The Russians are coming is a famous phrase attributed to United States Secretary of Defense James Forrestal in 1949. In full, it is supposed to be: "The Russians are coming. The Russians are coming. They’re right around. I’ve seen Russian soldiers."
Forrestal allegedly uttered those words while suffering from mental illness, not long before purportedly committing suicide. The allegation originated with Forrestal's bitter political enemy, columnist Drew Pearson, and has been verified by no other person. This is what Townsend Hoopes and Douglas Brinkley have to say about the episode in their 1992 book, Driven Patriot, the Life and Times of James Forrestal:
Pearson had, in fact, decided to fire his heaviest ammunition in a radio broadcast on April 9. He charged that Forrestal, awakened by the sound of a fire siren (on the night of April 1 at Hobe Sound), had rushed out of his cottage screaming, “The Russians are attacking.” He defined Forrestal’s condition as “temporary insanity.” In subsequent newspaper columns he asserted that Forrestal made three suicide attempts while in Florida — by drug overdose, by hanging, and by slashing his wrists. According to a later statement by Raines, all of these assertions were lies.
— pp. 455-456.
Read more about The Russians Are Coming: Uses of The Phrase
Famous quotes containing the words russians and/or coming:
“If the Russians have gone too far in subjecting the child and his peer group to conformity to a single set of values imposed by the adult society, perhaps we have reached the point of diminishing returns in allowing excessive autonomy and in failing to utilize the constructive potential of the peer group in developing social responsibility and consideration for others.”
—Urie Bronfenbrenner (b. 1917)
“As every season seems best to us in its turn, so the coming in of spring is like the creation of Cosmos out of Chaos and the realization of the Golden Age.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)