28 Quotes by Orlando Figes

These romantic visions of the peasantry were constantly undone by contact with reality, often with devastating consequences for their bearers. The populists, who invested much of themselves in their conception of the peasants, suffered the most in this respect, since the disintegration of that conception threatened to undermine not only their radical beliefs but also their own self-identity.

The 'noble savage' whom the Populists had seen in the simple peasant was, as Gorky now concluded, no more than a romantic illusion. And the more he experienced the everyday life of the peasant, the more he denounced them as savage and barbaric.

In the mind of the ordinary peasant the Tsar was not just a kingly ruler but a god on earth. He thought of him as a father-figure who knew all the peasants personally by name, understood their problems in all their minute details, and, if it were not for the evil boyars who surrounded him, would satisfy their demands. Hence the peasant tradition of sending direct appeals to the Tsar.

To the less privileged it was this arbitrariness that made the regime's power feel so oppressive. There were no clear principles or regulations which enabled the individual to challenge authority or the state.

The only way, they argued, to prevent a revolution was to rule Russia with an iron hand. This meant defending the autocratic principle, the unchecked powers of the police, the hegemony of the nobility, and the moral domination of the Church, against the liberal and secular challenges of the urban-industrialize order.

The peasant also found another use for this sacred object. 'He says of the icon: "It's good for praying -- and you can cover the pots with it too.

It was ironic but somehow fitting that the 1905 Revolution should have been started by an organisation dreamed up by the tsarist regime itself. No-one believed more than Father Gapon in the bond between Tsar and people.

There was much that was endearing in this strangely Russian search for absolutes – such as the passion for big ideas that gave the literature of nineteenth-century Russia its unique character and power – and yet the underside of this idealism was a badgering didacticism, a moral dogmatism and intolerance, which in its own way was just as harmful as the censorship it opposed.

Lenin’s Personal life was extraordinarily dull. He dressed and lived like a middle-aged provincial clerk, with precisely fixed hours for meals, sleep, work and leisure. He liked everything to be neat and orderly.