Travel Writers

"Bernier says that the Rajput “Rajas never mount (guard) within a (Mughal) fortress, but invariably without the walls, under their own tents… and always refusing to enter any fortress unless well attended, and by men determined to sacrifice their lives for their leaders. This self devotion has been sufficiently proved when attempts have been made to deal treacherously with a Raja.”"

"The Omarahs mostly consist of adventurers from different nations who entice one another to the court; and are generally persons of low descent, some having been originally slaves, and the majority being destitute of education. The Mogol raises them to dignities, or degrades them to obscurity; according to his own pleasure and caprice."

"The unfortunate peasants who were incapable of discharging the demand of their rapacious lords, were bereft of their children who were carried away as slaves."

"…grandees pay for a work of art considerably under its value, and according to their own caprice. … When an Omrah or Mansabdar requires the services of an artisan, he sends to the bazar for him, employing force, if necessary, to make the poor man work; and after the task is finished, the unfeeling lord pays, not according to the value- of the labour, but agreeably to his own standard of fair remuneration; the artisan having reason to congratulate himself if the Korrah has not been given in part payment."

"There was no middle state. A man must be of the highest rank or live miserably."

"Most towns in Hindustan are made up of earth, mud, and other wretched material; that there is no city or town (that) does not bear evident marks of approaching decay."

"In eastern countries, the weak and the injured are without any refuge whatever; and the only law that decides all controversies is the cane and the caprice of a governor."

"[In these circumstances the peasant had little interest in cultivating the land. Bernier observes that] “as the ground is seldom tilled otherwise than by compulsion… the whole country is badly cultivated, and a great part rendered unproductive… The peasant cannot avoid asking himself this question: Why should I toil for a tyrant who may come tomorrow and lay his rapacious hands upon all I possess and value… without leaving me the means (even) to drag my own miserable existence? - The Timariots (Timurids), Governors and Revenue contractors, on their part reason in this manner: Why should the neglected state of this land create uneasiness in our minds, and why should we expend our own money and time to render it fruitful? We may be deprived of it in a single moment… Let us draw from the soil all the money we can, though the peasant should starve or abscond…”"

"No artisan can be expected to give his mind to his calling in the midst of a people who are either wretchedly poor, or who, if rich, assume an appearance of poverty, and who regard not the beauty and excellence but the cheapness of an article; a people whose grandeess pay for a work of art considerably under its value and according to their own caprice… For it should not be inferred that the workman is held in esteem, or arrives at a stage of independence. Nothing but sheer necessity or blows from a cudgel keeps him employed; he never can become rich, and he feels it no trifling matter if he have the means of satisfying the cravings of hunger and of covering his body with the coarsest garment. If money be gained it does not in any measure go into his pocket, but only serves to increase the wealth of the merchant."

"[Francois Bernier, late in the seventeenth century, talks of originally “real Mongols”, “White men, foreigners”. He also says] “that children of the third and fourth generation [of Uzbegs, Persians, Arabs and Turks], who have the brown complexion… are held in much less respect than new comers, and are seldom invested with official situations: they consider themselves happy, if permitted to serve as private soldiers in the infantry or cavalry.”"

"[According to Bernier, the Mughals maintained] “a large army for the purpose of keeping people in subjection… No adequate idea can be conveyed of the sufferings of the people. The cudgel and the whip compel them to incessant labour… their revolt or their flight is only prevented by the presence of a military force.”"

"[O]ne Western policy stands out as a phenomenal success, particularly when measured against the low expectations with which it began: the integration of Central Europe and the Baltic States into the European Union and NATO. Thanks to this double project, more than 90 million people have enjoyed relative safety and relative prosperity for more than two decades in a region whose historic instability helped launch two world wars."

"Before joining NATO, each country had to establish civilian control of its army. Before joining the European Union, each adopted laws on trade, judiciary, human rights. As a result, they became democracies. This was “democracy promotion” working as it never has before or since."

"For the record: No treaties prohibiting NATO expansion were ever signed with Russia. No promises were broken. Nor did the impetus for NATO expansion come from a “triumphalist” Washington. On the contrary, Poland’s first efforts to apply in 1992 were rebuffed...But Poland and others persisted, precisely because they were already seeing signs of the Russian revanchism to come."

"If respect for others helped some maintain their humanity, respect for themselves helped others. Many, particularly women, speak of the need to keep... as clean as possible, as a way of preserving... dignity. Olga Adamova-Sliozberg describes how a prison cell mate "washed and dried her white collar and sewed it back on her blouse' every morning." Japanese prisoners in Magadan set up a Japanese 'bath'—a large barrel, to which benches were attached—along the bay. During sixteen months in Leningrad’s Kresty prison, Boris Chetverikov washed his clothes over and over again, as well as the walls and the floors of his cell—before going through all of the opera arias he knew in his head. Others practised exercise or hygienic routines."

"Although... most often used to describe and Stalin's Soviet Union, the word "totalitarian"—totalitarismo—was... [i]nvented by one of his critics... and adapted... by Benito Mussolini... [who] offered... the best definition... "Everything within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state." ...A totalitarian regime ...bans all institutions apart from ...officially approved ...thus has one political party ...educational system ...artistic creed ...centrally planned economy ...unified media, and one moral code. ..."[O]utside of it [the state] no human or spiritual values can exist...""

"They did not work but they were allocated a full ration; they levied a money tribute from all the 'peasants', those who did work; they took half of the food parcels and purchases from the camp commissary; and they brazenly cleaned out the new transports, taking all the best clothes from the newcomers. They were ...racketeers, gangsters ...members of a small mafia. All the ordinary criminal inmates of the camp— ...the majority—hated them intensely."

"Of all the different kinds of damage done by the Second World War, the hardest to quantify is the psychological and emotional damage. The brutality of the First World War created a generation of fascist leaders, idealistic intellectuals, and expressionist artists who twisted the human form into inhuman shapes and colors in an attempt to convey their disorientation. But... the Second World War entered far more deeply... Constant daily violence shaped the human psyche..."

"Soviet reality was always a strange one: the factory is barely functioning, in the shops there is nothing to buy, old ladies cannot afford to heat their apartments, yet in the streets outside, banners proclaim the 'triumph of socialism' and the 'heroic achievements of the Soviet motherland.'"

"[M]any have tried to describe what it feels like to endure the disintegration of one's entire civilization, to watch the buildings and landscapes of one's childhood collapse, to understand that the moral world of one's parents and teachers no longer exists and that... respected national leaders have failed. ...[N]ational failure had profound effects, especially on young people, many of whom... concluded everything... once thought true was false. ...Many ...did resemble Hannah Arendt's "totalitarian personality ...completely isolated ...who derives ...sense of having a place in the world ...only ...to ...membership in the party.""

"The Western Right, on the other hand, did struggle to condemn Soviet crimes, but sometimes using methods that harmed their own cause. Surely the man who did the greatest damage to anti-communism was the American Senator Joe McCarthy. Recent documents showing that some of his accusations were correct do not change the impact of his overzealous pursuit of communists in American public life: ultimately, his public "trials" of communist sympathizers would tarnish the cause of anti-communism with the brush of chauvinism and intolerance. In the end, his actions served the cause of neutral historical inquiry no better than those of his opponents."

"Before a nation can be rebuilt, its citizens need to understand how it was destroyed in the first place: how its institutions were undermined, how its language was twisted, how its people were manipulated."

"Against this background of improvisation and violence, the first Soviet labour camps were born. Like so many other Bolshevik institutions, they were created ad hoc... as an emergency measure in the heat of the civil war. This is not to say the idea had no prior appeal. Three weeks before the , Lenin... was... sketching... [a] vague plan to organize 'obligatory work duty' for wealthy capitalists."

"When the slow, cautious expansion eventually took place, constant efforts were made to reassure Russia. No NATO bases were placed in the new member states, and until 2013 no exercises were conducted there. A Russia-NATO agreement in 1997 promised no movement of nuclear installations. A NATO-Russia Council was set up in 2002. In response to Russian objections, Ukraine and Georgia were, in fact, denied NATO membership plans in 2008."

"In her worldview, the marriage between democracy and capitalism was made in heaven, and most of the conflicts in the world were not about a clash of interests but about a clash of values. It was this mindset that made many ’89ers first to detect the danger coming from Vladimir Putin’s Russia but also the last to condemn George W. Bush’s ugly war in Iraq."

"Applebaum’s political identity was made by her admiration for the moral courage of East European dissidents and her belief in the potential of the United States to make the world a better place."

"[The fall of the Berlin Wall in] 1989 was the point of departure of everything that Applebaum did in the following three decades. Her much-praised history books about the Soviet Gulag and the establishment of the communist regimes in Central Europe were her historical introduction to the inevitability of 1989. For her, the end of the Cold War was not a geopolitical story; it was a moral story, a verdict pronounced by history itself."

"Applebaum has been active as a political commentator highly critical of Russia and Putin’s regime."

"Donald Trump now genuinely lives in a different reality, one in which neither grammar nor history nor the normal rules of human interaction now affect him. Also, he really is maniacally, unhealthily obsessive about the Nobel Prize. The Norwegian Nobel Committee, not the Norwegian government and certainly not the Danish government, determines the winner of that prize. Yet Trump now not only blames Norway for failing to give it to him, but is using it as a justification for an invasion of Greenland."

"Virulent populist movements have always existed in America, on the right (the Klan, say) and the left (the Weather Underground, say). Applebaum finds it surprising that its current incarnation emerged in the Republican Party...This is probably the place to note that Applebaum deserted the Republican Party in 2008, over the nomination of the “proto-Trump” Sarah Palin."

"The collapse of the Soviet Union 30 years ago was, for Anne Applebaum and many others of her generation, a stirring moment of "post-Cold War optimism," she writes, "a belief that 'we had won,' that the democratic revolution would now continue, that more good things would follow." Applebaum, a leading historian of the Communist era, now seeks to understand why the contrary happened—why authoritarianism is in the ascendant again."

"The list of major American corporations caught in tangled webs of personal, financial, and business links to China, Russia, and other autocracies is very long."

"If the 20th century was the story of slow, uneven progress toward the victory of liberal democracy over other ideologies—communism, fascism, virulent nationalism—the 21st century is, so far, a story of the reverse."

"I don’t think Hunter Biden’s business relationships have anything to do with who should be president of the United States. So, I don’t find it [Hunter Biden's laptop] to be interesting. (April 6, 2022)"

"Democratic politicians spend a lot of time thinking about how to engage people and persuade them to vote. But a certain kind of autocrat, of whom Putin is the outstanding example, seeks to convince people of the opposite: not to participate, not to care, and not to follow politics at all. The propaganda used in Putin's Russia has been designed in part for this purpose. The constant provision of absurd, conflicting explanations and ridiculous lies—the famous "firehose of falsehoods"— encourages many people to believe that there is no truth at all. The result is widespread cynicism. If you don't know what's true, after all, then there isn't anything you can do about it. Protest is pointless. Engagement is useless."

"Trump's fawning attitude towards dictators is his ideology at its purest: He meets his own psychological needs first; he thinks about the country last. The true nature of the ideology that Trump brought to Washington was not “America First,” but rather “Trump First.”"

"Putin’s overt attempt to destroy a political opponent has a logic: If [[Alexei Navalny|[Alexei] Navalny]] is showing his countrymen how to be courageous, Putin wants to show them that courage is useless."

"So, yes, this is another mysterious death, but it is a new kind of mysterious death. With this plane crash, the violence on the periphery of Russia’s empire has now migrated to its very heart. Putin's rule has always been maintained by a heady combination of opportunism, bribery, and the facade of Russian nationalism, propped up by the subtle threat of violence. In the aftermath of Prigozhin's rebellion, Putin needs something more spectacular: theatrical, public violence; violence of the kind that brings down a plane soon after takeoff in the middle of a sunny day; violence designed to terrify anyone who secretly wished for Prigozhin’s victory."

"The American intellectuals who now find themselves alienated from the country that they inhabit aren't interested in reality. They are interested in a fantasy nation, different and distinct from their own hateful country. America, with its complicated social and political as well as ethnic diversity, with its Constitution that ensures we will never, ever all be forced to feel as if "all life is focused in a central purpose"—this America no longer appeals to them at all. Most of them know that this fantasy foreign nation they admire seeks to put an end to all of that. It seeks to undermine American democracy, beat back American influence, and curtail American power. But to those who dislike American democracy, despair of American influence, and are angered by American power? That, truly, is the point."

"Authoritarianism appeals, simply, to people who cannot tolerate complexity [...]."

"More important, he [Trump] has governed in defiance—and in ignorance—of the American Constitution, notably declaring, well into his third year in office, that he had "total” authority over the states. His administration is not merely corrupt, it is also hostile to checks, balances, and the rule of law. He has built a proto-authoritarian personality cult, firing or sidelining officials who have contradicted him with facts and evidence—with tragic consequences for public health and the economy. ... Trump has attacked America’s military, calling his generals "a bunch of dopes and babies," and America's intelligence services and law-enforcement officers, whom he has denigrated as the "deep state" and whose advice he has ignored."

"One former administration official who has seen Trump interact with [Chinese President] Xi [Jinping] as well as with Russian President Vladimir Putin told me that it was like watching a lesser celebrity encounter a more famous one. Trump did not speak to them as the representative of the American people; he simply wanted their aura—of absolute power, of cruelty, of fame—to rub off on him and enhance his own image."

"Instead of fighting ideological battles, [[Keir Starmer|[Keir] Starmer]] wanted the party to talk about ordinary people's problems—advice that Democrats in the United States, and centrists around the world, could also stand to hear."

"[Guests at a party held by Applebaum and her husband on December 31, 1999 in their Polish home] You could have lumped the majority of them, roughly, in the general category of what Poles call the right—the conservatives, the anti-Communists. But at that moment in history, you might also have called most of my guests liberals—free-market liberals, or classical liberals—or maybe Thatcherites. Even those who might have been less definite about economics certainly believed in democracy, in the rule of law, and in a Poland that was a member of nato and on its way to joining the European Union—an integrated part of modern Europe. In the 1990s, that was what being "on the right" meant."

"Starvation was the result, rather, of the forcible removal of food from people’s homes; the roadblocks that prevented peasants from seeking work or food; the harsh rules of the blacklists imposed on farms and villages; the restrictions on barter and trade; and the vicious propaganda campaign designed to persuade Ukrainians to watch, unmoved, as their neighbours died of hunger."

"That moment has passed. Nearly two decades later, I would now cross the street to avoid some of the people who were at my New Year's Eve party. They, in turn, would not only refuse to enter my house, they would be embarrassed to admit they had ever been there. In fact, about half the people who were at that party would no longer speak to the other half. The estrangements are political, not personal. Poland is now one of the most polarized societies in Europe, and we have found ourselves on opposite sides of a profound divide,"

"Instead of attempting to foster an international Communist revolution, the primary goal is to keep Vladimir Putin in power and make the world safe for Russian corruption, Russian oligarchs, and Russian money. Which might, in fact, prove a lot more appealing than the dictatorship of the proletariat."

"Stalin’s policies that autumn led inexorably to famine all across the grain-growing regions of the USSR. But in November and December 1932 he twisted the knife further in Ukraine, deliberately creating a deeper crisis. Step by step, using bureaucratic language and dull legal terminology, the Soviet leadership, aided by their cowed Ukrainian counterparts, launched a famine within the famine, a disaster specifically targeted at Ukraine and Ukrainians."

"Given the right conditions, any society can turn against democracy. Indeed, if history is anything to go by, all societies eventually will."

"The archival record backs up the testimony of the survivors. Neither crop failure nor bad weather caused the famine in Ukraine."