World War III (1982)

Jeroen Krabbé: Col. Alexander Vorashin

Quotes 

• Col. Alexander Vorashin : The sad thing about death, Major, is they don't even know they've died.

• Col. Alexander Vorashin : My orders are to take this base.

  Col. Jake Caffey : My orders are to stop you.

  Col. Alexander Vorashin : You have no chance. I appeal to you to surrender.

  Col. Jake Caffey : Let me tell you something, Russian. That spot that you're standing on happens to be a part of the United States and my job is to defend it.

  Col. Alexander Vorashin : I understand you. I am a soldier too.

  Col. Jake Caffey : Is that all you have to say? "Surrender"?

  Col. Alexander Vorashin : I no longer have the stomach to kill you.

  Col. Jake Caffey : Why not? You've had plenty of stomach for it so far. You've killed innocent civilians, anybody who happened to be around. You've killed boys who hardly know how to handle a gun. You've killed people that I care about who were doing their best to prevent an invasion of their country.

  Col. Alexander Vorashin : You know as well as I do that we don't kill people. We simply inflict casualties on the other side. This little war is no longer the full story, Colonel. Our leaders have much bigger ideas.

  Col. Jake Caffey : I know that. The end?

  Col. Alexander Vorashin : And what have you to say about that?

  Col. Jake Caffey : I have always believed that the finest ambition of the soldier is to prevent war from ever happening but it has always been out of our hands. It's in the hands of men whom we don't even know.

  Col. Alexander Vorashin : Shall we deprive them of our services?

  Col. Jake Caffey : Well at least we can tell them we've done our job and now it's time for them to do theirs.

  Col. Alexander Vorashin : We are in agreement.

  Col. Jake Caffey : Should that be happening? Two soldiers talking to each other, that it would be the end of war?

  Col. Alexander Vorashin : Perhaps the time has come for that. Let us end this particular war right here. I will say to them I have met my enemy and he is no longer my enemy.

• Col. Alexander Vorashin : I would like to think there is still some meaning to all this.

  Maj. Nicolai Saamaretz : A soldier doesn't ask for meaning, Comrade. He asks for information and further instructions. That is what we will get.

• Maj. Nicolai Saamaretz : [Outside an oil pumping station in Alaska]  Do you think it will be worth it for them to die for a piece of machinery?

  Col. Alexander Vorashin : Ideology, Major. That's your subject, isn't it? They will fight for the ideal of that place and all the ideas connected with it.

  Maj. Nicolai Saamaretz : And where do people get those ideas? From men like me.

  Col. Alexander Vorashin : In Stalingrad my father fought for a steel plant that looked like a pile of rubble. It wasn't the steel plant, it was what it represented to the Russian people.

  [Looks towards the pumping station] 

  Col. Alexander Vorashin : Well, then that's their Stalingrad.