QUOTES

21 " How fiercely everyone yearns for the Bolsheviks to perish! There’s not the most terrible biblical punishment that we wouldn’t wish on them. If the devil himself would burst into the city and literally go about with Bolshevik blood up to his neck, half of Odessa would weep from joy.9 There is so much lying going around that I could scream. All my friends, all my acquaintances, people whom earlier I never would have thought of as liars, are now uttering falsehoods at every turn. "

― , Cursed Days: Diary of a Revolution

22 " They cannot help but lie; they cannot help but add to their own lies, their own flourishes to well-known falsehoods. And they all do so from an agonizing need that everything be just as they so fiercely desire. They rave on like they have a fever; and when I hear their rantings I take their words in greedily and become infected by them. "

― , Cursed Days: Diary of a Revolution

23 " Otherwise it seems that I won’t survive the week. And every day this self-deception gains such momentum that by evening I go to bed as if in a drunken stupor, almost completely certain that something will happen during the night. I cross myself firmly and furiously. I pray with such force that my body hurts. It seems that God, or a miracle, or the heavenly powers cannot but help us. I fall asleep, exhausted from the unbelievable fervor with which I have begged for an end to the Bolsheviks. "

― , Cursed Days: Diary of a Revolution

24 " send my soul over thousands of miles, into the night, the darkness, and the unknown so that I will be with my family and loved ones, and so that I can express my fear for them, my love for them, my agony for them, and my hope that God will save and protect them. Then suddenly in the middle of the night I jump up with a wildly beating heart: somewhere I hear the rat-a-tat-tat of a machine gun. Sometimes it is very close by, like a hail of stones on the roof. "

― , Cursed Days: Diary of a Revolution

25 " Here it is, I think. Something has finally happened; someone, perhaps, has attacked the city and will finally put an end to this cursed life! But the next morning I again sober up with a heavy hangover. I rush to the newspapers; no, nothing has happened. Again I read all the same insolent and self-assured cries, all the same new “victories.” The sun is shining, people are going about, the stores have lines in front of them . . . and again I fall into a torpor, overwhelmed by hopelessness and the feeling that I have to face another long, empty day; no, not just one day but many days, empty, long, and good for nothing! Why bother living? For what? Why bother to do anything? In this world, in their world, in the world where the lout and the beast hold sway, I need nothing. . . . [People say:] “Our country has an extremely special psyche, one which people will write about for "

― , Cursed Days: Diary of a Revolution

26 " Люди спасаются только слабостью своих способностей, — слабостью воображения, внимания, мысли, иначе нельзя было бы жить. "

― , Cursed Days: Diary of a Revolution

27 " Вообще, студентов видишь нередко: спешит куда-то, весь растерзан, в грязной ночной рубахе под старой распахнувшейся шинелью, на лохматой голове слинявший картуз, на ногах сбитые башмаки, на плече висит вниз дулом винтовка на веревке... Впрочем, черт его знает — студент ли он на самом деле. Да хорошо и все прочее. Случается, что, например, выходит из ворот бывшей Крымской гостиницы (против чрезвычайки) отряд солдат, а по мосту идут женщины: тогда весь отряд вдруг останавливается — и с хохотом мочится, оборотясь к ним. А этот громадный плакат на чрезвычайке? Нарисованы ступени, на верхней — трон, от трона текут потоки крови. Подпись: Мы кровью народной залитые троны Кровью наших врагов обагрим! "

― , Cursed Days: Diary of a Revolution

28 " Cursed Days and Bunin’s writings in Southern Word drive home this theme: Revolutions must be viewed with “genuinely savage hatred” and “genuinely savage contempt. "

― , Cursed Days: Diary of a Revolution

29 " the next hundred years.” But what comfort do I take in that? After all, what do I care about a time when even the dust from my remains will be gone? These notes will not be worth anything. But who cares? The very same human being will be living through these hundred years—and I know very well how much he’s worth! "

― , Cursed Days: Diary of a Revolution

30 " А по Дерибасовской опять плакаты: два рабочих крутят пресс, а под прессом лежит раздавленный буржуй, изо рта которого и из зада лентами лезут золотые монеты. А толпа? Какая, прежде всего, грязь! Сколько старых, донельзя запакощенных солдатских шинелей, сколько порыжевших обмоток на ногах и сальных картузов, которыми точно улицу подметали, на вшивых головах! И какой ужас берет, как подумаешь, сколько теперь народу ходит в одежде, содранной с убитых, с трупов! А в красноармейцах главное — распущенность. В зубах папироска, глаза мутные, наглые, картуз на затылок, на лоб падает «шевелюр». Одеты в какую-то сборную рвань. Иногда мундир 70-х годов, иногда, ни с того ни с сего, красные рейтузы и при этом пехотная шинель и громадная старозаветная сабля. Часовые сидят у входов реквизированных домов в креслах в самых изломанных позах. Иногда сидит просто босяк, на поясе браунинг, с одного боку висит немецкий тесак, с другого кинжал. "

― , Cursed Days: Diary of a Revolution

31 " But what happened? Did our stupidity and ignorance come from the fact that we didn’t know the people, or because we didn’t want to know them? Both. At that time, though, people usually had a lot to gain by telling falsehoods for which they were somehow rewarded. “I believe in the Russian people,” someone would say, and applause would follow. "

― , Cursed Days: Diary of a Revolution

32 " A well-known segment of society suffered particularly from such lying. People became so depraved in professing to be “friends of the people, of youth, and of all that is enlightened,” that they seemed completely sincere. "

― , Cursed Days: Diary of a Revolution

33 " The celebrating of revolutionary anniversaries and milestones pillory honor as murderers, hypocrites, and sexually diseased youth become heroes of socialism, proclaiming Soviet salvation to the world. "

― , Cursed Days: Diary of a Revolution

34 " Russia was destroyed by a sluggish, self-interested power that did not heed the wishes of the people, their hopes, their dreams. . . . In light of this, the revolution was inevitable.” My answer to his: “The people did not start the revolution; individuals like you did. The people spat on absolutely everything we wanted, on all we were dissatisfied with. I am not talking to you about the revolution—let it be inevitable, splendid, anything you like. But don’t lie about the people—they need all your executive ministries, the successions of the Shcheglovitovs by the Malyantoviches, and the abolition of all kinds of censorship like they need snow during summertime. "

― , Cursed Days: Diary of a Revolution

35 " Such public displays, however, cannot conceal from a thinking person the growing emptiness and horror of bolshevized life. In its vulgarity and sham, Bunin sees that the only forward movement of the new Soviet existence is toward the grave. "

― , Cursed Days: Diary of a Revolution

36 " Страшно сказать, но правда: не будь народных бедствий, тысячи интеллигентов были бы прямо несчастнейшие люди. Как же тогда заседать, протестовать, о чем кричать и писать? А без этого и жизнь не в жизнь была. То же и во время войны. Было, "

― , Cursed Days: Diary of a Revolution

37 " This the people showed firmly and cruelly when they abandoned, to the devil, the Provisional Government, the Constituent Assembly, and ‘everything that generations of the best Russians died for,’ as you yourself have expressed it, and ‘including your victorious end,’ to boot. "

― , Cursed Days: Diary of a Revolution

38 " It’s a terrible thing to say, but it’s the truth: if it were not for the misfortunes of the folk, thousands of our intellectuals would be profoundly unhappy people. How else could they have sat around and protested? What would they have cried and written about? Without the folk, life would not have been life for them. "

― , Cursed Days: Diary of a Revolution

39 " Как холодно, росисто и как хорошо жить на свете! "

― , Антоновские яблоки

40 " Are they in cahoots with the Germans?4 No, that’s ridiculous. They’re fanatics, they believe in universal conflagration. But they fear everything like fire and suspect plots everywhere. And up until now they have also been in trembling for their power and for their lives. They, I repeat, never expected they would succeed in October. After Moscow had fallen, they were terribly confused. They ran over to us at New Life and begged us to be ministers, and presented us with briefcases. . . .” March 15 / 28, 1918 "

― , Cursed Days: Diary of a Revolution