Russians

Russians (Russian: русские, russkiye) are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Eastern Europe; they are the most numerous ethnic group in Europe. The majority of ethnic Russians live in Russia.

• The Russians are fascinating, ingenious, creative, sentimental, warm-hearted, generous, obstinately courageous, endlessly tough, often devious, brutal and ruthless. Ordinary Russians firmly believe that they are warmer-hearted than others, more loyal to their friends, more willing to sacrifice themselves for the common good, more devoted to the fundamental truths of life. They give the credit to the Russian soul, as broad and all-embracing as the Russian land itself. Their passionate sense of Russia’s greatness is paradoxically undermined by an underlying and corrosive pessimism. And it is tempered by resentment that their country is insufficiently understood and respected by foreigners.
  • Rodric Braithwaite, Russia: Myths and Realities (2022)

• [T]hrough the Russian people will be realized the last thought of God, the thought of the End of the World.
  • Aleksandr Dugin, as quoted in "Dugin’s Evil Theology" (June 18, 2014), by Robert Zubrin, National Review

• Russians should realize that they are Orthodox in the first place; Russians in the second place; and only in the third place, people.
  • Aleksandr Dugin, The Foundations of Geopolitics: The Geopolitical Future of Russia (1997), Russia: Arktogeja, p. 255, as quoted in "Aleksandr Dugin's Foundations of Geopolitics" (31 January 2004), by John B. Dunlop, Demokratizatsiya, Chapter: The Gorbachev Debacle

• [W]hy should the Palatine Boors be suffered to swarm into our Settlements, and by herding together establish their Language and Manners to the Exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion. Which leads me to add one Remark: That the Number of purely white People in the World is proportionably very small. All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (exclusive of the new Comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Spaniards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes, are generally of what we call a swarthy Complexion; as are the Germans also, the Saxons only excepted, who with the English, make the principal Body of White People on the Face of the Earth. I could wish their Numbers were increased. And while we are, as I may call it, Scouring our Planet, by clearing America of Woods, and so making this Side of our Globe reflect a brighter Light to the Eyes of Inhabitants in Mars or Venus, why should we in the Sight of Superior Beings, darken its People? why increase the Sons of Africa, by Planting them in America, where we have so fair an Opportunity, by excluding all Blacks and Tawneys, of increasing the lovely White and Red? But perhaps I am partial to the Complexion of my Country, for such Kind of Partiality is natural to Mankind.
  • Benjamin Franklin, 1751 Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind

• Kremlin-connected media outlets and Vladimir Putin himself have increasingly stoked xenophobia and hyper-nationalism among ethnic Russians, but whenever major Western outlets begin to notice just how bad the situation has become, the Kremlin leader as he has in the past has denounced the slogan “Russia for the [Ethnic] Russians” as dangerous.
  • Paul A. Goble, "Even as Kremlin Stokes Xenophobia, Putin Gains Some Positive Press in the West by Denouncing Idea of ‘Russia for the Russians’ Alone", Window on Eurasia (April 1, 2024)

• The Great Russians, [founder of the Zalesskaya Rus civic initiative Ilya Lazarenko] argues, were the first victims of Muscovite imperialism; and thus it is important to recognize that “Moscow is hardly [a] symbol of ‘Russianness’ but rather of a Babylonian mixing” that was inevitably the result of the messianic ideas which arose around that city rather than out of the minds of Great Russians as such.
  • Paul A. Goble, "After RF Disintegrates, New Russian State Must Arise where Central Federal District is Now and without Moscow as Its Capital, Lazarenko Says", Window on Eurasia (January 11, 2024)

• These people were of all races, colors, and creeds.  French were in the north and in the Carolinas.  Dutch had built the town on Manhattan island, and their patroons' estates in the Hudson valley; now they were building their own cabins in the Mohawk Indian country that is now New York State.  Germans had settled in the Jerseys and in the far west, beyond Philadelphia.  Germans and Scotch-Irish were climbing the Carolina mountains; Swedes were in Delaware, English and French and Dutch and Irish were settled in Massachusetts, the New Hampshire Grants, Connecticut, and Virginia.  Mingled with all these were Italians, Portuguese, Finns, Arabs, Armenians, Russians, Greeks, and Africans from a dozen very different African peoples and cultures.  Black, brown, yellow and white, all these peoples were some of them free and some of them slaves.  Also they were intermarried with the American Indians.
  • Rose Wilder Lane, §1 of "The Third Attempt," ch. V of Pt. Two of The Discovery of Freedom: Man's Struggle Against Authority (New York: The John Day Company, 1943), pp. 153–154.

• You ain't from Russia, so bitch why you Russian?
  • Nelly, "Pimp Juice", Nellyville (2002), California: Universal Records

• The Russians are serious people. One of the reasons Khrushchev was put on the shelf back in 1964 is that the proud Russians became ashamed of his crude antics at the U.N. and in other international forums.
  • Richard Nixon, as quoted in "Declassified Richard Nixon letter to President Clinton proves prophetic on Russia" (2023), by Chris Pandolfo, Fox News

• The difficulty in understanding the Russian is that we do not take cognizance of the fact that he is not a European, but an Asiatic, and therefore thinks deviously. We can no more understand a Russian than a Chinaman or a Japanese, and from what I have seen of them, I have no particular desire to understand them, except to ascertain how much lead or iron it takes to kill them. In addition to his other Asiatic characteristics, the Russian has no regard for human life and is an all out son of bitch, barbarian, and chronic drunk.
  • George S. Patton, as quoted in Eisenhower: A Soldier's Life (2002), by Carlo D'Este, New York City: Henry Holt and Company, p. 739

• Russians have always been suckers for greatness. They would sell their last shirt for its elusive promise.
  • Sergey Radchenko, "Why Russia needs to be humiliated in Ukraine: Too little was learnt from the collapse of the Soviet Union" (May 15, 2022), The Spectator

• At the same time, I also wish to pay tribute to the Russian people from whom the Red Army springs, and upon whom it is dependent for its men, women, and supplies. They, too, are giving their full efforts to the war and are making the supreme sacrifice. The Red Army and the Russian people have surely started the Hitler forces on the road to ultimate defeat and have earned the lasting admiration of the people of the United States.
  • Franklin D. Roosevelt; Message to Stalin on the Twenty-fifth Anniversary of the Red Army, The American Presidency Project; 22 February 1943

• Imagine that one not very fine day two or three of your states in the Southwest, in the space of 24 hours, declare themselves independent of the U.S. They declare themselves a fully sovereign nation, decreeing that Spanish will be the only language. All English-speaking residents, even if their ancestors have lived there for 200 years, have to take a test in the Spanish language within one or two years and swear allegiance to the new nation. Otherwise they will not receive citizenship and be deprived of civic, property and employment rights. What would be the reaction of the United States? I have no doubt that it would be immediate military intervention. But today Russia faces precisely this scenario. In 24 hours she lost eight to 10 purely Russian provinces, 25 million ethnic Russians who have ended up in this very way--as "undesirable aliens." In places where their fathers, grandfathers, great-grandfathers have lived since way back--even from the 17th century--they face persecution in their jobs and the suppression of their culture, education and language. Meanwhile, in Central Asia, those wishing to leave are not permitted to take even their personal property. The authorities tell them, "There is no such concept as 'personal property'!"
  • Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Interview With Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn on the New Russia and Ukraine (May 1994)

• A Russian is self-assured just because he knows nothing and does not want to know anything, since he does not believe that anything can be known.
  • Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace, Book IX, Chapter Ten, p. 898, as quoted in "Russia’s Paranoid Foreign Policy" (November 28, 2018), by Zachery Tyson Brown, RealClearDefense

• Russians follow orders; people are afraid – more afraid of the state – than of dying.
  • Yaroslav Trofimov, as quoted in "From Ukraine, a War Correspondent" (January 10, 2024), by Jay Nordlinger, Q & A, Hosted by Jay Nordlinger

• [to drivers] not forget that the health and lives of other people depend on you… comply with the established rules of behavior on the road.
  • ‘Emergency Situations Ministry, as quoted in "Bus carrying children overturns in Babyninsky" (February 6, 2019), Wikinews

• Encyclopedic article on Russians on Wikipedia