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:
“But these Russians are too romantic—too exaltés; they give way to a morbid love of martyrdom; they think they can do no good to mankind unless they are uncomfortable.”
—H. Seton Merriman (1862–1903)
“When great nations fear to expand, shrink from expansion, it is because their greatness is coming to an end. Are we, still in the prime of our lusty youth, still at the beginning of our glorious manhood, to sit down among the outworn people, to take our place with the weak and the craven? A thousand times no!”
—Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919)