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" Believe it or not, some Western analysts in the 1930s insisted that Stalin was a 'moderate,' controlled by extremists like the secret police chief Nikolai Yezhov. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Some
Police
Like
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" I'm not disciplined at all. I barely function. But I get a lot done. I take days off all the time, but when I work, I work very fast and very efficiently. But I'm always having days when I'm feeling a little anxious, and I take a day off. I work in a funny way. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
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" I don't feel that Jewish people have a class. "
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" When I was young, I always wanted to go to Russia. "
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" Trump wants to be the first American tsar. With his hero worship of Putin, his admiration for the apparent omnipotence of the Kremlin, schoolboyish crush on Putin's gangster swagger and his contempt for democracy, Trump wants to rule with his family, taking decisions purely because he's right about everything like a tsar. "
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" One of the strange things about doing publicity is that a mistake in a newspaper profile long ago is repeated and amplified over time. "
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" The unspoken contract between ruler and subject is that in return for safety, prosperity, and prestige, the Russians entrust power and cede democratic freedoms to their leaders. "
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" Stalin had 15 scenic seaside villas, some of them czarist palaces, on the Black Sea coast of Abkhazia. In 2002, I visited and photographed these extraordinarily well-preserved Stalinist time capsules. "
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" I am a passionate nonfinisher. Life is too short, and there are too many great books to read, so if I lose interest or respect, I switch. But when, of course, when you really fall in love with a book, all the others are ignored. "
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" A revolution resembles the death of a fading star, an exhilarating Technicolor explosion that gives way not to an ordered new galaxy but to a nebula, a formless cloud of shifting energy. "
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" Stalin, of course, never went on trial, but his legacy did. In 1956, three years after his death, he was denounced by Nikita Khrushchev. And his crimes were even more explicitly exposed by Mikhail Gorbachev during the late '80s. Yet to many, Stalin remains more legitimate as a Russian leader than anyone since. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
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" The vanishing of David Tang is like the unthinkable diappearance of a magnificent palace on a mythical mountaintop. He was a dreammaker, pianist, adventurer, writer, entrepreneur, scholar, connoisseur, and a great friend. "
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Like
Great
Friend
" With popular rulers, the wife can become the guardian of their greatness: Peter the Great was succeeded by his wife, Catherine I. Sometimes the wives are an improvement. "
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Greatness
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" Regarding themselves as irreplaceable, both Lenin and Stalin tried in different ways to destroy their successors - Lenin through a testament that attacked Stalin and Trotsky, Stalin through purges culminating in the Doctors' Plot of 1953. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
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Different
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" If only all straight weddings could be somehow gay-ified. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
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" I'm the sort of person who, if I arrive in a city under siege, in the middle of nowhere, I'll always find my way to the leader of the rebels. I just don't know how. "
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Leader
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Find
" There are few words in Russian for the Western concept of 'law,' but there are legions of words for connections, helping people from one's neck of the woods. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Connections
People
Law
" I'm an enormous fan of American literature, and especially the great novels of Larry McMurtry, 'Lonesome Dove,' Cormac McCarthy, Elmore Leonard. "
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Literature
American
Dove
" President Yeltsin's instincts were decent: he encouraged the marketplace, the press flourished, and everything started to open - even the KGB archives. Yeltsin reburied Nicholas II. Free from Soviet anti-semitism, he surrounded himself with Jewish capitalists and advisers who returned to public life for the first time since the 1920s. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
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" While most know the young Stalin was a seminarian, few realize that he was also a Georgian patriot, a published romantic poet. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
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" Bolshevism was a mind-set, an idiosyncratic culture with an intolerant paranoid wordview obsessed with abstruse Marxist ideology. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Obsessed
Paranoid
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" In the new Georgia, Stalin is no longer Georgian. He's a Russian emperor. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Georgia
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" As a youth, I was much more of a Zionist. But Israel was very different then. Israel's changed, and so have I. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
More
Youth
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" The Europeans do tend to delegitimize Israel and turn Israel into a dirty word, which is unforgivable. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Dirty
Israel
Tend
" It was always presumptuous to expect Russia, an ancient nation-state and proud empire of distinct culture with a tradition of autocracy, to become an Anglo-American democracy overnight - just as it is naive to expect it in other parts of the world. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Culture
Always
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" Around us, we do see attempts to delegitimize Israel, a sort of secret, hidden anti-Semitism growing in many countries, often on the right but also on the left. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Hidden
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Right
" I love the flamboyance, the melodrama, the bloody theatre of Russian history. "
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Theatre
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I Love
" The memoirs of the Grand Duchess Olga are an entertaining record for anyone interested in the imperial family's home life during the last years of Russian autocracy. "
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" When we were in school, we were told that Stalin was a madman who got control of Europe, which teaches you nothing. "
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Nothing
School
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" Saddam Hussein admired, studied, and copied Stalin, the paragon of modern dictators. "
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" Mr. Putin presents himself as a czar - and like any czar, he fears revolution above all else. "
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Fears
Else
Above