Our Character Betrayal
The last paragraph on pg.477 in Solzhenitsyn’s The Evolution of Our Character it has a very deep focus with betrayal and lying. “An overpowering plume of betrayal. It was unavoidable. If you wanted to survive, lie. Lie and Pretend.” That is a quote I will be focusing and elaborating in the essay as well as tying that quote down from the reading of Our Muzzled Freedom from The Gulag Archipelago. During the ruling period of the Bolsheviks, which were, led by Stalin there was a lot to fear in the government. Reasons for people to fear, lie and to betray others as well. In a way, the Bolsheviks made betrayal and the lie into forms of existence within their government. In the reading of Our Muzzled Freedom it goes into a deeper sense into what
…show more content…
This lie so to speak is that the government was running everything smooth, and that the people had no problem at all. It was the government that had people betraying others. Not only was in the way of turning a blind eye, thinking if nothing ever happened. The Bolsheviks would force citizens to spy and to turn in information that they had on other people. That in the sense was a betrayal because you could not even trust a neighbor, or even say a family friend. They would go out, recruit, and try to get people to turn on each other. “Nadezhda Mandelstam correctly concludes: beyond the purpose of weakening ties between people, there was another purpose as well. Any person who had let himself be recruited would, out of fear of public exposure be very much interested in the continuing stability of the regime. (pg.151) It continues. “Given this constant fear over a period of many years- for oneself and one’s family- a human being became a vassal of fear, subjected to it. And it turned out that the least dangerous form of existence was constant betrayal.” I think the last sentence played a very big role on how used to the people were of constantly being betrayed. It was something that they saw everyday within their own eyes. A person never knew when they would be betrayed if it was at work, next to their homes, their own family, heck even their own spouse would betray a
This lie so to speak is that the government was running everything smooth, and that the people had no problem at all. It was the government that had people betraying others. Not only was in the way of turning a blind eye, thinking if nothing ever happened. The Bolsheviks would force citizens to spy and to turn in information that they had on other people. That in the sense was a betrayal because you could not even trust a neighbor, or even say a family friend. They would go out, recruit, and try to get people to turn on each other. “Nadezhda Mandelstam correctly concludes: beyond the purpose of weakening ties between people, there was another purpose as well. Any person who had let himself be recruited would, out of fear of public exposure be very much interested in the continuing stability of the regime. (pg.151) It continues. “Given this constant fear over a period of many years- for oneself and one’s family- a human being became a vassal of fear, subjected to it. And it turned out that the least dangerous form of existence was constant betrayal.” I think the last sentence played a very big role on how used to the people were of constantly being betrayed. It was something that they saw everyday within their own eyes. A person never knew when they would be betrayed if it was at work, next to their homes, their own family, heck even their own spouse would betray a