Vladimir Nabokov - Politics

Politics

Nabokov described himself as a classical liberal, in the tradition of his father. Throughout his life he was profoundly opposed to all forms of socialism and fascism. In a poem he wrote in 1917, he described Lenin's Bolsheviks as "grey rag-tag people". Later, during his American period, he expressed contempt for student activism, and all collective movements. In both letters and interviews, he reveals a profound contempt for the New Left movements of the 1960s, describing the protestors as "conformists" and "goofy hoodlums". Nabokov supported the Vietnam War effort and voiced admiration for President Richard Nixon.

Read more about this topic:  Vladimir Nabokov

Famous quotes containing the word politics:

    I believe you to be a brave and a skillful soldier, which, of course, I like. I also believe you do not mix politics with your profession, in which you are right.
    Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)

    The rage for road building is beneficent for America, where vast distance is so main a consideration in our domestic politics and trade, inasmuch as the great political promise of the invention is to hold the Union staunch, whose days already seem numbered by the mere inconvenience of transporting representatives, judges and officers across such tedious distances of land and water.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    I played by the rules of politics as I found them.
    Richard M. Nixon (1913–1995)