Orlando Figes Quotes

On the news that the Tsar had sent the troops icons to boost their morals, General Dragomirov quipped: 'The Japanese are beating us with machine-guns, but never mind: we'll beat them with icons.

There is no sadder symbol of the crippling poverty in which millions of peasants were forced to live than the image of a peasant and his son struggling to drag a plough through the mud.

Lenin was always prone to overestimate the physical danger to himself: in this respect he was something of a coward.