Doubts surfaced. Had some unearthly power intervened and stopped this crime?
-- Narrator (Soviet Union, Moscow, 3 June 1949 paragraph 30)

Importance: The first attempt to raze the Sancta Sophia fails. Some people believe it is the work of God, and that the Communists have gone too far in seeking to destroy the church to build a watersport complex. Symbolically, the razing of the church is more than just the razing of a religious place, but the razing of morality itself. This causes many people to question as well just what the State can be like if it destroys something as sacred as a church without care.

Principles were more important than their lives.
-- Narrator (Soviet Union, Moscow, 3 June 1949, Same Day paragraph 19)

Importance: At the beginning of the novel, Anisya knows, along with her husband, Lazar, that righteousness matters more than anything else, including their lives. It is a statement of extreme irony made to describe Anisya, for by the end of the novel, nothing will be more important to...