I read Havel’s The power of the powerless in parallel with Svetlana Alexievich’s The voices from Chernobyl. It was just chilling as what Havel described about the post-totalitarian dystopia happened exactly in reality in Minsk. And through the testimonies of the many survivors from Chernobyl, I could still barely grasp the scale of the tragedy.
Havel provides the theoretical framework while generations of people in Chernobyl lived the example of “living in the lie” and the tremendous suffering from the explosion aftermath. Their stories told us about a historical time of mass deception, secrets and servitude to uphold a murderous regime. With countless lifes ruined, no one take any responsibilities while everyone has their own contribution to the killings.
The authoritarian government was the silhouette blanketing every form of people’s activities, touching people with every step using a glove of the ideology. According to Havel, it is a regime built on appearance and sustained by lies. The government had to take controls on all aspects of thoughts, lest their lies exposed.
“Because the regime is captive to its own lies, it must falsify everything. It falsifies the past. It falsifies the present, and it falsifies the future. It falsifies statistics.”
It is like the regime is compulsive to tell lies, and make its people to repeat them until they believe these lies. We can see such patterns in Chernobyl. The firemen, construction workers and medics all knew that the radiations are killing them, yet they had to kept their narratives as “serving the great Soviet Union”, “ we are brave, so we volunteer to clean up the radioactive mess”. One can tell that what they say deviated from how they lived, “We have to tell the villagers everything is fine.” , “We eat the local salami, but kill all the radioactive livestock and dump them in a pit.”, “We have no dosimeter, but the higher-ranked officers each has one.”.
These inconsistencies captured the fear of the people worked and lived in Chernobyl, the tiresome of their lies yet their unwillingness to speak the truth. The first half of The voices from Chernobyl recorded a common narratives about losing their love one with misinformation or lack of understandings about the danger of radiation. Yet people did not dare to explicitly questioned the Soviet regime; “We did not we could refuse to go”, “We got our certificate of service, and now we are class-one invalids”.
“You know why people don’t believe in you? Because you believes in your lies.”
As Havel pointed out, somewhat serving the system implies harming one’s life. People life were ruined through the hidden manipulations in the system.
“the limitations placed on lawyers’ ability to defend their clients, the closed nature, de facto, of trials, the arbitrary actions of the security forces, their position of authority over the judiciary, the absurdly broad application of several deliberately vague sections of that code…”
People had to play along. And everyone has an excuse, either they are just following the legal codes or they felt that showing compliance was the only way to survive. They were afraid, as the system is testing their submission in all possible ways, under the surveillance of everyone: their family members, neighbor and co-workers.
“For this reason, however, they must live within a lie. They need not accept the lie. It is enough for them to have accepted their life with it and in it. For by this very fact, individuals confirm the system, fulfill the system, make the system, are the system.”
This is how people lived in the post-authoritarian era according to Havel. These people ruled by fears became both victims and perpetrators of the violent regime.
The dissident that live in the truth Then there are another troop of freedom fighters: the dissident. The dissident emerge from conflicts where the aim to life goes against the aim of the system; people then have to make a choice whether they will accept to live with the lie, or revolt within the system to preserve one’s dignity and integrity.
Havel did not ask for much, just take the courage to tell the truth and refuse to live in such schizophrenic way.
“In other words, he may go no further than ‘merely’ refusing to comply with certain demands made on him by the system (which of course is not an insignificant step to take).”
“…is every attempt to live within the truth,… in which the genuine aims of life go beyond the limits placed on them by the aims of the system.”
The dissident life style constitutes “serving truth consistently, purposefully and articulately, and organizing this service.”. It can be an all-or-nothing gamble as the regime would do anything to weed out these truth-seeking individuals. But the immediate preservation of personal integrity and freedom is “worth the sacrifice”.
“Thank you all for what you are doing. For not keeping silent. Not to be afraid – it turns out not to be so complicated, right? It’s just hard to take the first step. Some people did that right away, others just recently, but I am grateful to each and all for your courage.” - Oleg Sentsov
Living in the truth illuminate all the hidden lies propping up the regime, which first appeared to be as solid as concrete, but crumbled like papers when one person acknowledge that it is all just a lie.
Living in the truth is also the ultimate exercise and expression of our Freedom, to live for what truly matters to our conscience, Here and Now. Through defending our collective freedom and well-being, we struggle with “means available to us” for a society that serve the people.
With that mindset, the “dissident” is everyone striving for a better life and take the responsibility to create one. One example is the Belorussian nuclear physicists mentioned in The voice of Chernobyl, who risked his career and his life to warn the authority about the radioactive contaminations. Other examples were the teachers, nurses and the parents witnessing children born with horrible birth defects and dying of cancers.
“it was impossible to go on waiting any longer, and that the truth had to be spoken loudly and collectively, regardless of the virtual certainty of sanctions and the uncertainty of any tangible results in the immediate future.”
It is not just our rights and responsibility to live in the truth, it is a means to a better life and en end of self actualisation. The creativity and courage we ought to pour into this daily practice and our perseverance to sustain such attitude can be exhausting. Living with such value exhibit true virtue and grit, also a deep compassion on other human.
“the everyday, thankless and never-ending struggle of human beings to live more freely, truthfully and in quiet dignity – never imposes any limits on itself, never be half-hearted, inconsistent, never trap itself in political tactics, speculating on the outcome of its actions or entertaining fantasies about the future. The purity of this struggle is the best guarantee of optimum results when it comes to actual interaction with the post-totalitarian structures.”
Meanwhile, Havel makes a note on the false impression of the popular individualism that people can flourish alone, isolated from others’ suffering. A point of “departure” is not a solution, as we are in it together.
“I have already emphasized several times that these ‘dissident movements’ do not have their point of departure in the invention of systemic changes but in a real, everyday struggle for a better life ‘here and now’.”
“Patočka used to say that the most interesting thing about responsibility is that we carry it with us everywhere. That means that responsibility is ours, that we must accept it and grasp it here, now, in this place in time and space where the Lord has set us down, and that we cannot lie our way out of it by moving somewhere else, whether it be to an Indian ashram or to a parallel polis. If western young people so often discover that retreat to an Indian monastery fails them as an individual or group solution, then this is obviously because, and only because, it lacks that element of universality, since not everyone can retire to an ashram.”
This is particular true when facing global crises such as pandemics, mass extinction and climate changes. And it would merely be an escape if we ignore or refuse to educate ourselves on these crises in exchange for a momentary “mental peace”.
All in all, living within the truth is an independent attitude, a practice of each individual, that can become a powerful collective action. Havel cannot emphasize enough that “the dissident movement” begins with our own decision, a courageous first step, that we actively take to pursue “freer forms of thinking, independent creation and political articulation.”
It is “only our own blindness and weakness has prevented us from seeing it around us and within us, and kept us from developing it”.