“Жизнь страны менялась с каждым столетием. Менялась одежда, совершенствовалось оружие, были усмирены картофельные бунты. Люди научились брить бороды. Полетел первый воздушный шар. Были изобретены железные близнецы пароход и паровоз. Затрубили автомашины.А дорога осталась такой же, какой была при Соловье разбойнике.”

“Let's put it to a vote. Shall the ballots be open or secret?""We don't need Soviet-style voting," Charushnikov said, offended. "Let's vote the honest way, the European way: secret ballots.”

“But the editor in chief was already balding and worked a lot. He was at the mercy of his family and apartment. He enjoyed lying down on the couch for a spell after dinner and reading Pravda before bed.”

“Everyone drank to popular education and to the irrigation of Uzbekistan.”

“To a Soviet person, used to the nationality policy of the USSR, all the mistakes of the American government's Indian policy are evident from the first glance. The mistakes are, of course, intentional. The fact of the matter is that in Indian schools, class is conducted exclusively in English. There is no written form of any Indian language at all. It's true that every Indian tribe has its own language, but this doesn't change anything. If there were any desire to do so, the many American specialists who have fallen in love with Indian culture could create Indian written languages in a short time. But imperialism remains imperialism.”

“So what was in this building before historical materialism?''Before what?''You know, back then, under the old regime?''Oh. Under the old regime my master lived here.''A bourgeois?''You're a bourgeois yourself! He wasn't a bourgeois. He was a marshal of the nobility.''So he was a proletarian, then?''You're a proletarian yourself! I told you loud and clear, a marshal.'The conversation with the clever dvornik with a vague understanding of the class structure of society would have lasted god knows how long if the young man hadn't made a decisive move.”

“The way people used to kiss before the age of historical materialism.”