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Key Information about the Essay
Essay: The Smatterers
Author:Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Written In: 1974
Prominent Theme(s) in the Essay: Good vs Evil, Truth, Work/Duty
Brief Description: This essay is a critique of the Soviet intelligentsia. It encourages the reader to refuse to participate in the widespread lies in Soviet Russia.
Similar Essays/Books: Russian Destinies
Essays/Books by the Same Author: The Gulag Archipelago
"But the chief justifying argument is: children! In the face
of this argument everyone falls silent: for who has the right to
sacrifice the material welfare of his children for the sake of an
abstract principle of truth?!...(On the contrary) Let my children grow up on a
crust of bread, so long as they are honest."
Theme(s): Children, Truth
Where:-
"Nobody is foisting “culture” on us, it is lies they are foisting
upon us and it is only lies that we must not accept, but at
once, right then and right there where we are being asked to
accept them, instead of venting our indignation later in the
evening over the tea table at home. We must reject lies on
the spot, without thinking about the consequences for our
salaries, our families and our leisure for spreading the “new
culture.” We must reject lies without worrying whether
others will follow in our footsteps and without looking
around to see if the rest of the population is catching the
habit. "
Theme(s): Truth, Courage/Perseverance, Work/Duty
Where:-
"A stratum, a people, the masses, the smatterers — they all
consist of human beings, and there is no way in which the future can be closed to human beings: human beings determine their future themselves, and whatever point has been
reached on the crooked, descending path, it is never too late
to take a turn for the good and the better."
Theme(s): Good vs Evil
Where:-
"Because in our country the daily lie is not the
whim of corrupt natures but a mode of existence, a condition
of the daily welfare of every man. In our country the lie has
been incorporated into the state system as the vital link holding everything together, with billions of tiny fasteners, several dozen to each man. This is precisely why we find life so oppressive. But it is
also precisely why we should find it natural to straighten up.
When oppression is not accompanied by the lie, liberation
demands political measures. But when the lie has fastened
its claws in us, it is no longer a matter of politics! It is an invasion of man’s moral world, and our straightening up and
refusing to lie is also not political, but simply the retrieval of
our human dignity."
Theme(s): Work/Duty, Truth, Good vs Evil
Where:-
"Before we purify the country we shall have purified ourselves.
And this is the only correct historical order: for what is the
good of purifying our country’s air if we ourselves remain
dirty?"
