The famous phrase “If I fall asleep and wake up in a hundred years and they ask me what is happening in Russia now, I will answer: they drink and steal” is often attributed to the Russian writer Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin. We checked whether he actually said it.
“Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov-Shchedrin is given a special place in Russian literature, because not a single writer in his works criticizes, ridicules or denounces Russian reality so accurately and mercilessly,” quotes Adme portal in its blogs radio "Echo of Moscow". — Despite the fact that he wrote almost two centuries ago, his stories are very similar to what is happening in Russia now. The characters characterize the modern world so accurately that it seems that the writer simply looked into the future and wrote about us.”
The first quote that the authors of the text remember is “If I fall asleep and wake up in a hundred years and they ask me what is happening in Russia now, I will answer: they drink and steal.”
This quote Saltykov-Shchedrin attributed to en masse. But he is not the only writer to receive this honor. Sometimes as its author offer even Leo Tolstoy (although in the comments they immediately write that this is Saltykov-Shchedrin).
Another version - the phrase was uttered by historian Nikolai Karamzin. A phrase for him attributed writer Mikhail Zoshchenko in his “Blue Book”: “At one time, the famous writer Karamzin said this: “If you wanted to express in one word what is happening in Russia, then you should say: they are stealing.”
But there is a problem. This quote is not found in written form in any of the written sources, neither in Saltykov-Shchedrin, nor in Tolstoy, nor in Karamzin.
In 2012, LiveJournal user polesh_chuk paid paid attention to this and tracked the path of the phrase. Apparently, on the Russian-language Internet, the expression as a quote from Saltykov-Shchedrin began to exist after interview Alexander Rosenbaum to the Sobesednik magazine in 2000. In it, the famous singer attributed the phrase to both, Saltykov-Shchedrin and Karamzin:
“Either Karamzin or Saltykov-Shchedrin said: “What will happen in two hundred years? They will drink and steal!”
However, there appears to have been some confusion. The original phrase could indeed have belonged to Karamzin, but it sounded somewhat different. So, succeeded find a similar phrase in the testimony of Prince Pyotr Vyazemsky, who knew Karamzin personally and could actually write down the phrase from his words. That's what he is wrote in his “Notebooks”:
“Karamzin said that if you answered the question in one word: “What is happening in Russia?”, then you would have to say: “They are stealing.”
Most likely, Karamzin’s phrase was first modified by Zoshchenko, changing “steal” to “steal”, and later “drink” was added. Nevertheless, this expression has nothing to do with Saltykov-Shchedrin and is attributed to him by mistake.
Incorrect quote attribution
- Who released Saltykov-Shchedrin’s “quote” that Russians drink and steal?
- “They drink and steal” and other quotes from famous people that they didn’t say
- Catchphrases of famous people that they never said
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