Orlando Figes

On the news that the Tsar had sent the troops icons to boost their morals, General Dragomirov quipped: 'The Japanese are beating…

— Orlando Figes

“For the Romanov regime fell under the weight of its own internal contradictions. It was not overthrown.”

— Orlando Figes

“The only way, they argued, to prevent a revolution was to rule Russia with an iron hand. This meant defending the autocratic…

— Orlando Figes

“This was a cruelty made by history. Long after serfdom had been abolished the land captains exercised their right to flog the…

— Orlando Figes

“Whereas in Europe new ideas were forced to compete against other doctrines and attitudes, with the results that people tended towards healthy…

— Orlando Figes

Time and time again, the obstinate refusal of the tsarist regime to concede reforms turned what should have been a political problem…

— Orlando Figes

The link between literacy and revolutions is a well-known historical phenomenon. The three great revolutions of modern European history -- the English,…

— Orlando Figes

“For all too many of these high-born revolutionaries, the main attraction of 'the cause' lay not so much in the satisfaction which…

— Orlando Figes

Their notion of training was to march the men up and down in parades and reviews: these were nice to look at…

— Orlando Figes

“Gorky called for the building of a monument to the young martyr, who, the writer said, had ‘understood that a relative by…

— Orlando Figes

“As in 1917, the drift towards authoritarian government under Putin was enabled by the weakness of the middle classes and public institutions…

— Orlando Figes

It was ironic but somehow fitting that the 1905 Revolution should have been started by an organisation dreamed up by the tsarist…

— Orlando Figes

“Convinced that their own ideas were the key to the future of the world, that the fate of humanity rested on the…

— Orlando Figes

“For the majority of ordinary Russians, especially for those of a certain age who identified themselves as ‘Soviet’, the 1990s were little…

— Orlando Figes

“The worst violence was reserved for the Jews. There were 690 documented pogroms -- with over 3,000 reported murders -- during the…

— Orlando Figes

“With the Russian Empire teetering on the brink of collapse, the tsarist regime responded to the crises with its usual incompetence and…

— Orlando Figes

“I understood that the most terrible thing in life is complete hopelessness... To cross out all the 'maybes' and give up the…

— 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…

— Orlando Figes

“The 'noble savage' whom the Populists had seen in the simple peasant was, as Gorky now concluded, no more than a romantic…

— Orlando Figes

“The currents of modern civilization had somehow passed it by, and as he returned to it now, fresh from the sides of…

— Orlando Figes

“The peasant also found another use for this sacred object. 'He says of the icon: "It's good for praying -- and you…

— Orlando Figes

“This was one of the most revealing scenes of the whole revolution – one of those rare episodes when the hidden relations…

— Orlando Figes

“Whereas in Western countries the constitution merely had to guarantee the rights of a per-existing civil society and culture, in Russia it…

— Orlando Figes

“The ancient bond between the tsarist state and Russian nationalism could be used to create powerful emotions when the enemy came from…

— Orlando Figes

We, the workers and inhabitants of St Petersburg, of various estates, our wives, our children, and our aged, helpless parents, come to…

— Orlando Figes