Tsar Quotes

The man who did the shooting was a civilian, Peter Kakhovsky, a gifted intellectual of extreme purity of motive in whom the conviction of the necessity of regicide burned with a gem-like flame. Determined to kill, expecting to die, this brilliant and terrible apparition, his slender form bundled up in a sheepskin coat, his delicate features surmounted by a shabby top hat, shot to kill with that indiscriminate ruthlessness which was later to characterise a whole generation of revolutionary terrorists. If he could not yet murder the Tsar, he would do the next best thing. ~ Edward Crankshaw

Maria cries unashamedly on my shoulder while I whisper and pet her cheek, but Anastasia grips my other hand and stares fiercely back at our Alexander Palace with her wet blue eyes until it is no more than a lemon-colored speck against the sunrise. ~ Sarah Miller

In Russia, the person who put Sevastopol on the literary map was Leo Tolstoy, a veteran of the siege. His fictionalized memoir The Sebastopol Sketches made him a national celebrity. Already with the first installment of the work published, Tsar Alexander II saw the propaganda value of the piece and ordered it translated into French for dissemination abroad. That made the young author very happy. Compared with Tolstoy's later novels, The Sebastopol Sketches hasn't aged well, possibly because this is not a heartfelt book. As the twenty-six-year-old Tolstoy's Sevastopol diaries reveal, not heartache but ambition drove him at the time. Making a name as an author was just an alternative to two other grand plans - founding a new religion and creating a mathematical model for winning in cards (his losses during the siege were massive even for a rich person). ~ Constantine Pleshakov

If you took the most ardent revolutionary, vested him in absolute power, within a year he would be worse than the Tsar himself. ~ Mikhail Bakunin

But the Tsar of Death and the Tsar of Life greatly feared one another, for Death is surrounded by souls, and is never lonely, and the Tsar of Life had hidden his death away in a place deeper than secrets, and more secret than depth. ~ Catherynne M Valente

But really, why should you distress yourself? Whoever stirs up the past - out with his eye! Who is not a sinner before God and to blame before the Tsar, as the saying is? ~ Leo Tolstoy

He keeps going, going, going on; his people groan and fall one after the other, but he keeps on going, going and in the end, perishes himself, but still remains the despot and tsar of the desert because the cross over his grave is visible to caravans thirty-forty miles away and reigns over the wasteland. ~ Anton Chekhov

Subect: Sigh.
Okay. Since we're on the subject...
Q. What is the Tsar of Russia's favorite fish?
A. Tsardines, of course.
Q. What does the son of a Ukranian newscaster and a U.S. congressman eat for Thanksgiving dinner on an island off the coast of Massachusetts?
A.?
-Ella

Subect: TG
A. Republicans.
Nah.I'm sure we'll have all the traditional stuff: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes. I'm hoping for apple pie. Our hosts have a cook who takes requests, but the island is kinda limited as far as shopping goes. The seven of us will probably spend the morning on a boat, then have a civilized chow-down. I predict Pictionary. I will win.
You?
-Alex

Subect: Re. TG
Alex,
I will be having my turkey (there ill be one, but it will be somewhat lost among the pumpkin fettuccine, sausage-stuffed artichokes, garlic with green beans, and at least four lasagnas, not to mention the sweet potato cannoli and chocolate ricotta pie) with at least forty members of my close family, most of whom will spend the entire meal screaming at each other. Some will actually be fighting, probably over football.

I am hoping to be seated with the adults. It's not a sure thing.

What's Martha's Vineyard like? I hear it's gorgeous. I hear it's favored by presidential types, past and present.
-Ella

Subject: Can I Have TG with You?
Please??? There's a 6a.m. flight off the island. I can be back in ~ Melissa Jensen

Given the gruesome fate of the last Tsar, Nicholas II, and his family, and the fact that five of the previous 12 Romanov rulers were also murdered, it is easy to regard Russia's imperial dynasty as cursed. ~ Saul David

The so-called "breeding" of the tsar, his ability to control himself in the most extraordinary circumstances, cannot be explained by a mere external training; its essence was an inner indifference, a poverty of spiritual forces, a weakness of the impulses of the will. That mask of indifference which was called breeding in certain circles, was a natural part of Nicholas at birth. The ~ Leon Trotsky

Did the tsar refuse to marry you?" I asked. I thought the duke might have been angry with her if he had: he hadn't seemed like a man to be satisfied if his plans went awry.

"No," she said. "I am tsarina. For as long as I live." She said it dryly, as if she didn't expect that to last long. "The tsar is a black sorcerer. He is possessed by a demon of flame that wants to devour me."

I laughed; I couldn't help it. It wasn't mirth, it was bitterness. "So the fairy silver brought you a monster of fire for a husband, and me a monster of ice. We should put them in a room together and let them make us both widows. ~ Naomi Novik

Yes, what would Russia be without me?" he [Tsar Nicholas I] said to himself, again sensing the approach of the unpleasant feeling. "Yes, what would, not just Russia, but Europe be without me?" And he remembered his brother-in-law, the king of Prussia, and his weakness and stupidity and shook his head. ~ Leo Tolstoy

I'll pretend, I tell myself. Pretending is safer than believing. ~ Sarah Miller

On December 13, the tsarina suggests to the tsar: "Anything but this responsible ministry about which everybody has gone crazy. Everything is getting quiet and better, but people want to feel your hand. How long they have been saying to me, for whole years, the same thing: 'Russia loves to feel the whip.' That is their nature!" This orthodox Hessian, with a Windsor upbringing and a Byzantine crown on her head, not only "incarnates" the Russian soul, but also organically despises it. Their nature demands the whip - writes the Russian tsarina to the Russian tsar about the Russian people, just two months and a half before the monarchy tips over into the abyss. In ~ Leon Trotsky

I wish I wasn't an imperial highness or an ex-grand duchess. I'm sick of people doing things to me because of what I am. Girl-in-white-dress. Short-one-with-fringe. Daughter-of-the-tsar. Child-of-the-ex-tyrant. I want people to look and see me, Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova, not the caboose on a train of grand duchesses. Someday, I promise myself, no one will be able to hear my name or look at my picture and suppose they know all about me. Someday I will do something bigger than what I am. ~ Sarah Miller

A few years later, Mendeleev, now famous, divorced his wife and wanted to remarry. Although the conservative local church said he had to wait seven years, he bribed a priest and got on with the nuptials. This technically made him a bigamist, but no one dared arrest him. When a local bureaucrat complained to the tsar about the double standard applied to the case- the priest was defrocked-the tsar primly replied, I admit, Mendeleev has two wives, but I have only one Mendeleev. ~ Sam Kean

I took a deep breath. The words to a Hebrew song popped into my mind: "Kol ha'olam kulo/Gesher tsar me'od." The whole world is a very narrow bridge.... And the main thing is, not to be afraid. ~ Hilary Zaid

From afar at the end of Tsar Peter Straat, issued in the frosty air the tinkle of bells of the horse tramcars, appearing and disappearing in the opening between the buildings, like little toy carriages harnessed with toy horses and played with by people that appeared no bigger than children. ~ Joseph Conrad

We are accustomed to live in hopes of good weather, a good harvest, a nice love-affair, hopes of becoming rich or getting the office of chief of police, but I've never noticed anyone hoping to get wiser. We say to ourselves: it'll be better under a new tsar, and in two hundred years it'll still be better, and nobody tries to make this good time come tomorrow. On the whole, life gets more and more complex every day and moves on its own sweet will, and people get more and more stupid, and get isolated from life in ever-increasing numbers. ~ Anton Chekhov

Next day at the review the Tsar asked Prince Andrey where he desired to serve; and Bolkonsky ruined his chances for ever in the court world by asking to be sent to the front, instead of begging for a post in attendance on the Tsar's person. ~ Leo Tolstoy

There was a happy irony in the first cousin of the autocratic Kaiser Wilhelm II and Tsar Nicholas II (with whom George bore a striking resemblance) furthering British democracy. ~ Paul Ham

The constant, obvious flattery, contrary to all evidence, of the people around him [Tsar Nicholas I] had brought him to the point that he no longer saw his contradictions, no longer conformed his actions and words to reality, logic, or even simple common sense, but was fully convinced that all his orders, however senseless, unjust, and inconsistent with each other, became sensible, just, and consistent with each other only because he gave them. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Когда рыжеволосый Самозванец
Тебя схватил - ты не согнула плеч.
Где спесь твоя, княгинюшка? - Румянец,
Красавица? - Разумница, - где речь?

Как Пётр-Царь, презрев закон сыновний,
Позарился на голову твою -
Боярыней Морозовой на дровнях
Ты отвечала Русскому Царю.

Не позабыли огненного пойла
Буонапарта хладные уста.
Не в первый раз в твоих соборах - стойла.
Всё вынесут кремлёвские бока.

9 декабря 1917



When the red-haired impostor, fell Dmitri,
laid hold of you, you did not bow the knee.
Where is your pride, my princess? - Where, my beauty?
The rosy cheeks? the voice once wise and free?

And when Tsar Peter, coveting your beauty,
made to ride roughshod over filial law -
Morozova showed you the path of duty:
she was your answer to the Russian Tsar.

And Bonaparte's cold lips cannot forget still
The fiery draught you set before him then.
Once more now your cathedrals serve for stables.
The Kremlin's flanks will soldier to the end. ~ Marina Tsvetaeva

Brother," he wept, "my heart is being cut in two. I cannot bear it."
"Tscha!" said the Tsar of Birds. "Life is like that. ~ Catherynne M Valente

And as we watched, the Tsar of Death lifted up his eyelids like skirts and began to dance in the streets of Leningrad. ~ Catherynne M Valente

In the summer of 1705, an unusually extravagant rumor horrified the citizenry. The Tsar, it was said, had forbidden Russian men to marry for seven years so that Russian women might be married to foreigners being imported by the shipload. To preserve their young women, Astrachaners arranged a mass marriage before the foreigners could arrive, and on a single day, July 30, 1705, a hundred women were married. ~ Robert K. Massie

An effective tsar could be harsh provided he was consistently harsh. Rulers are often killed not for brutality but for inconsistency. And tsars had to inspire trust and respect among their courtiers but sacred reverence among the peasantry, 90 per cent of their subjects, who saw them as "Little Fathers." They were expected to be severe to their officials but benign to their peasant "children": "the tsar is good," peasants said, "the nobles are wicked. ~ Simon Sebag Montefiore

I don't mind whether a person is rich or poor. Once my friend, always my friend.
--Tsarina Alexandra of Russia (1872-1918) ~ Julia P. Gelardi

Jews were emphatically second-class subjects of the Tsar. A Pale of Settlement, outside which Jews were not supposed to reside, had been established by Catherine II in 1791, though it was not precisely delineated until 1835. It consisted of Russian-controlled Poland ~ Niall Ferguson

...from the perspective of the individual, it could be said that the single greatest difference between Russia and the West, both under Tsarism and Communism, was that in Western Europe citizens were generally free to do as they pleased so long as their activities had not been specifically prohibited by the state, while the people of Russia were not free to do anything unless the state had given them specific permission to do it. No subject of the Tsar, regardless of his rank or class, could sleep securely in his bed in the knowledge that his house would not be subject to a search, or he himself to arrest. ~ Orlando Figes

Music herself should be silent when Nicholas speaks. (on why he had stopped playing during a performance with Tsar Nicholas I in attendance) ~ Franz Liszt

Надобно смело признаться, Лира!
Мы тяготели к великим мира:
Мачтам, знаменам, церквам, царям,
Бардам, героям, орлам и старцам,
Так, присягнувши на верность - царствам,
Не доверяют Шатра - ветрам.

Знаешь царя - так псаря не жалуй!
Верность как якорем нас держала:
Верность величью - вине - беде,
Верность великой вине венчанной!
Так, присягнувши на верность - Хану,
Не присягают его орде.

Ветреный век мы застали, Лира!
Ветер в клоки изодрав мундиры,
Треплет последний лоскут Шатра…
Новые толпы - иные флаги!
Мы ж остаемся верны присяге,
Ибо дурные вожди - ветра.

14 августа 1918



Better, my Lyre, to confess it freely!
It was the great ever stirred our feelings:
masts, battle ensigns, churches, and kings,
bards, epic heroes, eagles, and elders.
Those that are pledged to the realm, like soldiers,
do not confide their Tent - to the winds.

You know the Tsar - do not toy with the hunter!
Loyalty has held us, firm as an anchor:
loyalty to greatness - to guilt - to grief,
to the great crowned guilt - loyalty unswerving!
Those that are pledged to the Khan will serve him
- their oath is not to the horde, but its chief.

We struck a fickle age, Lyre, that scatters
all to the winds! Uniforms ripped to tatters,
and the last shreds of the Tent worn thin...
New crowds ~ Marina Tsvetaeva

Vorobyaninov, I've got a pressing artistic task for you,' he whispered. 'Go over to the exit from the first-class hallway and stand there. If somebody approaches, start singing, loudly.'
The old man was taken aback. 'But what should I sing?'
'Not "God Save the Tsar," that's for sure! ~ Ilya Ilf

With its passive and unobtrusive despotism, the camera governed the smallest spaces of our lives. Even in the privacy of our own homes we had all been recruited to play our parts in what were little more than real-life commercials. As we cooked in our kitchens we were careful to follow the manufacturer's instructions, as we made love in our bedrooms we embraced within a familiar repertoire of gestures and affections. The medium of film had turned us all into minor actors in an endlessly running daytime serial. In the future, airliners would crash and presidents would be assassinated within agreed conventions as formalised as the coronation of a tsar. ~ J.G. Ballard

It's different now, like pushing the stop lever on my camera until nothing except the war can squeeze through the lens. ~ Sarah Miller

Take some exercise, try to recover the look of a human being. ~ Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin

Please search among your staffs and find me an expert on Russia. Find me someone who speaks the language, who is up-to-date on his internal politics, and who understands the Tsar. Find me someone who can think like a Russian. I can't stress how critical it is to find such a person. I need this man to prepare me for the peace talks, and I need him soon. Please notify me directly when such a man is identified."
President Theodore Roosevelt in 'Moryak ~ Lee Mandel

As a graduate of the Citadel, the military college of South Carolina, I am astonished by Tolstoy's absolute mastery at describing battles and military tactics. If I were teaching military history in any country in the world, I would make War and Peace required reading for anyone who held any ambition for advancement into the officer corps. It should be on the night table of the leader of every country who wishes to send troops into war. No writer has ever described the horror and anarchy of battle with more authority. It is one of the timeless lessons of War and Peace that no one, not Napoleon, nor the Tsar, nor the Russian general Katuzov, has any idea how a war is going to turn out once it is unleashed. Napoleon ~ Leo Tolstoy

We should be used to it," Tatiana reasons. "There have always been lines separating us from the rest of the world, whether they were satin ribbons or iron rails. ~ Sarah Miller

My sisters and I sit together on a pair of suitcases. If we've forgotten anything, it's already too late
our rooms have all been sealed and photographed. Anyway, Tatiana would say it's bad luck to return for something you've forgotten. ~ Sarah Miller

There, weeping, a tsarevna lies locked in a cell.
And Master Grey Wolf serves her very well.
There, in her mortar, sweeping beneath the skies,
the demon Baba Yaga flies.
There Tsar Koschei,
he wastes away,
poring over his pale gold. ~ Catherynne M Valente

There is history the way Tolstoy imagined it, as a great, slow-moving weather system in which even tsars and generals are just leaves before the storm. And there is history the way Hollywood imagines it, as a single story line in which the right move by the tsar or the wrong move by the general changes everything. Most of us, deep down, are probably Hollywood people. We like to invent "what if" scenarios
what if x had never happened, what if y had happened instead?
because we like to believe that individual decisions make a difference: that, if not for x, or if only there had been y, history might have plunged forever down a completely different path. Since we are agents, we have an interest in the efficacy of agency. ~ Louis Menand

The current technological and scientific revolution implies not that authentic individuals and authentic realities can be manipulated by algorithms and TV cameras, but rather that authenticity is a myth. People are afraid of being trapped inside a box, but they don't realise that they are already trapped inside a box – their brain – which is locked within a bigger box – human society with its myriad fictions. When you escape the matrix the only thing you discover is a bigger matrix. When the peasants and workers revolted against the tsar in 1917, they ended up with Stalin; and when you begin to explore the manifold ways the world manipulates you, in the end you realise that your core identity is a complex illusion created by neural networks. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

The first Romanov ruler was just 16 when he was crowned Tsar Michael I in Moscow in 1613, thus ending the 'Time of Troubles' sparked by Ivan the Terrible's death. ~ Saul David

By destroying the peasant economy and driving the peasant from the country to the town, the famine creates a proletariat ... Furthermore the famine can and should be a progressive factor not only economically. It will force the peasant to reflect on the bases of the capitalist system, demolish faith in the tsar and tsarism, and consequently in due course make the victory of the revolution easier ... Psychologically all this talk about feeding the starving and so on essentially reflects the usual sugary sentimentality of our intelligentsia. ~ Vladimir Lenin

That debauchery was not a good thing in a married man did not even occur to him [Tsar Nicholas I], and he would have been very surprised if anyone had condemned him for it. But, even though he was convinced that he had acted as he ought, he was left with some sort of unpleasant aftertaste, and, to stifle that feeling, he began thinking about something that always soothed him: about what a great man he was. ~ Leo Tolstoy

This praise of his strategic abilities was especially pleasing to [Tsar] Nicholas, because, though he was proud of his strategic abilities, at the bottom of his heart he was aware that he had none. And now he wanted to to hear more detailed praise of himself. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Это просто, как кровь и пот:
Царь - народу, царю - народ.

Это ясно, как тайна двух:
Двое рядом, а третий - Дух.

Царь с небес на престол взведён:
Это чисто, как снег и сон.

Царь опять на престол взойдёт -
Это свято, как кровь и пот.

7 мая 1918, 3-ий день Пасхи
(а оставалось ему жить меньше трёх месяцев!)


It is simple, as blood and sweat:
Tsar and people - in destiny wed.

It is clear, as a secret shared
Between two, an the Spirit- the third.

Heaven summoned the tsar to his throne:
It is spotless, as sleep as snow.

And the tsar shall regain his throne yet:
It is sacred, as blood and sweat.


24th April 1918
3rd day of Easter (and he had - less than three months to live!) ~ Marina Tsvetaeva

Occasionally, Charles and Maude would host a dinner party where they would come together as Husband and Wife, and on such occasions I would be brought down and passed around from couple to couple like a Fabergé egg they'd purchased from a descendant of the last Russian Tsar. ~ John Boyne

You see, my love. As you've always said, after the rain-"
Sun."
After the darkness-"
Light."
And after the illness-"
Health."
Exactly," said the Tsar. "We mustn't give up faith. ~ Robert Alexander

The tsar [Nicholas II] is not treacherous but he is weak. Weakness is not treachery, but it fulfils all its functions. ~ Wilhelm II

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. ~ Orlando Figes

Do Boga vysoko, do Tsarya daleko, God is high up, and the tsar is far away," she whispered. Anything can happen, and there's no remedy. ~ Jason Matthews

Yet there was always in me, even when I was very small, the sense that I ought to be somewhere else. And wander I did, although, in my everyday life, I had nowhere to go and no imaginable reason on earth why I should want to leave. The buses took to the interstate without me, the trains sped by. So I wandered the world through books. I went to Victorian England in the pages of 'Middlemarch' and 'A little Princess', and to Saint Petersburg before the fall of the tsar with 'Anna Karenina'. I went to Tara, and Manderley, and Thornfield Hall, all those great houses, with their high ceilings and high drama, as I read 'Gone with the Wind', 'Rebecca' and 'Jane Eyre'. ~ Anna Quindlen

In Russia, meanwhile, dedicated young people kept trying to kill the tsar. ~ Ian Frazier

With tears in her eyes, Alexandra assured him that the husband and father was infinitely more precious to her than the tsar whose throne she had shared. Nicholas finally broke. Laying his head on his wife's breast, he sobbed like a child. ~ Robert K. Massie