Fire in the Ashes

Behind the facade of Soviet ideology, there is a tremendous longing for the clear, pure word of truth. That, more than anything else, is the driving force behind the upsurge of literature, in typescript and carbon copies, emerging in all parts of the Soviet empire. The men and women who risk life, liberty, and fortune—such as they are—to produce and reproduce those slender volumes are not an opposition seeking to replace the rulers of the Soviet state. They are not even dissidents in the usual sense of proposing an alternative ideology. In their own eyes, they are simply people weary of pretense, people who have chosen to live in truth: to say what they are and be what they say.

To Western observers, that passionate earnestnes...