Character
When Volkogonov's editor for the English editions of his books, Harold Shukman, first met him in Oxford, England in 1989, he found Volkogonov to be "utterly unlike idea of a Soviet general." Shukman explained: "He did not strut or swagger, or drink or smoke, and in the many different situations in which I was to see him — in other countries, in Russia, with academics, etc., he was invariably easy-going and relaxed, and plainly popular.”
| “ | it was only late in my life, after long and tortuous inner struggle, that I was able to free myself of the chimera of Bolshevik Ideology. I felt enormous relief, and at the same time a sense of deep regret that I had wasted so many years in Utopian captivity. Perhaps the only thing I achieved in this life was to break with the faith I had held for so long...Disillusionment first came to me as an idea, rather like the melancholy of a spiritual hangover. Then, it came as intellectual confusion. Finally, as the determination to confront the truth and understand it... | ” |
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—Dmitri Volkogonov, Introduction, Autopsy For An Empire |
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By the end of his life, Volkogonov had "firmly committed himself to the view that Russia’s only hope in 1917 lay in the liberal and social democratic coalition that emerged in the February Revolution." Volkogonov told his editor that the "spiritual strength" that he displayed in his last years was derived from undergoing a Christian baptism. As one Los Angeles Times writer described Volkogonov: "For exposing truths and exploding myths, Volkogonov was often accused of treason and treachery. But he never retreated." Volkogonov was under tremendous pressures at the time. For instance he related that when he would enter the Russian Parliament (where he had held a seat as a liberal since the Gorbachev era), he would be met by Communist legislators who would "line up at the door and shout insults." Of this Volkogonov commented at the time, "I take these shouts as sounds of historical praise."
Read more about this topic: Dmitri Volkogonov
Famous quotes containing the word character:
“When I think of some of the Persians, the Hindus, the Arabs I knew, when I think of the character they revealed, their grace, their tenderness, their intelligence, their holiness, I spit on the white conquerors of the world, the degenerate British, the pigheaded Germans, the smug self-satisfied French.”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)
“The character of the logger’s admiration is betrayed by his very mode of expressing it.... He admires the log, the carcass or corpse, more than the tree.... What right have you to celebrate the virtues of the man you murdered?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Have you not budged an inch, then? Such is the daily news. Its facts appear to float in the atmosphere.... We should wash ourselves clean of such news. Of what consequence, though our planet explode, if there is no character involved in the explosion? In health we have not the least curiosity about such events. We do not live for idle amusement. I would not run round a corner to see the world blow up.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)