Did Churchill say: “When Russia, which fed all of Europe with bread, began to buy grain, I realized that I would die of laughter”?

In social networks, online collections of quotes and in articles, the phrase about the USSR purchasing grain, which is attributed to the British Prime Minister, is often found. We decided to check whether this statement was true from Churchill.

The most commonly quoted phrase attributed to Winston Churchill is: “I thought I was going to die of old age. But when Russia, which fed the whole of Europe with bread, began to buy grain, I realized that I would die of laughter.” It is quoted by users Instagram, social networks X (ex-Twitter), LiveJournal, "VKontakte", platforms "Zen" This statement also appears on entertainment sites, and in online quotation books, and in a wide variety of media (for example, in the newspaper “Tomorrow", on the sites "Sight" And 7x7, "Express newspaper"

Soviet Union started purchasing grain abroad in 1963, after a crisis caused by a bad harvest. On September 19, 1963, the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee approved the decision to purchase grain from other countries; by the end of autumn, the Soviet leadership agreed on supplies from Canada and the USA.

Accordingly, Churchill's quote could be attributed to a short period - from the autumn of 1963 to January 1965, when the British politician died. Throughout the first half of 1964, he remained a member of the British Parliament, but no longer spoke before the House of Commons. On July 27, 1964, he last attended meeting, and the next day parliamentarians honored his services. Winston Churchill no longer made any public speeches on foreign and domestic policy during this period.

There are no traces of the phrase about grain purchases in the archive Churchill Museum, nor on the website Society for the Study of His Legacy. However, in the latter case the phrase mentioned among fake quotes of unclear origin attributed to a British politician.

The earliest mention of this phrase dates back to 1985, 20 years after Churchill's death, when Dora Shturman and Sergei Tiktin's book "The Soviet Union in the mirror of a political joke" Among the numerous political jokes, the researchers cite this one: “If earlier I thought that I would die of old age, now I know that I will die of laughter: bringing Russia to import bread is brilliant!” It is indicated that this anecdote dates back to 1964, and is told as a quote from Churchill dedicated to the leader of the USSR Nikita Khrushchev, under whom the grain crisis occurred.

This anecdote, in a slightly modified form, began to circulate on blogs in March 2010. In the entry on the website budclub.ru the author of the text, Dmitry Yuryevich Kuznetsov, cites several passages allegedly from Churchill, pointing out that these are not real quotes, but the fruit of his creativity: “This is just an attempt to recreate the history of Russia as it could have been viewed in the last century from London.”

The full quote, invented by the author, looks like this: “These Russians are unpredictable. They starved their farmers. They flooded the most fertile lands to create power plants. They contaminated productive areas with waste from the nuclear industry. They have a small population density, but even so they have managed to pollute their country so much that they are now forced to buy grain. I thought I would die of old age. But when Russia, which fed the whole of Europe with bread, began to buy grain, I realized that I would die of laughter. Stalin captured an agricultural country and turned it into a raw materials appendage and a nuclear garbage dump.” Later the same author created and letter, which Churchill allegedly wrote to Nina Andreeva, a Soviet public figure and author of the anti-perestroika manifesto "I can't compromise my principles" It was after her article that the phrase “Stalin took Russia with a plow and left with an atomic bomb” began to be attributed Churchill.

Thus, the phrase about grain purchases does not belong to Churchill. This was originally a Soviet joke, which was then retold in the 2010s and began to be perceived by users as a real quote from a British politician.

Cover photo: Library of Congress

Incorrect quote attribution

What do our verdicts mean?

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