Great Terror Quotes

“In a regime where words are watched, lies are rewarded, and silence is survival, there is no truth.

- Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad”
― M T Anderson

“When agents of the Turkmen secret police came up short in arrests of counterrevolutionaries in 1937-38, they filled their quota by going to the Ashgabat marketplace and rounding up all men who wore beards, on theory that they were likely to be mullahs.”
― Douglas Northrop

“When asked, 'What did you want to say in this work?' he would answer, 'I've said what I've said.'
This made sense in where everyone assumed music had a meaning - but where saying the wrong thing could get a person killed.

-Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad”
― M T Anderson

“When we read tales of atrocity, we all want to be the one who stood firm, who would not bend, who shouted the truth in the face of the dictator.
Vsevolod Meyerhold came as close as anyone to achieving this. It is important to know of the full horror of his sacrifice.
It is easy for all to imagine we are heroes when we are sitting in our kitchens, dreaming of distant suffering.

- Symphony for the City of the Dead: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad”
― M T Anderson