From the creation of the Soviet Union in 1917 until its dissolution in 1991, Pravda, its largest newspaper, was the mouthpiece of the ruling Communist Party.
“Pravda” means “Truth” in Russian. The irony was lost on no one.
The Russian Nobel Prize winner, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, summed it up nicely:
“We know that they are lying, they know that they are lying, they even know that we know they are lying, we also know that they know we know they are lying too, they of course know that we certainly know they know we know they are lying too as well, but they are still lying. In our country, the lie has become not just moral category, but the pillar industry of this country.”
Similarly, there was a famous joke that Russians would say about the Soviet work culture in the 1970s-80s: “They pretend to pay us, we pretend to work.”
In other words, there was a culture of 200+ million people built on lies, with everybody pretending it was the truth. Let’s just call it an endless Solzhenitsyn-esque “Lying Doom Cycle” (LDC).
What could possibly go wrong? Everything, as it turned out.
Sounds like stuff from “a long time ago in galaxy far away”. Except it isn’t. LDCs are alive and well, just on a different scale.
- Companies who tout “Corporate Responsibility,” even if all they’re doing is sweeping the mess under the developing world’s rug.
- DEI initiatives that change nothing but checkbox statistics.
- Safety commitments from companies with policies that support the opposite
- The entertainment industry preaching to normal folk about the latter’s moral failings one day, while (allegedly) partying with P Diddy the next.
Perhaps the real sin is not that they lie, but that we so willingly believe them. That we, too, are complicit in the LDC.
But when we read about great leaders, we tend to find a different story. Think of Jacinda Ardern’s transparent COVID-19 response or Satya Nadella’s culture shift at Microsoft. We see it even in the problematic and narcissistic ones – Steve Jobs and General George Patton come to mind. Despite their differences, these leaders all have a common trait:
They had a “compass”- they knew where “True North” was. They never tried to pretend that East was West.
The truth is so valuable and, unfortunately, rare. One could argue that one of the primary duties of a leader is to disincentivize untruth. Because in the end, the truth doesn’t just set you free, it sets you apart.
