LIVE NOT BY LIES

A bare-knuckle essay accounting the citizen rights of responsibility through living truth in time of great lies, according to history's greatest political dissenter of communism and the Soviet Union.

  “THE MAN WHO IS FOR THE MOMENT THE MOST FAMOUS PERSON IN THE WESTERN WORLD.”  — THE TIMES" [LONDON], 15 FEBRUARY 1974. Image: Christopher Odgen,

Mr Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was a Russian and historical novelist. One of the most famous Soviet dissidents, Mr Solzhenitsyn, a critic of communism helped to raise global awareness of political repression in the Soviet Union, in particular the Gulag system.

On the day Mr Solzhenitsyn was arrested, February, 12, 1974, he released the text of “Live Not by Lies.” The next day, he was exiled to the West, where he received a hero’s welcome.

This moment marks the peak of his fame.

Mr Solzhenitsyn equates “lies” with ideology, the illusion that human nature and society can be reshaped to predetermined specifications.

And his last word before leaving his homeland urges Soviet citizens as individuals to refrain from cooperating with the regime’s lies. Even the most timid can take this least demanding step toward spiritual independence. If many…