Prime Minister Witte quotes

View Quote The people want more schools and health clinics, laws to protect the workers, and the right to vote for an elected Duma. They are angry sir, and they are serious. Imagine sire, imagine if you would, that you are a factory worker living in Vladivostok or Saint Petersburg. You are really poor; meals almost never fill your belly. You freeze eight months out of the year. Your children have no school; no doctors. Your country taxes you, and sends the men a continent away to die for a piece of land on the Pacific Ocean. Imagine all that you have to deal with. You must give your people a little of what they want. Not everything mind you; just a taste.

View Quote [The Russian flag officers are all celebrating and congratulating themselves on their war plans and believe their entry into the First World War will be quick and painless for Russia. Witte, now retired, is trying in vain to convince them and the Tsar of the dire consequences of what World War One will do. It seems Witte is prophetic in predicting the rise of the Soviet Union, the rise of Nazi Germany, and the eventual coming of the Second World War]

None if you will be here when this war ends. Everything we worked to build will be destroyed. There is no question another great war will come. The societies and kingdoms of Europe we knew will crumble, and out of the wreckage madmen and lunatics will come to power. And the world will grow old.