Russian Identity Quotes

Above all, we should acknowledge that the collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the century. As for the Russian nation, it became a genuine drama. Tens of millions of our co-citizens and co-patriots found themselves outside Russian territory.

Russia, Russia - unwashed, backward, appealing Russia, so ashamed of your own backwardness, so orientally determined to conceal it from us by clever deceit.

The Soviet Union was designed for Muscovite rule, not for division into independent republics. Yet the latter is exactly what happened in 1991 - and the Kremlin has never accepted it.

The biggest nationalist in Russia: that's me.

Russia itself is a European country, and not just because our major political and economic centres are in Europe, but because Russian culture is primarily European culture.

It is easier for a Russian to become an Atheist, than for any other nationality in the world. And not only does a Russian 'become an Atheist,' but he actually BELIEVES IN Atheism, just as though he had found a new faith, not perceiving that he has pinned his faith to a negation. Such is our anguish of thirst!

I love the good Russian world, the humanitarian Russian world, but I do not love the Russian world of Beria, Stalin, and Shoigu.

There is a view of Russian exceptionalism, that they are a unique civilisation, a view right since Ivan the Terrible that Russia is a special civilisation with a special culture. Putin is pushing that now.

From being a patriotic myth, the Russian people have become an awful reality.

Russia is an ancient country with historical, profound traditions and a very powerful moral foundation. And this foundation is a love for the Motherland and patriotism. Patriotism in the best sense of that word. Incidentally, I think that to a certain extent, to a significant extent, this is also attributable to the American people.

If people in Russia do not take the path of traditional, pure Sufi Islam, Russia will lose out. All the other denominations, like Wahhabism, are new inventions for our country - we have never had it, and we will never accept it.

There is no such thing as Russian fascism. You won't find a single Russian who considers Russians to be a superior race and who advocate expulsion of aliens.

The dominant factor in the history of Russia's past is the influence of Asia. She crushed us, but she has also regenerated us.

I doubt whether the Revolution has, in essentials, changed Russia at all. Reading Gogol, or Dostoevsky for that matter, one realizes how completely the Soviet regime has fallen back on to, and perhaps invigorated, the old Russia. Certainly there is much more of Gogol and Dostoievsky in the regime than there is of Marx.

Trotsky was essentially a Western mind. Lenin was a Russian, and unlike most other revolutionary exiles, wherever he went he was a Russian.

The problem is not so much that they are Communists as it is that they are Russians.

Russia is a name usurped by the Muscovites. They are not Slavs; they do not belong to the Indo-Germanic race at all, they are des intrus [intruders], who must be chased back across the Dnieper, etc.

I have yet to meet a Russian who views the Ukraine as a separate state apart from Russia.

It was awesome and liberating to play a Russian spy.

Since the days of Peter the Great, Russians have been maybe Europeans who didn't share in the enlightenment and the reformation, or are they Mongol Asians with the European veneer. And they've gone back and forth.

I'm actually embarrassed to tell people I'm Russian these days, because it's become such an awful place.

I have never been much of a patriot. My father would not have allowed such a thing while he lived, and his death insured that his wish was carried out. Piter commanded far more affection and loyalty from me than the nation as a whole. But that night, running across the unplowed fields of winter wheat, with the Fascist invaders behind us and the dark Russian woods before us, I felt a surge of pure love for my country. We ran for the forest, crashing through the stalks of wheat, beneath the rising moon and the stars spinning farther and farther away, alone beneath the godless sky.

I was very anti-Soviet and very pro-Russian..

In the soul of a Russian person there is always a drive toward some kind of lofty moral ideal, lofty moral values. That definitely sets us apart, and I'm certain it's in a good way.

'Daddy used to be a Georgian,' Stalin's son, Vasily, once said. Actually, the dictator didn't truly become Russian; he remained Georgian culturally. Yet he embraced the imperial mission of the Russian people.