"He smelled cold water and cold intrepid green. Those early flowers smelled like cold water. Their fragrance was not the still perfume of high summer; it was the smell of cold, raw green."

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When the whole discussion of "developing a national idea" hastily began in post-Soviet Russia, I tried to pour cold water on it with the objection that, after all the devastating losses we had experienced, it would be quite sufficient to have just one task: the preservation of a dying people.

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn