The post we are expanding on is here. best to read that first.
But thinking about it some more, there are other Solzhenitsyn quotes that make the point.
One of them, is actually much better stated by Orwell, albeit not in one sentence.
From Alexander:
“The permanent lie becomes the only safe form of existence.” -Gulag Archipelago.
“The permanent lie becomes the only safe form of existence, in the same way as betrayal.
Every wag of the tongue can be overheard by someone, every facial expression observed by someone.
Therefore every word, if it does not have to be a direct lie, is nonetheless obliged not to contradict the general, common lie.
There exists a collection of ready-made phrases, of labels, a selection of ready-made lies.”
Orwell’s scene in 1984 (O’Brien torturing Winston in the Ministry of Love) makes the same point even more viscerally and clearly.
“How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?”
…
“Four.”
“And if the Party says that it is not four but five, then how many?”
…
“Sometimes, Winston, sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.”[…]
“Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal. Whatever the Party holds to be truth is truth.”
Given all this, it is extremely important never to forget what the PM of New Zealand said during Covid. And one should also remember she was tight with Obama, as Mark Carney is now.
“We will continue to be your single source of truth.
Unless you hear it from us, it is not the truth.” -Jacinda Ardern March 19, 2020
It’s a strikingly blunt modern echo of the same idea:
The State (or the approved authority) claims a monopoly on truth.
This is why both Solzhenitsyn and Orwell remain so relevant. Once a society (or government) pivots from Socratic truth to a flexible, political, or “dialectical” rather than objective and discoverable, measurable set of axioms, more than that, shifting entirely from one system of thought to the other, it opens the door to the kind of repression and self-destruction both writers documented so well.
But this is difficult to comprehend. Painful even. Which is why the warnings both those writers offered amounted at best to the most unpleasant from of I told you so. Like yelling at your dog to not cross the street while watching it get hit by a car.
Another quote: “When the truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie.” – Yevtushenko
As important as the lies men are forced to tell are the truths they are not allowed to speak.
Thank you.
There’s even another layer of complexity.
Pogovorki means sayings, proverbs, aphorisms.
In the Soviet era it described a learned defense mechanism. Silence was suspect, a careful speaker might be harboring original thoughts. So voluble stupidity, nonstop babbling of cliched nonsense, could serve as a disguise.
Absurdist satire as decoy and weapon in Soviet times remains a constant for subversives today. It’s a loophole to avoid censorship.
Look at this page of 40 Proverbs.
https://www.thoughtco.com/40-russian-proverbs-and-sayings-4783033
The meaning is actually the literal translation, NOT what the article calls the meaning. For example:
• Translation: When one has power, they don’t have a need for intelligence
• ?• • Meaning: Might makes right
You can see how complicated it gets. Most of it impenetrable for me.