Solzhenitsyn Participation and the Lie

Solzhenitsyn, Alexander. "Participation and the Lie."I Must Speak Out: The Best of The Voluntaryist. Edited by Carl Warner. 200-202. San Francisco: Fox and Wilkes,  1999.

published in 1975 by Little Brown and Company in Under the Rubble


"Our present system is unique in world history, because over and above its physical and economic constraints, it demands of us total surrender of our souls, continuous and active participation in the general conscious lie."  (Sol, 200)


"The most important part of our freedom, inner freedom, is always subject to our will. If we surrender it to corruption, we do not deserve to be called human."(Sol, 200)

"But let us note that if the absolutely essential task is not political liberation, but the liberation of our souls from participation in the lie forced upon us, then is requires no physical, revolutionary, social, organizational easures, no meetings, strikes trade unions-things fearful for us to even contemplate and from which we quite naturally allow circumstances to dissaude us. No! IT requires from each individual a moral step within his power- no more than that.  200


"Do not lie! Do not take part in the lie~ Do not support the lie!" 200


"It is an invasion of man's moral world, and our straightening up and refusing to lie is also not political, but simply the retrieval of our human dignity." 200

"It simply means: not saying what you don't think, and that includes not whispering, not opening your mouth, not raising your hand, not casting your vote, not feigning a smile, not lending you presence, not standing up, and not cheering." 201

"We all work in different fields and move in different walks of life. THose who work in the humanities and all who are studying find themselves much more profoundly and inextricably involved in lying and participating in the lie- they are fenced about by layer after layer of lies. In the technical science it can be more ingeniously avoided, but even so one cannot excape daily entering some door, attending some meeting, putting one's signature to something or undertaking some obligation which is a cowwardly submission to the lie. The lie surrounds us at work, on our way to work, in our leisure pursuits--in everything we see, hear and read." 201

"It will cost you canceled dissertations, annulled degrees, demotions, dismissals, expulsions, sometimes even deportations. But you will not be cast into flames. Or crushed by a tank. And you will still have food and shelter." 202

"This path is the safest and most accessible of all the paths open to the average man in the street. But it is also most effective! Only we, knowing out system, can imagine what will happen when thousand and tens of thousands of people take this path--how our country will be purified and transformed without shots or bloodshed." 202

"But this path is also the most moral: we shall be commencing this liveration and purification with our sown souls. Before we purify the country we shall have purification with our own souls. Before we purify the country we shall have purified ourselves. And this is the only correct historical order; for what is the food of purifying our country's air if we ourselves remain dirty."  202