On the day in 1974 when Soviet secret police arrested him for treason, Alexander Solzhenitsyn published an essay (via the underground samizdat press) entitled “Live Not by Lies”. It ended with a commandment in capital letters: “DON’T LIE! DON’T PARTICIPATE IN LIES, DON’T SUPPORT A LIE!” The lie, wrote the author of “The Gulag Archipelago”, had become “a mode of existence” in the USSR, “incorporated into the state system as the vital link holding everything together.” On December 19th, Alexei Navalny (pictured), a Russian anti-corruption blogger and opposition politician, recalled Mr Solzhenitsyn’s commandment in the “last word” he delivered at …read more
Source: Business Insider
