Soviet Union

🇷🇺Ivan Pavlov

Medicine

1849–1936

"I was, I am and will remain the Russian, the son of the Motherland. Her life first of all I will be interested in. I will live with her interests. With her’s dignity I will strengthen mine."

🇷🇺Boris Pasternak

Literature

Futurism

1890–1960

"Poetry is a rich, full-bodied whistle, cracked ice crunching in pails, the night that numbs the leaf, the duel of two nightingales, the sweet pea that has run wild, Creation’s tears in shoulder blades."

"The first words of the inhabitats of Partgrad were offensive words."

🇷🇺Alexandra Kollontai

Politics

1872–1952

"My Marxist outlook pointed out to me with an illuminating clarity that women's liberation could take place only as the result of the victory of a new social order and a different economic system."

🇷🇺Andrei Tarkovsky

Entertainment

1932–1986

"The film needs to be slower and duller at the start so that the viewers who walked into the wrong theatre have time to leave before the main action starts"

🇷🇺Anna Akhmatova

Literature

Acmeist poetry

1889–1966

"Film About Anna Akhmatova by Helga Landauer and Anatoly Naiman"

🇷🇺Mikhail Tukhachevsky

Military

1893–1937

"Many desire it. We are a slack people but deeply destructive. Should there be a revolution, only God knows where it will end. I think that a constitutional regime would mean the end of Russia. We need a despot!"

🇷🇺Ahad Ha'am

Politics

Hovevei Zion

1856–1927

"Historical truth is that, and that alone, which reveals the forces that go to mould the social life of mankind."

🇷🇺Saint John of Shanghai and San Francisco

1896–1966

"Many were aware that it was not necessary to ask Vladika to visit someone. The Lord Himself inspired him where and to whom to go."

🇷🇺Vytautas Juozapaitis

Music

b. 1963

"Most noteworthy was Vytautas Juozapaitis in the title role. He nailed the role with his well projected baritone."

🇷🇺Anastas Mikoyan

Literature

1895–1978

"All peoples enjoy freedom, and freedom for the development of their culture... There is no Jewish problem in the Soviet Union at all... I have many friends who are Jews."

🇷🇺Boris Berman

Politics

1901–1939

"Prokofiev’s playing of lyrical music is especially noteworthy. His phrasing can be exquisitely beautiful in its dynamic molding , and his polyphonic voicing can be clear and expressive ."

🇷🇺Naum Gabo

Politics

abstract art

1890–1977

"Art and Science are two different streams which rise from the same creative force and flow into the same ocean of the common culture, but the currents of these two streams flow in different directions."

🇷🇺Leonid Brezhnev

Politics

1906–1982

"Today progress is so swift in all fields that the education received by young people is only a foundation that requires the constant acquisition of knowledge."

🇷🇺Lev Artsimovich

Science

1909–1973

"Science is a way to pursue one's sense of inquiry at the expense of the State."

🇷🇺Nikolai Krylenko

Law

1885–1938

"The basic mistake in eyery case is made by those women who consider 'freedom of abortion' as one of their civil rights. We need new fighters - they built this life, we need people."

🇷🇺Alexander Ovechkin

b. 1985

"I don't care what people say about me and what they think about me. I care about my team and I care about myself. Lots of people watch hockey, and I think everybody has different thinking."

🇷🇺Mikhail Gorbachev

Politics

Marxism

1921–1981

"I believe, as Lenin said, that this revolutionary chaos may yet crystallize into new forms of life."

🇷🇺Vyacheslav Molotov

Economics

1890–1986

"The trouble with free elections is that you never know how they are going to turn out."

🇷🇺Lazar Kaganovich

Politics

1893–1991

"First, Stalin is disowned, now, little by little, it gets to prosecute socialism, the October Revolution, and in no time they will also want to prosecute Lenin and Marx."

🇷🇺Sergey Biryuzov

Military

1904–1964

"We ceased to deal seriously with mobile combat. We relegated to oblivion the fundamentals of combat-in-depth tactics and of combined arms maneuvers which had been widespread before the Finnish campaign."

🇷🇺Semyon Timoshenko

Military

1895–1970

"We'll spin them out like a bobbin thread."

🇷🇺Lavrentiy Beria

Politics

1899–1953

"By psychopolitics create chaos. Leave a nation leaderless. Kill our enemies. And bring to Earth, through Communism, the greatest peace Man has ever known."

🇷🇺Maxim Gorky

Literature

socialist realism

1868–1936

"One has to be able to count, if only so that at fifty one doesn't marry a girl of twenty."

🇷🇺Nikolai Bukharin

Politics

1888–1938

"In all grades of army life, the proletariat is in control through the instrumentality of the communist commissars, who both at the front and at the rear are mainly drawn from among the workers."

"I think, that it is our common duty from now on to stop Chinese penetration of the international Communist movement and in relation to Western powers to show China as the main present and future troublemaker."

🇷🇺Leonid Govorov

Military

1897–1955

"The Germans had thought they could replace light artillery with mortars, believing it unnecessary to furnish their troops with light guns and howitzers. The theory was wrong as they found out during the invasion."

🇷🇺Lyubov Popova

Art

cubism

1889–1924

"Christina Lodder, 'Liubov Popova: From Painting to Textile Design', Tate Papers, no.14, Autumn 2010"

🇷🇺Andrei Grechko

Politics

1903–1976

"The Communist Party and the Soviet Government display constant concern to strengthen the country's defensive might and raise the combat readiness of the Armed Forces."

🇷🇺Vasily Chuikov

Military

1900–1982

"Every German soldier must be made to feel that he is living under the muzzle of a Russian gun."

🇷🇺Andrei Zhdanov

Politics

1896–1948

"The only conflict that is possible in Soviet culture is the conflict between good and best."

🇷🇺Sergei Prokofiev

Music

1891–1953

"This is my best work, but only because The Flaming Angel is my greatest."

🇷🇺Mikhail Sholokhov

Literature

socialist realism

1905–1984

"Sometimes life played with him, sometimes it hung on him like a stone round the neck of a drowned man."

🇷🇺Aleksandr Vasilevsky

Politics

1895–1977

"I did not decide to become an officer to start a military career. I still wanted to be an agronomist and work in some remote corner of Russia after the war. I could not suppose that my country would change, and I would."

🇷🇺Filipp Golikov

Military

1900–1980

"Golikov was a perfect choice. While he himself likely saw Stalin as a guardian angel, Stalin surely saw in him an individual on whom he could rely completely."

🇷🇺Leonid Kantorovich

Mathematics

1912–1986

"Leonid Kantorovich", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive, University of St Andrews"

🇷🇺Andrei Gromyko

Economics

1909–1989

"under a Sword of Damocles … on a tightrope over the abyss."

🇷🇺Shushanik Kurghinian

Literature

1876–1927

"Whoever is without hope, dulled, without spirit,"

🇷🇺Dmitriy Ustinov

Literature

1908–1984

"Frankly, we doubt the veracity and seriousness of the United States in regard to achieving results that would be acceptable to both sides in Geneva."