Art Quote by Simon Sebag Montefiore

“It is interesting to ponder the fact that there is no real difference between what the Western Fascists wanted of literature and what the…

— Vladimir Nabokov

Don't believe Wikipedia, not everything written there is true. The Soviet Artists Union was not a communist party organization. It was a professional union,…

— Ilya Kabakov

After Stalin died, the Soviet Union began inching toward the world again. The ban on jazz was lifted. Ernest Hemingway was published; the Pushkin…

— Keith Gessen

There were no dissidents then in the USSR because they were all killed.

— Natan Sharansky

Stalin said artists are the engineers of human souls. I wanted to show what happens to the soul when the engineers get through with…

— Antonin Kratochvil

“Literature under despotism: “The personality of the artist should develop freely and without restraint. One thing, however, we demand: acknowledgement of our creed.” -…

— Vladimir Nabokov

There were nowhere more docile disciples of Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin than the Nazis were.

— Ludwig von Mises

I think the role of artists in the past was very different. Artists had less responsibility in many ways.

— Marina Abramovic

“Stalin is one of the most extraordinary figures in world history. He began as a small clerk, and he has never stopped being a…

— Adolf Hitler

“This absolute lack of objectivity might be said to resemble nothing so much as the lack of objectivity these same people had shown during…

— Vasily Grossman

A writer or painter cannot change the world. But they can keep an essential margin of nonconformity alive.

— Luis Bunuel

I was interested by the idea that artists working in a totalitarian dictatorship or tsarist autocracy are secretly and slightly shamefully envied by artists…

— Tom Stoppard