Orlando Figes Quote
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 external signs of life in the remote hamlets had remained essentially unchanged since the Middle Ages. Yet, despite living so close to the peasants, the educated classes of the cities knew next to nothing about their world. It was as exotic and alien to them as the natives of Africa were to their distant colonial rulers.
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 external signs of life in the remote hamlets had remained essentially unchanged since the Middle Ages. Yet, despite living so close to the peasants, the educated classes of the cities knew next to nothing about their world. It was as exotic and alien to them as the natives of Africa were to their distant colonial rulers.
Tags:
russia
Related Quotes
Now life is given in exchange for pain and fear, and that's the basis of the whole deception. Now man is still not what he should be. There will e a new man, happy and proud. Whoever doesn't care whet...
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Tags:
classics, death, demons, dostoyevsky, fyodor dostoyevsky, god, russia, russian, russian lit, russian literature
Long before it was known to me as a place where my ancestry was even remotely involved, the idea of a state for Jews (or a Jewish state; not quite the same thing, as I failed at first to see) had been...
Christopher Hitchens
Tags:
ancestry, antisemitism, arabs, armageddon, arthur balfour, bedouin, bolshevism, britain, christianity, colonialism
About Orlando Figes
Figes is known for his works on Russian history, such as A People's Tragedy (1996), Natasha's Dance (2002), The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia (2007), Crimea (2010) and Just Send Me Word (2012). A People's Tragedy is a study of the Russian Revolution, and combines social and political history with biographical details in a historical narrative. Figes has also contributed significantly on European history more broadly, notably with his book The Europeans (2019).
He serves on the editorial board of the journal Russian History, writes for the international press, broadcasts on television and radio, reviews for The New York Review of Books, and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. In 2023, Figes was awarded an Honorary Degree by the Universidad Internacional Menéndez Pelayo in Santiago, Spain.