journalists-from-russia

"In an interview of January 20 that “Bitter Winter” readers will recognize as both bold and overdue, Sergei Chapnin delivers a harsh critique of the current state of the Russian Orthodox Church. Once a senior insider, serving as the editor of the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, deputy chief editor of the Church Herald, lecturer at St. Tikhon’s Orthodox University, and secretary of the Inter-Conciliar Board, Chapnin now shares his views from exile as the director of communications at the Orthodox Christian Studies Center at Fordham University in New York. His statements reflect deep experience and feelings of betrayal. “The Russian Orthodox Church has effectively stopped being part of the Christian world and has become a tool of power,” he states. Chapnin refers to it as a “spiritual catastrophe.” He argues that the Church no longer follows the Gospel but instead supports war, repression, and violence. “The Church of Russia is no longer Christian.”"

"And here you are yesterday's ensign soldier or captain shell-shocked a hundred times shot through darned and put back together half-mad and dull you write and write and whine from helplessness and melancholy and tears flow down your face and get stuck in your stubble And you understand that you shouldn't have returned from the war."

"It was in the year 641 that the Arab invaders, in the heyday of their fervor for the faith of which their prophet Mohammed had taught them to consider themselves the heaven-sent bearers, won the battle, (on the field of }}, fifty miles from ancient ), which changed the destinies of , and turned its people, dreaded and victorious for four centuries under their last national kings, the dynasty}}, into a conquered, enslaved, and for a long time ruthlessly oppressed and ill-treated population. III.}}, the last Sassanian king, was murdered on his flight, for plunder, and no effort was made to retrieve the lost fortunes of that terrible day, with which closed an heroic struggle of over eight years; the country’s energies were broken."

"In or about the year before Christ 606, , the great city, was destroyed. For many hundred years had she stood in arrogant splendor, her palaces towering above the Tigris and mirrored in its swift waters; army after army had gone forth from her gates and returned laden with the spoils of conquered countries; her monarchs had ridden to the high place of sacrifice in chariots drawn by captive kings. But her time came at last. The nations assembled and encompassed her around. Popular tradition tells how over two years lasted the siege; how the very river rose and battered her walls; till one day a vast flame rose up to heaven; how the last of a mighty line of kings, too proud to surrender, thus saved himself, his treasures and his capital from the shame of bondage. Never was city to rise again where Nineveh had been."

"The serpent tribe is perhaps more numerous in India than in any other country, and the most poisonous varieties seem to have congregated there. The openness of the dwellings imperatively demanded by the climate, and the vast numbers of people sleeping in the open air, in groves, forests, gardens, etc. give them chances of which they make but too good use, swarming in the gardens and seeking shelter in the houses during the rainy season. As a consequence, death from snake-bite almost equals an epidemic. In ... 1877, 16,777 human victims perished by this means, although £811 reward were paid for the destruction of 127,295 snakes, while in 1882, 19,519 person were reported to have been killed by snakes as compared with 2606 by tigers, leopards, wolves, and all other wild beasts together. That year £1487 were paid in rewards for the destruction of 322,421 venomous reptiles."

"That the nation of , which the biblical table of nations (Gen. x. 22) places second among ’s own children, was of purely Semitic race, has never been doubted. The striking likeness of the n to the type of face would almost alone have sufficed to establish the relationship, even were not the two languages so very nearly akin. But the kinship goes deeper than that, and asserts itself in certain spiritual tendencies, which find their expression in the national religion, or, more correctly, in the one essential modificationintroduced by the Assyrians into the , which they otherwise adopted wholesale, just as they brought it from their Southern home. Like their Hebrew brethren, they arrived at the perception of the Divine Unity; but while the wise men of the Hebrews took their stand uncompromisingly on monotheism and imposed it on their reluctant followers with a fervor and energy that no resistance or backsliding could abate, the Assyrian priests thought to reconcile the truth, which they but imperfectly grasped, with the old traditions and the established religious system. They retained the entire Babylonian pantheon, with all its theory of successive emanations, its two great triads, its five planetary deities, and the host of inferior divinities, but, at the head of them all, and above them all, they placed the one God and Master whom they recognized as supreme. They did not leave him wrapped in uncertainty and lost in misty remoteness, but gave him a very distinct individuality and a personal name: they called him ..."

"What? Seventy thousand roubles' worth of jewellery hidden in a chair! Heaven knows who may sit on that chair!"

"He got so drunk that he could already perform various minor miracles."

"In science fiction novels, the main thing was the radio. With it, the happiness of mankind was expected. Now there is a radio, but there is no happiness."

"When we went to America, we did not take into account one thing, American hospitality. It boundlessly and far leaves behind everything possible of this kind, including Russian, Siberian or Georgian. The first American you know will definitely invite you to his home (or restaurant) to drink a cocktail with him. Ten of your new acquaintance's friends will be at the cocktail party. Each of them will certainly drag you to their place for a cocktail. And each of them will have ten or fifteen friends. In two days you make a hundred new acquaintances, in a week - several thousand. Staying in America for a year is simply dangerous: you can drink yourself to death and become a vagabond. All several thousand of our new friends were filled with one desire: to show us everything we wanted to see, to go with us wherever we wanted, to explain to us everything that we did not understand. Americans are amazing people, it’s nice to be friends with them, and it’s easy to do business with them."

"With printing being as well developed as it is in the West, the forgery of Soviet identification papers is nothing. A friend of mine even went as far as forging American dollars. And you know how difficult that is. The paper has those different-coloured little lines on it. It requires great technique. He managed to get rid of them on the Moscow black market, but it turned out later that his grandfather, a notorious currency-dealer, had bought them all in Kiev and gone absolutely broke. The dollars were counterfeit, after all."

"Liar competition. The first prize was given to the person who told the truth."

"...She is four years old, but she says she is two. Rare coquetry."

"There were so many hairdressing establishments and funeral homes in the regional centre of N. that the inhabitants seemed to be born merely in order to have a shave, get their hair cut, freshen up their heads with toilet water and then die."

"New York was sleeping, and millions of electric lamps guarded its sleep. People from Scotland, Ireland, Hamburg and Vienna, Kovno and Bialystok, Naples and Madrid, Texas, Dakota and Arizona were sleeping, people from Latin America, Australia, Africa and China were sleeping. Black, white and yellow people were sleeping. Looking at the slightly fluctuating lights, we wanted to quickly find out: how do these people work, how do they have fun, what do they dream about, what do they hope for, what do they eat?"

"We thought that we would walk slowly, carefully looking around, so to speak, studying, observing, absorbing and so on. But New York is not the kind of city where people move slowly. People did not walk past us, but ran. And we ran too. From then on we couldn't stop. We lived in New York for a month and all the time we were rushing somewhere as fast as we could. At the same time, we looked so busy and businesslike that John Pierpont Morgan Jr. himself could have envied us. At this rate, he would earn sixty million dollars this month."

"It's madness to think that you can drive slowly on an American interstate. The desire to be careful is not enough. Hundreds more cars are running next to your car, thousands of them are pressing behind you, and tens of thousands are rushing towards you. And they all drive at full speed, in a satanic impulse, dragging you along with them. All of America is rushing somewhere, and, apparently, there will be no stopping. Steel dogs and birds sparkle on the cars noses. Among millions of cars, we flew from ocean to ocean — a grain of sand, driven by a gasoline storm that has been raging over America for so many years!"

"Just as at the North Station in Moscow the loudspeaker informs summer residents that the nearest train goes non-stop to Mytishchi, and then stops everywhere, here the blacks reported that the elevator goes only to the sixteenth floor, or up to the thirty-second, with the first stop again on the sixteenth floor. Subsequently, we realized this little trick of the administration: on the sixteenth floor there is a restaurant and cafeteria."

"You need to show him some paper, otherwise he won't believe that you exist."

"… Now you, for instance. You're distinguished-lookin' and tall, though a bit on the thin side. If you should die, God forbid, they'll say you popped off. But a tradesman, who belonged to the former merchants' guild, would breathe his last. And if it's someone of lower status, say a caretaker, or a peasant, we say he has croaked or gone west. But when the high-ups die, say a railway conductor or someone in administration, they say he has kicked the bucket. They say: 'You know our boss has kicked the bucket, don't you?'"

"Every small town [in America] wants to be like New York. There are New Yorks for two thousand people, and there are for one thousand eight hundred. We even came across one baby New York with nine hundred inhabitants. And it was a real city. Its residents walked along their own Broadway with their noses in the air. It is a disputable thing whose Broadway they considered the main thing to be, theirs or New York's one."

"Statistics know everything."

"When a woman grows old, many unpleasant things may happen to her: her teeth may fall out, her hair may thin out and turn grey, she may become short-winded, she may unexpectedly develop fat or grow extremely thin, but her voice never changes. It remains just as it was when she was a schoolgirl, a bride, or some young rake's mistress."

"An attempt to look at New York from a car failed. We were driving along rather dark and gloomy streets. Sometimes something was buzzing like hell under my feet, sometimes something rumbled overhead. When we stopped at traffic lights, the sides of the cars next to us obscured everything. The driver turned around several times and asked for the address. Apparently, he was worried about our English. Sometimes he looked at us encouragingly, and his face said: “Nothing, you won’t get lost! No one has ever lost in New York.”"

"All talented people write differently, all untalented ones write the same way and even in the same handwriting."

"Long, heavy trains race to all' parts of the country. The way is open at every point. Green lights can be seen everywhere; the track is clear. The polar express goes up to Murmansk. The K-l draws out of Kursk Station, bound for Tiflis, arching its back over the points. The far-eastern courier rounds Lake Baikal and approaches the Pacific at full speed. The Muse of Travel is calling. … People speed all over the country. Some of them are looking for scintillating brides thousands of miles away, while others, in pursuit of treasure, leave their jobs in the post office and rush off like schoolboys to Aldan. Others simply sit at home, tenderly stroking an imminent hernia and reading the works of Count Salias, bought for five kopeks instead of a rouble."

"Not a single car has ever been run over by a pedestrian, yet for some reason motorists are unhappy."

"The West has to understand: if certain weapons exist, taboos and limitations on using them could be lifted in certain circumstances."

"The only thing the West fears today is the possibility of Russia using its tactical nuclear weapons."

"Russia doesn't want or desire war with the UK. But if British soldiers land in Ukraine and engage in combat against the Russian armed forces, we reserve the right to resort to any possible actions and we need to record officially in our doctrinal documentation that the participation of any Nato country's servicemen in the conflict against the Russian army in Ukraine, resistance using force on their part to the special military operation gives Russia the right to respond in any way, including preventive strikes. There's no need for immediate nuclear strikes. We have three systems carrying Kinzhal missiles. So when Britain suddenly decides to make war with Russia, let us deliver three demonstrative strikes on London, not on civilian targets, but on the UK Ministry of Defense, where they make plans and are designing war against Russia, against British military bases, where, among other things, US nuclear weapons are stored, and on other decision-making centers in London. This is not a threat, this is preventive right to self-defense which we must exercise without fail should Britain really decide to fight us."

"We need to scale up our strikes against critical infrastructure in such a way that one region after the next, one district after another, Ukraine is plunged into darkness... By December, 20 million residents of Ukraine should flee to the West, to the European Union. This is our goal and the task we should accomplish."

"In Russia, independent journalism is a blood sport. Since Dmitry Muratov founded independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta in 1993, six of his reporters have been assassinated for exposing the crimes of Vladimir Putin’s regime and Russia’s oligarchy. In response to one piece in 2012, Muratov’s deputy was taken to a forest by the head of the Russian Investigative Committee, or Russia’s FBI. The official threatened to kill him and then pretend to investigate his death. But nothing has intimidated Muratov and the Novaya Gazeta team. Year in and year out, his newspaper has exposed billions of dollars of the Putin government’s corruption, extrajudicial killings, and rampant human-rights abuses. For this work, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2021. Months later, following Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, he pledged to donate the medal to benefit refugees fleeing the crisis. Some heroes show moments of bravery; Dmitry Muratov has shown a lifetime of bravery."

"Where it’s propaganda, it’s war. Where there is freedom of expression, people do not let the authorities start a war, a war like the one we see in the middle of Europe now."

"It is a targeted annihilation of the independent media. Journalists are expelled and made enemies of the people, so-called foreign agents. And why all this? The government has decided to leave the Russian people completely alone with the state propaganda. And that propaganda is slowly but surely destroying society’s brains,"

"The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2021 to Maria Ressa and Dmitry Muratov for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace. Ms. Ressa and Mr. Muratov are receiving the peace prize for their courageous fight for freedom of expression in the Philippines and in Russia. At the same time, they are representatives of all journalists who stand up for this ideal in a world in which democracy and freedom of the press face increasingly adverse conditions."

"Journalism in Russia is going through a dark valley. Over a hundred journalists, media outlets, human rights defenders and NGOs have recently been branded as “foreign agents”. In Russia, this means “enemies of the people.” Many of our colleagues have lost their jobs. Some have to leave the country. Some are deprived of the opportunity to live a normal life for an unknown period of time. Maybe forever."

"Don't dismiss two or three million Chinese soldiers. That's what is needed now. I look at Belgorod region and think how much we lack a Chinese people's liberation army."

"This award is for all true journalism. This award is to my colleagues from Novaya Gazeta, who have lost their lives – Igor Domnikov, Yuri Shchekotschikhin, Anna Politkovskaya, Anastasija Baburova, Stas Markelov and Natasha Estemirova. This award is also to the colleagues who are alive, to the professional community who perform their professional duty."

"What are our next actions? [Striking] the decision-making centers? In Kyiv, London, Washington - where?"

"We should have done it today. All the best people are there for the funeral.""

"What should we do to avoid the nuclear war, or is it already a given? It certainly seems that way."

"History doesn't teach people anything. After all, thanks to such self-satisfied and arrogant idiots, Poland has already on several occasions ceased to exist as an independent state."

"We are all adults and we are well aware that war depletes the Russian state in every way but if we stop it will make the special military operation meaningless."

"At the same time we, being adequate and normal people, of course, are not capable of enjoying military action, war and each one of us, I am convinced, would like an end to hostilities. We simply understand that this is completely unrealistic and impossible on current terms."

"Aggressive marketing of war affects people and they start thinking that war is acceptable. Governments and their propaganda supporters are fully responsible for the militaristic rhetoric on state-owned television channels."

"We are journalists, and our mission is clear – to distinguish between facts and fiction."

"In front of our eyes a breakthrough is underway in the special operation. The Ukrainians are crumbling in front of our eyes. The Ukrainian army is falling apart."

"Even though we are methodically destroying the weapons that are being delivered [to Ukraine], but the quantities in which the United States are sending them force us to come up with some global conclusions. Perhaps it’s time to acknowledge that maybe Russia’s special operation in Ukraine has come to an end, in a sense that a real war had started: WWIII. We’re forced to conduct the demilitarization not only of Ukraine, but of the entire NATO alliance."

"Nobody was expecting such a large, global war."

"Propaganda is the kitchen of war, Propaganda is war itself. First comes the militarisation of national holidays, then the news is replaced by propaganda shows."