Keeping Your Head Down

From Theo Caldwell of the National Post:

It must be terrifically tempting, in such a society, to keep one’s head down to stay out of trouble. As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn observed in his seminal chronicle of the Soviet Terror, The Gulag Archipelago: “Every man always has handy a dozen glib little reasons why he is right not to sacrifice himself.” One of the graces of Russia’s new repression is that many of its excesses remain public, for those who care to look. Among Solzhenistyn’s laments as the Terror progressed was that, after a few well-known and public trials, the courts and tribunals became closed-door operations, while society trudged along in tragic ignorance. That is, until their turn came.

Theo might have wanted to check in on today’s Solzhenitsyn before using quotes sympathetic in his portrayal.