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In the First World War, there was the sudden passion of nationalism, and the killing took place because of these emotions. But the Soviet case is different, because you had systematic murder, like the Holocaust.

Ryszard Kapuscinski

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Ryszard Kapuscinski
Age: 74 †
Born: 1932
Born: March 4
Died: 2007
Died: January 22
Journalist
Opinion Journalist
Photographer
Poet
Reporter
Translator
Writer
Pińsk
War
Murder
Place
Emotions
Firsts
Killing
Systematic
First
Case
Genocide
Different
Took
Nationalism
Like
Cases
Holocaust
World
Emotion
Sudden
Passion
Soviet

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Although a system may cease to exist in the legal sense or as a structure of power, its values (or anti-values), its philosophy, its teachings remain in us. They rule our thinking, our conduct, our attitude to others. The situation is a demonic paradox: we have toppled the system but we still carry its genes.
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Literature seemed to be everything then. People looked to it for the strength to live, for guidance, for revelation.
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Our salvation is in striving to achieve what we know we'll never achieve.
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I'm trying to put more elements of the essay into my writing.
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In the Russian experience, although the Russian state is oppressive, it is their state, it is part of their fabric, and so the relation between Russian citizens and their state is complicated.
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The extent of one man's guilt may be defined by how much of it is experienced by the party he injured.
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Amin is the shame of the whole world. The fact that he managed to rule so long and commit so many crimes was only possible thanks to the hypocrisy of the East and the West who were waging the Cold War for world domination.
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Do not be misled by the fact that you are at liberty and relatively free that for the moment you are not under lock and key: you have simply been granted a reprieve.
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The Cold War was waged in a particularly brutal and cynical way in Africa, and Africa seemed powerless to do anything to stop it.
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This is the most intimate relationship between literature and its readers: they treat the text as a part of themselves, as a possession.
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Our job is like a baker's work - his rolls are tasty as long as they're fresh after two days they're stale after a week, they're covered with mould and fit only to be thrown out.
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Amin hid nothing. Everybody knew everything. Yet the American Senate only introduced a resolution breaking off trade with Amin three months before his overthrow.
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My writing is a combination of three elements. The first is travel: not travel like a tourist, but travel as exploration. The second is reading literature on the subject. The third is reflection.
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There are several reasons why Russians view the oppressive state positively. First, in the Russian Orthodox religion, there is an understanding of authority as something sent by God.
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First you destroy those who create values. Then you destroy those who know what the values are, and who also know that those destroyed before were in fact the creators of values. But real barbarism begins when no one can any longer judge or know that what he does is barbaric.
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He killed his enemies because he was afraid they would kill him. Amin ordered entire tribes to be put to death, because he feared they would rebel.
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The official independence celebration was going to be held over four or five days, and a group of journalists from all over the world was allowed to fly in, because Angola was closed otherwise.
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I remember that during the period leading up to independence in Angola in 1975, I was the only correspondent there at all for three months.
Ryszard Kapuscinski