‘The simple act of an ordinary brave man is not to participate in lies.’ This is a line from Solzhenitsyn’s acceptance speech at the Swedish Academy upon winning the Nobel Prize for Literature. Throughout The Gulag Archipelago we are reminded of what a society might come to resemble once it has dispensed with the primacy of truth. In a world where falsehoods are the only acceptable currency, anyone can be branded a criminal. If one person’s ‘lived experience’ is sufficient to condemn another as a racist, homophobe, sexist or transphobe, there can be no adequate defence for the accused.
