the case for innovation in dissidence or contemporary yurodstvo
– Joseph Stalin, 1878-1953, the pin-up of the purges
They say that I stood too close to power. An optical illusion.
– Dmitri Shostakovich, quoted by Solomon Volkov in Testimony, in Ian McDonald, The New Shostakovich, new edition revised by Raymond Clarke, Pimlico, London, 2006, p. 2
Don’t try to save