不撒谎

WASHINGTON POST
Feb.08th, 1974

Live Not By Lies
Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Solzhenitsyn penned this essay in 1974 and it circulated among
Moscow's intellectuals at the time. It is dated Feb. 12, the same day
that secret police broke into his apartment and arrested him. The next
day he was exiled to West Germany. The essay is a call to moral
courage and serves as light to all who value truth.

At one time we dared not even to whisper. Now we write and read
samizdat, and sometimes when we gather in the smoking room at the
Science Institute we complain frankly to one another: What kind of
tricks are they playing on us, and where are they dragging us?
Gratuitous boasting of cosmic achievements while there is poverty and
destruction at home. Propping up remote, uncivilized regimes. Fanning
up civil war. And we recklessly fostered Mao Tse-tung at our
expense—and it will be we who are sent to war against him, and will
have to go. Is there any way out? And they put on trial anybody they
want and they put sane people in asylums—always they, and we are
powerless.

Things have almost reached rock bottom. A universal spiritual death
has already touched us all, and physical death will soon flare up and
consume us both and our children—but as before we still smile in a
cowardly way and mumble without tounges tied. But what can we do to
stop it? We haven't the strength?

We have been so hopelessly dehumanized that for today's modest ration
of food we are willing to abandon all our principles, our souls, and
all the efforts of our predecessors and all opportunities for our
descendants—but just don't disturb our fragile existence. We lack
staunchness, pride and enthusiasm. We don't even fear universal
nuclear death, and we don't fear a third world war. We have already
taken refuge in the crevices. We just fear acts of civil courage.

We fear only to lag behind the herd and to take a step alone-and
suddenly find ourselves without white bread, without heating gas and
without a Moscow registration.

We have been indoctrinated in political courses, and in just the same
way was fostered the idea to live comfortably, and all will be well
for the rest of our lives. You can't escape your environment and
social conditions. Everyday life defines consciousness. What does it
have to do with us? We can't do anything about it?

But we can—everything. But we lie to ourselves for assurance. And it
is not they who are to blame for everything—we ourselves, only we. One
can object: But actually toy can think anything you like. Gags have
been stuffed into our mouths. Nobody wants to listen to us and nobody
asks us. How can we force them to listen? It is impossible to change
their minds.

It would be natural to vote them out of office—but there are not
elections in our country. In the West people know about strikes and
protest demonstrations—but we are too oppressed, and it is a horrible
prospect for us: How can one suddenly renounce a job and take to the
streets? Yet the other fatal paths probed during the past century by
our bitter Russian history are, nevertheless, not for us, and truly we
don't need them.

Now that the axes have done their work, when everything which was sown
has sprouted anew, we can see that the young and presumptuous people
who thought they would make out country just and happy through terror,
bloody rebellion and civil war were themselves misled. No thanks,
fathers of education! Now we know that infamous methods breed infamous
results. Let our hands be clean!

The circle—is it closed? And is there really no way out? And is there
only one thing left for us to do, to wait without taking action? Maybe
something will happen by itself? It will never happen as long as we
daily acknowledge, extol, and strengthen—and do not sever ourselves
from the most perceptible of its aspects: Lies.

When violence intrudes into peaceful life, its face glows with
self-confidence, as if it were carrying a banner and shouting: "I am
violence. Run away, make way for me—I will crush you." But violence
quickly grows old. And it has lost confidence in itself, and in order
to maintain a respectable face it summons falsehood as its ally—since
violence lays its ponderous paw not every day and not on every
shoulder. It demands from us only obedience to lies and daily
participation in lies—all loyalty lies in that.

And the simplest and most accessible key to our self-neglected
liberation lies right here: Personal non-participation in lies. Though
lies conceal everything, though lies embrace everything, but not with
any help from me.

This opens a breach in the imaginary encirclement caused by our
inaction. It is the easiest thing to do for us, but the most
devastating for the lies. Because when people renounce lies it simply
cuts short their existence. Like an infection, they can exist only in
a living organism.

We do not exhort ourselves. We have not sufficiently matured to march
into the squares and shout the truth our loud or to express aloud what
we think. It's not necessary.

It's dangerous. But let us refuse to say that which we do not think.

This is our path, the easiest and most accessible one, which takes
into account out inherent cowardice, already well rooted. And it is
much easier—it's dangerous even to say this—than the sort of civil
disobedience which Gandhi advocated.

Our path is to talk away fro the gangrenous boundary. If we did not
paste together the dead bones and scales of ideology, if we did not
sew together the rotting rags, we would be astonished how quickly the
lies would be rendered helpless and subside.

That which should be naked would then really appear naked before the
whole world.

So in our timidity, let each of us make a choice: Whether consciously,
to remain a servant of falsehood—of course, it is not out of
inclination, but to feed one's family, that one raises his children in
the spirit of lies—or to shrug off the lies and become an honest man
worthy of respect both by one's children and contemporaries.

And from that day onward he:

Will not henceforth write, sign, or print in any way a single phrase
which in his opinion distorts the truth.
Will utter such a phrase neither in private conversation not in the
presence of many people, neither on his own behalf not at the
prompting of someone else, either in the role of agitator, teacher,
educator, not in a theatrical role.
Will not depict, foster or broadcast a single idea which he can only
see is false or a distortion of the truth whether it be in painting,
sculpture, photography, technical science, or music.
Will not cite out of context, either orally or written, a single
quotation so as to please someone, to feather his own nest, to achieve
success in his work, if he does not share completely the idea which is
quoted, or if it does not accurately reflect the matter at issue.
Will not allow himself to be compelled to attend demonstrations or
meetings if they are contrary to his desire or will, will neither take
into hand not raise into the air a poster or slogan which he does not
completely accept.
Will not raise his hand to vote for a proposal with which he does not
sincerely sympathize, will vote neither openly nor secretly for a
person whom he considers unworthy or of doubtful abilities.
Will not allow himself to be dragged to a meeting where there can be
expected a forced or distorted discussion of a question. Will
immediately talk out of a meeting, session, lecture, performance or
film showing if he hears a speaker tell lies, or purvey ideological
nonsense or shameless propaganda.
Will not subscribe to or buy a newspaper or magazine in which
information is distorted and primary facts are concealed. Of course we
have not listed all of the possible and necessary deviations from
falsehood. But a person who purifies himself will easily distinguish
other instances with his purified outlook.
No, it will not be the same for everybody at first. Some, at first,
will lose their jobs. For young people who want to live with truth,
this will, in the beginning, complicate their young lives very much,
because the required recitations are stuffed with lies, and it is
necessary to make a choice.

But there are no loopholes for anybody who wants to be honest. On any
given day any one of us will be confronted with at least one of the
above-mentioned choices even in the most secure of the technical
sciences. Either truth or falsehood: Toward spiritual independence or
toward spiritual servitude.

And he who is not sufficiently courageous even to defend his
soul—don't let him be proud of his "progressive" views, don't let him
boast that he is an academician or a people's artist, a merited
figure, or a general—let him say to himself: I am in the herd, and a
coward. It's all the same to me as long as I'm fed and warm.

Even this path, which is the most modest of all paths of resistance,
will not be easy for us. But it is much easier than self-immolation or
a hunger strike: The flames will not envelope your body, your
eyeballs, will not burst from the heat, and brown bread and clean
water will always be available to your family.

A great people of Europe, the Czechoslovaks, whom we betrayed and
deceived: Haven't they shown us how a vulnerable breast can stand up
even against tanks if there is a worthy heart within it?

You say it will not be easy? But it will be easiest of all possible
resources. It will not be an easy choice for a body, but it is the
only one for a soul. Not, it is not an easy path. But there are
already people, even dozens of them, who over the years have
maintained all these points and live by the truth.

So you will not be the first to take this path, but will join those
who have already taken it. This path will be easier and shorter for
all of us if we take it by mutual efforts and in close rank. If there
are thousands of us, they will not be able to do anything with us. If
there are tens of thousands of us, then we would not even recognize
our country.

If we are too frightened, then we should stop complaining that someone
is suffocating us. We ourselves are doing it. Let us then bow down
even more, let us wail, and out brothers the biologists will help to
bring nearer the day when they are able to read our thoughts are
worthless and hopeless.

And if we get cold feet, even taking this step, then we are worthless
and hopeless, and the scorn of Pushkin should be directed to us:

Why should cattle have the gifts of freedom?
Their heritage from generation to generation is the belled yoke and the lash.