https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2022/03/the-enduring-lesson-in-the-gulags-defiant-wisdom/
The guiding wisdom of the wretches who endured a living death in the Soviet Union’s labour camps was simple: Ne ver’ Ne boisya Ne prosy — Don’t trust. Don’t fear. Don’t beg.
These short sentences crystallize the collective experience of the millions who went through the gulags and perished amid the permafrost of far-north Russia, paying with their lives for the demented dreams of world conquest by Marxists fanatics. These six crisp words summarize the resolve of the human spirit when it refuses to be broken while retaining individual dignity by resisting oppression and injustice, even when the odds are overwhelmingly against it.
Pronounced together those words are an unexpectedly powerful poem. This poetry of defiance, silent by necessity in the face of brutal force, coercion and humiliation, was the only form of resistance available to the enslaved by the totalitarian State. They are also the way for the West to respond to international bullies. But political will is required to succeed, and this is where the problem lies.