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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
Culture
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" Gay weddings will be remembered as Tony Blair's greatest achievement! "
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" I enjoy tequila, which has a strange effect on people and makes parties more fun than warm white wine. "
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People
Enjoy
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" I'd like to write a biography of Ivan the Terrible. "
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Biography
Like
Write
" After the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russian influence collapsed, and Moscow came to bitterly resent the Western interventions that destroyed Mr. Hussein and Colonel Qaddafi. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Influence
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Union
" I don't like sports. I'm not interested in sports. I hate sports. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Like
Not Interested
Sports
" I'm an enormous fan of American literature, and especially the great novels of Larry McMurtry, 'Lonesome Dove,' Cormac McCarthy, Elmore Leonard. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Literature
American
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" Most history books are about power. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Most
About
Books
" Writing about Jerusalem can be such a minefield. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Writing
About
Jerusalem
" A book's title is vital. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Title
Vital
Book
" A crenelated wall of books encircles my bed, its tottering towers looming ever taller, always on the verge of collapsing onto oblivious sleepers. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Books
Towers
Wall
" 'Daddy used to be a Georgian,' Stalin's son, Vasily, once said. Actually, the dictator didn't truly become Russian; he remained Georgian culturally. Yet he embraced the imperial mission of the Russian people. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Used
Son
Said
" 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
Israel
" I am ashamed to say that both my children knew Stalin before they knew Thomas the Tank Engine. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Am
Say
I Am
" President Trump is, some ways, the personification of a new Bolshevism of the Right, where the ends justify the means and acceptable tactics include lies and smears and the exploitation of what Lenin called 'useful idiots.' "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
New
Right
President
" It is a characteristic of potentates that they don't succumb to peaceful retirement. Instead, they hold power in their hoary fists as judgment and grip weaken, destroying any successors except family members. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Family
Retirement
Power
" 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
Democracy
" Russian writers enjoy almost sacred status. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Enjoy
Almost
Sacred
" I read many wonderful novels, though I now find the idea of literary fiction obsolete. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Fiction
Now
Wonderful
" It's the mix of the trivial and the great events that make up history. It's the low things about high people that make it fascinating, and that's why it would be a shame to exclude the trivial things. That mixing up is not just at the heart of history. It's at the heart of how to live a great life. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Great
Heart
History
" All tyrannies are virtuoso displays, over many years, of cunning, risk-taking, terror, delusion, narcissism, showmanship, and charm, distilled into a spectacle of total personal control. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Personal
Over
Narcissism
" Yeltsin was admirable but flawed, noble but tainted, but in his own negligent grandeur, he undermined his own real achievements - and accelerated their ruin. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Ruin
Admirable
He
" The Europeans do tend to delegitimize Israel and turn Israel into a dirty word, which is unforgivable. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Dirty
Israel
Tend
" Lenin had just reflected that the revolution would never happen in his lifetime when in February 1917, hungry crowds in Petrograd overthrew Nicholas II while the revolutionaries were abroad, exiled, or infiltrated by the secret police. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Police
Never
Revolution
" The West is pathetically naive about Russian reformers. We long to believe they are real liberals, but no liberal will ever rule Russia. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Long
Will
Believe
" The Soviet Union was designed for Muscovite rule, not for division into independent republics. Yet the latter is exactly what happened in 1991 - and the Kremlin has never accepted it. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Independent
Union
Never
" In the new Georgia, Stalin is no longer Georgian. He's a Russian emperor. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Georgia
Emperor
Stalin
" I love the flamboyance, the melodrama, the bloody theatre of Russian history. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
Theatre
Love
I Love
" There is a view of Russian exceptionalism, that they are a unique civilisation, a view right since Ivan the Terrible that Russia is a special civilisation with a special culture. Putin is pushing that now. "
Simon Sebag Montefiore
View
Special
Now
" 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
Destroy
Different
Plot
" 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
Legacy
Late
Three