“ Lenin was always prone to overestimate the physical danger to himself: in this respect he was something of a coward. Orlando Figes
“ 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… Orlando Figes
“ The remarkable thing about the Bolshevik insurrection is that hardly any of the Bolshevik leaders had wanted it to happen until a few hours before it began. Orlando Figes
“ The Provisional Government had lost effective military control of the capital a full two days before the armed uprising began. This was the essential fact of the whole insurrection: without it one can… Orlando Figes
“ Political indoctrination was geared towards producing activists. The propaganda image of the ideal child was a precocious political orator mouthing agitprop. Communism could not be taught from books,… Orlando Figes
“ 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. Orlando Figes
“ It was not Marxism that made Lenin a revolutionary but Lenin who made Marxism revolutionary. Orlando Figes
“ Whereas land reform was the first act of the Bolsheviks, it was the last act of the Whites: that, in a peasant country, says it all. Orlando Figes
“ 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… Orlando Figes
“ The deeper the Whites moved into the steppe, the more they resorted to terror against a hostile population. Their Ice March left a trail of blood. It was perhaps unavoidable, given the Volunteers' des… Orlando Figes
“ Sveta had much less to say, but she sat with Lev and held his hand, and when I asked her what had made her fall in love with him, she replied, ‘I knew he was my future. When he was not there, I would… Orlando Figes
“ The link between literacy and revolutions is a well-known historical phenomenon. The three great revolutions of modern European history -- the English, the French and the Russian -- all took place in… Orlando Figes
“ Only a few miles from any city centre one would find oneself already in the backwoods, where there were bandits living in the forests, where roads turned into muddy bogs in spring, and where the exter… Orlando Figes
“ According to a poll of 2005, 42 per cent of the Russian people, and 60 per cent of those over 60 years of age, wanted the return of a ‘leader like Stalin’. Orlando Figes
“ 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. Orlando Figes
“ 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 t… Orlando Figes
“ 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 problem… Orlando Figes
“ The worst violence was reserved for the Jews. There were 690 documented pogroms -- with over 3,000 reported murders -- during the two weeks following the deceleration of the October Manifesto. The Rig… Orlando Figes
