In apartments and cottages, on the street and in the train... I listen... More and more, I turn into one large ear, always turning to another person.
Svetlana AlexievichRead
Stalin's machine can be started up again at only a moment's notice: the same informers, the same denunciations, the same tortures. The same universal, all-devouring terror.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote highlights the pervasive fear and control under Stalin's regime, emphasizing how the mechanisms of oppression are always ready to be activated.
Svetlana Alexievich captures the chilling reality of life under Stalin's rule, where the machinery of terror is permanently in place, ready to inflict suffering at any moment. The reference to informers, denunciations, and tortures underlines the oppressive atmosphere of mistrust and brutality that characterized this period in history, demonstrating how quickly and easily a regime can mobilize its repressive apparatus to instill fear among the populace.
Themes
StalinTerrorOppressionFearDenunciation
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a historical lecture about totalitarian regimes.
More from Svetlana Alexievich
All quotes →The subjects I wanted to write about - the mystery of the human soul, evil - didn't interest newspapers, and news reporting bored me.
Svetlana AlexievichRead
'Women's' war has its own colors, its own smells, its own lighting, and its own range of feelings. There are no heroes and incredible feats; there are simply people who are busy doing inhumanly human things.
Svetlana AlexievichRead
There is no need to give in to the compromise that totalitarian regimes always count on.
Svetlana AlexievichRead
I've been searching for a genre that would be most adequate to my vision of the world to convey how my ear hears and my eyes see life. I tried this and that, and finally, I chose a genre where human voices speak for themselves. But I don't just record a dry history of events and facts; I'm writing a history of human feelings.
Svetlana AlexievichRead
From the point of view of art, the butcher and the victim are equal as people. You need to see the people.
Svetlana AlexievichRead
Similar quotes
Nigeria has had a complicated colonial history. My work has examined that part of our story extensively.
Chinua AchebeRead
In short, Europe’s colonization of Africa had nothing to do with differences between European and African peoples themselves, as white racists assume. Rather, it was due to accidents of geography and biogeography—in particular, to the continents’ different areas, axes, and suites of wild plant and animal species. That is, the different historical trajectories of Africa and Europe stem ultimately from differences in real estate.
Jared DiamondRead
The March on Washington was a defining moment in the history of this country and a great example of our nation truly living up to its creed.
Martin Luther King IiiRead
History is not a procession of illustrious people. It's about what happens to a people. Millions of anonymous people is what history is about.
James A. BaldwinRead
It is one of the ironies of this strange century that the most lasting results of the October revolution, whose object was the global overthrow of capitalism, was to save its antagonist, both in war and in peace - that is to say, by providing it with the incentive, fear, to reform itself after the Second World War, and, by establishing the popularity of economic planning, furnishing it with some of the procedures for its reform
Eric HobsbawmRead
Sixty years after the end of the war, the time has come to make this information available. With the number of survivors and witnesses diminishing by the day, and the reality that the Holocaust is fading into the pages of history and memory, we should not have to wait any longer.
Abraham FoxmanRead