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“On the Ostankino channels the President's personal confessor, the Archimandrite Tikhon, dressed in a long black cassock and walking through Istanbul, is telling a prime-time tale about the fall of Byzantium, of how the great Orthodox Empire (to which Russia is the successor) was brought low by a mix of oligarchs and the West. Professional historians howl in protest at this pseudo-history, but the Kremlin is starting to use religion and the supernatural for its own ends. Byzantium and Muscovy could only flourish under one great autocrat, the Archimandrite states. This is why we need the President to be like a tsar.”
― Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia
― Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia
“Anna wrote to her father that she found her new land “a barbarous country where the houses are gloomy, the churches ugly, and the customs revolting.” Paris under Henry I was clearly not Constantinople, but more importantly, in Anna’s eyes, it did not rank even with Kyiv.”
― The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine
― The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine
“Most of the time, however, the cruelty of Soviet camp guards was unthinking, stupid, lazy cruelty, of the sort that might be shown to cattle or sheep.”
― Gulag: A History
― Gulag: A History
“There is a spate of prime-time documentaries about "psychological weapons." One is The Call of the Void. It features secret service men who inform the audience about the psychic weapons they have developed. The Russian military has "sleepers," psychics who can go into a trance and enter the world's collective uncounscious, its deeper soul, and from thence penetrate the minds of foreign statesmen to uncover their nefarious designs. One has entered the mind of the US president and then reconfigured the intentions of one of his advisers so that whatever hideous plan the US had hatched has failed to come off. The message is clear: if the secret services can see into the US president's mind, they could definitely see into yours; the state is everywhere, watching your every thought.”
― Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia
― Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia
“The Kremlin idea is to own all forms of political discourse, to not let any independent movements develop outside its walls.”
― Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia
― Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia
Esperanto
— 84 members
— last activity May 22, 2024 06:27AM
Esperanto is an international language invented by Zamenhof a polish doctor to faciliate relations between peoples with different languages.
The History Book Club
— 26099 members
— last activity 6 hours, 48 min ago
"Interested in history - then you have found the right group". The History Book Club is the largest history and nonfiction group on Goodread ...more
Olga’s 2025 Year in Books
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