Narrated: "Live Not By Lies" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn 1974

On the day 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. 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 march together on this path of passive resistance, the whole inhuman system will totter and collapse.

-- by Edward E. Ericson, Jr. and Daniel J. Mahoney, The Solzhenitsyn Reader

Source: https://www.solzhenitsyncenter.org/live-not-by-lies

Narrated by Jonathan Streeter