1
" There is something in this January Siberian landscape that overpowers, oppresses, stuns. Above all, it is its enormity, its boundlessness, its oceanic limitlessness. The earth has no end here; the world has no end. Man is no created for such measureless. For him a comfortable, palpable, serviceable measure is the measure of his village, his field, street, house. At sea, the size of the ship's deck will be such a measure. Man is created for the kind of space that he can traverse at one try, with a single effort. "
― Ryszard Kapuściński , Imperium
5
" Biel często kojarzy się z ostatecznością, z kresem, ze śmiercią. W tych kulturach, w których ludzie żyją lękiem przed śmiercią żałobnicy ubierają się na czarno, żeby odstraszyć od siebie śmierć, izolować ją, ograniczyć do zmarłego. Tam jednak, gdzie śmierć jest uważana za inną formę, inną postać istnienia, żałobnicy ubierają się na biało i na biało ubierają zmarłego: biel jest tu kolorem akceptacji, zgody, przystania na los. "
― Ryszard Kapuściński , Imperium
8
" The train is speeding into a luminous future. Lenin is at the controls. Suddenly—stop, the tracks come to an end. Lenin calls on the people for additional, Saturday work, tracks are laid down, and the train moves on. Now Stalin is driving it. Again the tracks end. Stalin orders half the conductors and passengers shot, and the rest he forces to lay down new tracks. The train starts again. Khrushchev replaces Stalin, and when the tracks come to an end, he orders that the ones over which the train has already passed be dismantled and laid down before the locomotive. Brezhnev takes Khrushchev’s place. When the tracks end again, Brezhnev decides to pull down the window blinds and rock the cars in such a way that the passengers will think the train is still moving forward. (Yurii Boriev, Staliniad, 1990) "
― Ryszard Kapuściński , Imperium
11
" Gradually, the nations living in this cradle of mankind, having created great, monumental civilizations, as if exhausted by the superhuman effort, or perhaps even crushed by the immensity of what they had brought forth and no longer capable of further developing it, handed over the reins to younger peoples, bursting with energy and eager to live. Europe will come on the scene and, later, America. "
― Ryszard Kapuściński , Imperium
12
" Will not mankind, which was born in the desert, as all the sources attest, have to return there to its cradle? And then to whom will he turn for advice, this sweaty urbanite, with his broken-down Fiat, with his refrigerator and no place to plug it in? Will he not start searching for the Turkman with the gray beard, the Tuareg wrapped in a turban? They know where the wells are, which means that they know the secret of survival and salvation. Their knowledge, devoid of scholasticism and doctrinairism, is great, because it serves life. In Europe they have the habit of writing that people of the desert are backward, even extremely backward. And it doesn’t occur to anyone that this is no way to judge a people who have been able to survive millennia under the most dire conditions, producing a culture that is most valuable because it is practical, a culture that allowed entire nations to exist and develop while during that very same time many sedentary civilizations fell and disappeared forever from the face of the earth. "
― Ryszard Kapuściński , Imperium
13
" The Western democrat and the Moscow democrat are possessed of two entirely different mindsets. The mind of the Western democrat roams freely among the problems of the contemporary world, reflects upon how to live well and happily, how modern technology might serve man better, and how to ensure that each one of us produces more and more material goods and attains greater and greater spiritual well-being. Yet these are all matters beyond the Moscow democrat’s field of vision. Only one thing interests him: how to defeat communism. On this subject he can discourse with energy and passion for hours, concoct schemes, present proposals and plans, unaware that as he does so he becomes for a second time communism’s victim: the first time he was a victim by force, imprisoned by the system, and now he has become a victim voluntarily, for he has allowed himself to be imprisoned in the web of communism’s problems. For such is the demonic nature of great evil—that without our knowledge and consent, it manages to blind us and force us into its straitjacket. "
― Ryszard Kapuściński , Imperium
16
" Por supuesto, resulta espantosa e insoportablemente aburrida esta inactividad tan absoluta, este quedarse sentado sin hacer nada en un estado de postración mental, pero, por otro lado, ¿acaso no pasan el tiempo de esa manera tan pasiva y apática millones y millones de gentes del planeta? Y además, ¿no lo hacen así desde hace años, desde haces siglos, independientemente de la religión, de la cultura, de la raza?
Basta con que, en América del Sur, vayamos a los Andes o nos paseemos en coche por las polvorientas calles de Piura o naveguemos por el Orinoco: en todas partes encontramos aldeas de barro, poblados y villas pobres y veremos cuánta gente permanece sentada en la puerta de su casa, sobre piedras o en bancos, inmóvil, sin hacer nada. Vayamos de América del Sur a África, visitemos los solitarios oasis del Sáhara o los poblados de pescadores negros que se extienden a lo largo del Golfo de Guinea, visitemos a los misteriosos pigmeos en la jungla del Congo, la diminuta ciudad de Mwenzo en Zambia, la hermosa y dotada tribu Dinka en Sudán: en todas partes veremos gentes sentadas que de vez en cuando articularán alguna palabra, que por la noche se calentarán alrededor de un fuego, pero que en realidad, aparte de permanecer sentadas, inmóviles e inactivas, no hacen nada en absoluto y se encuentran (podemos suponer) en un estado de postración mental. ¿Acaso Asia es diferente? ¿Acaso, yendo de Karachi a Lahore o de Bombay a Madrás o de Yakarta a Malangu, no nos chocará ver que miles, qué digo, millones de paquistaníes, hindúes, indonesios y otros asiáticos están sentados inmóviles con la vista fija en no se sabe qué? Cojamos un vuelo a las Filipinas o a Samoa, visitemos las inconmensurables extensiones del Yukón o la exótica Jamaica: en todas partes veremos el mismo panorama de gentes sentadas que permanecen inmóviles durante horas enteras en unas sillas viejas, en unos tablones de madera, en unas cajas de plástico, a la sombra de olmos y mangos, apoyadas contras las paredes de las chabolas, las vallas y los marcos de las ventanas, independientemente de la hora del día y de la estación del año, de si hace solo o llueve, gentes aturdidas e indefinidas, gentes en un estado de somnolencia crónica, que no hacen nada excepto permanecer allí sin necesidad y sin objetivo, y también sumidas (podemos suponer) en una postración mental. "
― Ryszard Kapuściński , Imperium
17
" Whiteness is often associated with finality, with the end, with death. In those cultures in which people live with the fear of death, mourners dress in black, to scare death away from themselves, isolate it, confine it to the deceased. But here, where death is regarded as another form, another shape of existence, mourners dress in white and dress the deceased in white: whiteness is here the color of acceptance, consent, of a surrender to fate. "
― Ryszard Kapuściński , Imperium
18
" While still at university I read Bierdayev’s old book in which he reflected upon how the great expanses of the Imperium had influenced the Russian soul. What does a Russian think about, somewhere on the shore of the Yenisey, or deep in the Amur taiga? Every road that he takes seems to have no end. He can walk along it for days and months, and always Russia will surround him. The plains have no end, nor the forests, nor the rivers. To rule over such boundless expanses, says Bierdayev, one had to create a boundless state. And behold, the Russian fell into a contradiction—to maintain the great expanses, the Russian must maintain a great state; on the maintenance of this great state he expends his energy, of which not enough remains for anything else—for organization, for husbandry, and so on. He expends his energy on a state that then enthralls and oppresses him. "
― Ryszard Kapuściński , Imperium
20
" I had just read a new book, published in early 1989, by the eminent historian Natan Eydelman, Revolution from the Top in Russia. The author regards perestroika as just one more in a series of turning points in Russian history and reminds us that all such turning points, revolutions, convulsions, and breakthroughs in this country came about because they were the will of the czar, the will of the secretary-general, or the will of the Kremlin (or of Petersburg). The energy of the Russian nation, says Eydelman, has always been spent not on independent grass-roots initiatives, but on carrying out the will of the ruling elite. "
― Ryszard Kapuściński , Imperium
