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In modern Russia, you have no official, formal assessment of this past. Nobody in any Russian document has said that the policy of the Soviet government was criminal, that it was terrible. No one has ever said this.

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
Ever
Russia
Official
Sea
Documents
Nobody
Russian
Terrible
Formal
Policy
Criminal
Modern
Soviet
Past
Officials
Assessment
Government
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More quotes by Ryszard Kapuscinski

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Our salvation is in striving to achieve what we know we'll never achieve.
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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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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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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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The Cold War was waged in a particularly brutal and cynical way in Africa, and Africa seemed powerless to do anything to stop it.
Ryszard Kapuscinski
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Photographing expresses human desire to preserve passing time. It is like a man struggling with time that elapses, and in general - a desire to preserve oneself.
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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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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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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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The continent is too large to describe. It is a veritable ocean, a separate planet, a varied, immensely rich cosmos. Only with the greatest simplification, for the sake of convenience, can we say 'Africa'. In reality, except as a geographical appellation, Africa does not exist.
Ryszard Kapuscinski
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Money changes all the iron rules into rubber bands.
Ryszard Kapuscinski
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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.
Ryszard Kapuscinski
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The Cold War in Africa is one of the darkest, most disgraceful pages in contemporary history, and everybody ought to be ashamed.
Ryszard Kapuscinski
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in reference to Persepolis and all palaces, cities and temples of the past: could these wonders have come into being without that suffering? without the overseer's whip, the slave's fear, the ruler's vanity? was not the monumentality of past epochs created by that which is negative and evil in man?
Ryszard Kapuscinski
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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.
Ryszard Kapuscinski
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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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If the crowd disperses, goes home, does not reassemble, we say the revolution is over.
Ryszard Kapuscinski
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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.
Ryszard Kapuscinski
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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.
Ryszard Kapuscinski
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In order to feel contempt, you generally need to cherish some kind of feelings.
Ryszard Kapuscinski