“Russia, Russia — unwashed, backward, appealing Russia, so ashamed of your own backwardness, so orientally determined to conceal it from us by clever deceit. So sensitive and so suspicious in the face of the wicked, civilized west. I shall always remember you — slyly, touchingly, but with great shouting and confusion — pumping hot water into our sleeping car in the frosty darkness of a December morning in order that we might not know, in order that we might never realize, to how primitive a land we had come.”

— George F. Kennan

Written about an incident where hot water was pumped from a switch engine on the next track into a diplomats sleeping-car; as quoted in George Kennan and the Dilemmas of US Foreign Policy (1988) by David Allan Mayers, p. 30

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Russia, Russia — unwashed, backward, appealing Russia, so ashamed of your own backwardness, so orientally determined to…" by George F. Kennan?

George F. Kennan46

American advisor, diplomat, political scientist and histori… 1904–2005

Related quotes

“We look to Russia because Russia is our natural ally against the fiendish contamination and corruption from the west... Because we can see the commencement of our own national and socialist survival in an alliance with a truly national and socialist Russia.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

National Socialist Letters (Nationalsozialistische Briefe), “National Socialism or Bolshevism”, (November 15, 1925)
1920s

“The streets of our country are in turmoil. The universities are filled with students rebelling and rioting. Communists are seeking to destroy our country. Russia is threatening us with her might and the Republic is in danger. Yes, danger from within and from without. We need law and order. Yes, without law and order our nation cannot survive. Elect us and we shall restore law and order.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Reported as refuted in the Congressional Record: Lou Hiner, Jr., "Hitler's Phony Quotation on Law and Order", May 21, 1970, vol. 116, pp. 1676–77, reprinted from the Indianapolis News; and M. Stanton Evans, "The Hitler Quote", August 11, 1970, vol. 116, p. 28349, reprinted from the National Review Bulletin (August 18, 1970).
Misattributed

“Violence was common in both places, but the violence of the capitalist order seemed inherent in it; whilst the violence of Russia, bad though it was, aimed at a new order based on peace and cooperation and real freedom for the masses. With all her blunders, Soviet Russia had triumphed over enormous difficulties and taken great strides towards this new order. While the rest of the world was in the grip of the depression and going backward in some ways, in the Soviet country a great new world was being built up before our eyes. Russia, following the great Lenin, looked into the future and thought only of what was to be, while other countries lay numbed under the dead hand of the past and spent their energy in preserving the useless relics of a bygone age. In particular, I was impressed by the reports of the great progress made by the backward regions of Central Asia under the Soviet regime. In the balance, therefore, I was all in favour of Russia, and the presence and example of the Soviets was a bright and heartening phenomenon in a dark and dismal world.”

Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) Indian lawyer, statesman, and writer, first Prime Minister of India

Autobiography (1936; 1949; 1958)

“As I consider a future political and economic agreement with Great Russia to be the immutable aim of our foreign policy, we must attempt at least not to make an enemy of Russia…I refuse to support Poland, even if that means that Poland will be eaten up. On the contrary, I reckon with this, and if at the moment we cannot help Russia to regain her old Imperial frontiers, we should at least not hinder her from doing so…The same applies to Lithuania and Latvia.”

Hans von Seeckt (1866–1936) German general

Letter to General von Massow (31 January 1920), quoted in F. L. Carsten, The Reichswehr and Politics 1918 to 1933 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), pp. 67-68.

“Farewell, unwashed Russia,
Land of slaves, land of masters,
And you, blue uniforms,
And you, people, devoted to them.
Perhaps beyond the wall of the Caucasus,
I will hide from your pashas,
From their all-seeing eye,
From their all-hearing ears.”

Mikhail Lermontov (1814–1841) Russian writer, poet and painter

—Published by Russky Arkhiv. Historical and literary collection (1890) Translation by Anatoly Liberman.
Original:
Прощай, немытая Россiя,
Страна рабовъ, страна господъ,
И вы, мундиры голубые,
И ты, имъ преданный народъ.
Быть можетъ, за стѣной Кавказа
Сокроюсь отъ твоихъ пашей,
Отъ ихъ всевидящаго глаза,
Отъ ихъ всеслышащихъ ушей.
Poems

“She didn't know what to do, well how did you get him, uh well uh… they were sent by Russia! You know they're always using Russia”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

October 25, 2016 rally in Sanford https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smKITCJJMnc&t=18m30s regarding Donna Brazile <br class="br">2010s, 2016, October

“Your commanders have ordered you to storm the White House and to arrest me. But I as the elected President of Russia give you the order to turn your tanks and not to fight against your own people.”

Boris Yeltsin (1931–2007) 1st President of Russia and Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR

Appeal to the military to not participate in the coup attempt, while standing on a tank during troop movements against the Russian White House. (19 August 1991)
1990s

“[Peace] is completely impossible between Slavs and Germans…Peace with Russia can only be maintained by fear of us. The Slavs will always hate us and remain our enemies! they are only frightened of a man and they only respect him if he hits them hard! S. [see] Japan! So it will be with us, too! The Entente, if it wants, and if my diplomacy is too stupid, can always do what it likes in Russia - it has driven it into war; but our preponderance in the German area is necessary to keep Russia away from our eastern frontier once and for all; no peace with Russia, however favourable, will give us that!”

Wilhelm II, German Emperor (1859–1941) German Emperor and King of Prussia

Marginal note to a memorandum written by Hellmuth Lucius von Stoedten (May 1918), quoted in Fritz Fischer, Germany's Aims in the First World War (New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 1967), p. 580
1910s

“They're professionals at this in Russia, so no matter how many Jell-O shots or Jager shooters you might have downed at college mixers, no matter how good a drinker you might think you are, don't forget that the Russians - any Russian - can drink you under the table.”

Anthony Bourdain book A Cook's Tour

A Cook's Tour (2001)

“The West is an oasis for criminals from Russia.”

Dmitry Peskov (1967) Russian politician

"Песков назвал Запад оазисом для преступников" https://ria.ru/20220403/zapad-1781539233.html (in Russian; "Peskov called the West an oasis for criminals"), interview in RIA Novosti, 3 April 2022 <br class="br">CNN Interview (March 2022)

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

George F. Kennan46

Related quotes

Related topics