Enduring the Long Night
Survival, Resistance, and the Breaking of Authoritarian Spells
This piece is for the clerk who tears up quietly at the news. For the teacher who skips one sentence in the required curriculum. For the neighbor who still remembers the quiet before the uniforms, before the slogans, before the silence. Among these people lives the real burden of authoritarianism—and the real possibility of something better.
And if you are not yet in the night, but feel it approaching—this piece is for you, too. Start now. Build early. Do not wait until you’re silenced to begin speaking truthfully. The habits you form before the collapse will shape who you are inside it.
I. Survival—Keeping Your Soul Alive Under Autocracy
When an authoritarian regime casts its long shadow, everyday life becomes a gauntlet of fear and falsehood. Survival is not merely about staying alive—it’s about preserving one’s mind, dignity, and relationships in a world bent on eroding them. Those who have endured such “long nights” offer a wealth of personal insight. Nadezhda Mandelstam, in her memoir Hope Against Hope, chronicles the terror under Stalin. She describes neighbors frantically rationalizing each new arrest: if someone was taken, surely they must have done something wrong, the others told themselves. This denial was a coping mechanism—a false hope that by obeying the rules and staying inconspicuous, one might be spared. Decades later, Masha Gessen, who grew up under Soviet authoritarianism and has written about modern autocracy, warns that this instinct to reach for rationalizations is dangerous. Their first “rule for survival” is blunt: “Believe the autocrat. He means what he says.” Don’t tell yourself the dictator is exaggerating or bluffing; that human urge to normalize the unacceptable is a trap. In both Mandelstam’s 1930s Moscow and Gessen’s analysis of today, we see the same insight: refusing to lie to oneself is the first act of resistance. Survival begins with mental clarity. To endure, one must not willingly don the blinders that the regime hands out.
Fear, of course, is the tyrant’s most potent weapon. Victor Klemperer, a Jewish philologist who kept a secret diary through the Nazi Third Reich, observed how fear warped the minds of ordinary Germans. Many became “crazed by fear,” grasping at any rationale that might explain away the terror around them. Klemperer noted how even language was corrupted by the regime—a barrage of slogans and lies that, if unchallenged, could make people “politically illiterate.” Yet Klemperer’s very act of writing a diary was his lifeline to reality. In pages never meant for Nazi eyes, he recorded the truth as he lived it: the cruelty, the absurdity, the “jumble of hollow phrases” that passed for official discourse. “How ridiculous it would be...if only it didn’t have such frighteningly deadly consequences!” he wrote privately, cutting through the propaganda. For him, telling the truth—even if only in the privacy of a diary—was a way to stay human. Similarly, Mandelstam clung to the memory of her poet husband and their circle of friends, reciting forbidden verses in whispers. In the silent war against enforced amnesia, memory and honesty are rebellious acts.
Survival under autocracy is profoundly personal. It’s the decision, day after day, to reject the unreality that power tries to impose. Gessen writes that one must “maintain one’s capacity for shock”—to stay outraged at the lies and injustices, rather than numb oneself for comfort. This emotional integrity carries a cost; regimes will label the truth-teller as hysterical or traitorous. But as Vaclav Havel—a Czech dissident who spent years under a totalitarian regime—observed, “living within the truth” is a moral act for which people “must pay dearly,” yet it restores one’s inner freedom. In practice, this may be as simple as refusing to repeat a lie, or as risky as whispering the truth to a friend while looking over your shoulder. The poet Anna Akhmatova, a contemporary of Mandelstam, spoke of a moment when “the strength came over me” to act despite fear. Such resolve is born from realizing that surrendering to fear—living entirely within the lie—is a kind of spiritual death. To survive as oneself, one must draw small circles of loyalty and truth with those they trust. In besieged communities, a wry sense of humor, a shared tune, a secret journal, or a guarded confidence become lifelines. These quiet rebellions of the mind and heart fortify the individual against the daily barrage of propaganda.
█ Remember: Fear is natural under tyranny, but lying to yourself offers only false safety. Cling to truth—in private thoughts, whispered words, secret journals—as an act of self-preservation. In the “long night” of repression, mental clarity and personal integrity are lifelines that keep the individual soul alive.
Field Notes for the Powerless
How to Survive With Self Intact
Keep a private journal, even if it's only a single sentence each day: “I saw the lie. I did not repeat it.” Write it by hand. Keep it hidden.
Speak honestly to one person you trust. That line of truth lies beyond the regime’s reach—but remember, even trust carries risk.
When you're afraid, name the fear. Do not let it become your compass.
Refuse to repeat slogans you know are false—but consider the cost of silence. Survival is the first act of defiance.
If you feel ashamed, remember: the shame belongs to those who demanded the lie—not to you.
Find a book that grounds you. Hide it if you must. Read it when you can.
Think of one act of kindness you can still offer. Protecting others keeps your humanity alive. Even small acts matter.
Remember, there is no shame in carefully choosing when and how to resist. Staying safe today ensures your voice remains heard tomorrow.
II. Resistance in Small Ways—The Quiet Art of Dignity and Defiance
Refusing to comply is not just an act of integrity—it is the foundation of new legitimacy. But if that legitimacy is to endure, it must be housed in structure. The same hands that remove the propaganda sign must also build something in its place: a council, a network, a ledger of memory, a plan. Survival without infrastructure is vulnerability prolonged. The first whisper of truth must be followed by the first signal of cohesion. Whether it’s a town council, a mutual aid circle, or a ledger of abuse kept in a safe place, the task is not only to resist—but to be ready.
Survival is only the first step. Authoritarians demand not just passive submission but active participation in their charade. Everyday acts of refusal therefore become profoundly significant. The tools of a dictator are often mundane—slogans in shop windows, compulsory cheers at rallies, little rituals of obedience that cement the populace’s complicity. Vaclav Havel’s famous parable of the greengrocer illuminates this truth. In The Power of the Powerless, Havel imagines a fruit seller who each morning places in his window the sign mandated by the state: “Workers of the world, unite!”. The greengrocer does not believe this slogan, but he displays it to avoid trouble—to signal “I am obedient and therefore have the right to be left in peace.” It is a lie he tells both the world and himself, a deal made in hope of a quiet life. Everyone around him does the same; the whole society lives “within the lie,” each person reassuring the next that the emperor’s clothes are splendid. But imagine, Havel says, that one day the greengrocer stops playing this game. He refuses to put the sign up. He does nothing violent or spectacular—he simply opts out of the charade. What happens then? Perhaps he’s punished or shamed, loses his shop or worse. But something even more momentous occurs: by “stepping out of line,” this ordinary man “denies [the system] in principle and threatens it in its entirety”. His small act of truth-telling—for that is what it is—shines a light on everyone else’s behavior. It says, in effect, “The emperor is naked. I will not pretend otherwise.” In that moment, powerlessness finds its power.
Everyday resistance often looks minor or even invisible to outsiders, yet these are the seeds from which larger changes grow. Political scientist Gene Sharp, who spent a lifetime studying nonviolent movements, catalogued 198 methods of nonviolent action—most of them quiet, incremental, and “small”. It might be a work slowdown, a boycott of regime media, a clandestine leaflet, a symbolic gesture like wearing a certain color—or simply the refusal to comply fully with an unjust order. What all these have in common is the insight that all regime power ultimately flows from the governed. As Sharp notes, even the strongest dictatorship depends on “the submission and obedience of the population, and on the cooperation of innumerable people and institutions”. If workers don’t show up, if journalists won’t repeat the lie, if soldiers won’t fire, the dictator’s edicts become mere words. Every tiny withdrawal of obedience chips away at the facade of omnipotence. “Obedience, cooperation, and submission are essential if dictators are to be powerful,” Sharp writes—conversely, deliberate non-cooperation is the kryptonite to tyranny. A shopkeeper in Prague won’t hang a propaganda poster; an editor in Budapest quietly excises the leader’s name from an article; a group of friends in Damascus meets to read banned poems. Each of these alone won’t topple a despot, but they nourish the underground reservoirs of truth and solidarity that make a society resilient. They also send a message to others still hiding in fear: you are not alone.
Moral clarity is contagious. This is why regimes fear even the smallest acts of dissent. In communist Czechoslovakia, Havel and fellow dissidents started Charter 77 by simply writing down their principles and grievances—a document, nothing more—and passing it hand to hand. The authorities reacted ferociously, because they recognized in that truthful document the beginning of a parallel moral authority. Rebecca Solnit, reflecting on activism in Hope in the Dark, argues that we must not discount “small, invisible” actions: the outcomes of our acts are not always immediately measurable, and may unfold in unexpected ways over time. A lone protester today might inspire a hundred others next year; a samizdat essay can lie dormant only to spark change a decade later. Solnit reminds us that history is full of long, quiet efforts that suddenly became irreversible victories. Every act of keeping truth alive contributes to a collective reservoir of hope. She writes, “Despair is also often premature: it’s a form of impatience as well as of certainty.” In other words, declaring an unjust system unchangeable is often an excuse to do nothing. The people of East Timor, she notes, endured a brutal occupation for decades, and international activists saw little progress for years—until suddenly, through persistence, the dictatorship fell and freedom was achieved. What if they had given up hope in year five, or year twenty? Solnit quotes writer Susan Griffin: “I’ve seen enough change in my lifetime to know that despair...is unrealistic.” For someone feeling powerless under a repressive regime, this perspective is vital. Hope is not naive optimism, nor a denial of reality—it is an outlook that sees possibilities and commits to acting, however modestly, in the belief that change is possible. In Solnit’s words, hope is a commitment to act in a world whose future remains uncertain. That commitment can sustain you through dark times when no victory is in sight.
Finally, these small acts of resistance are not just strategic moves; they are also about preserving dignity. To bow down abjectly, to tell the lies demanded—these things corrode the soul. As Havel observed, when the greengrocer takes down his sign, he “attempts to regain control over his own sense of responsibility”. He refuses to be a cog that mindlessly clicks into the machine each day. This personal reclamation of dignity can be a wellspring of strength. Masha Gessen puts it succinctly: Don’t make compromises with autocracy. Each compromise—each little self-censorship or public cheer you don’t really mean—may seem small, but cumulatively they build the cage you live in. Conversely, each quiet refusal expands the space of freedom within you, and often around you. It inspires others to keep their integrity too.
█ Remember: Every time you quietly refuse to cooperate with injustice—every truthful word, every small noncompliance—you weaken the regime’s hold. Authoritarianism is upheld by countless micro-acts of obedience; thus, micro-acts of disobedience are powerful. Defiance need not be loud to be effective. By preserving your integrity and helping others do the same, you lay the groundwork for a different future even when change is not yet visible.
III. Moments That Break the Spell—From Isolated Acts to Collective Awakening
Authoritarian regimes can loom for years as invincible and immovable—until one day, they crack. The accumulated weight of individual refusals and small resistances can reach a tipping point, often sparked by a catalyzing event or a coordinated action. Observers of tyranny across eras note a paradox: such regimes are at once rigid and brittle. They maintain a myth of absolute power—a spell over the populace—but that myth can shatter suddenly under pressure. Political philosopher Hannah Arendt, in The Origins of Totalitarianism, wrote that totalitarian governments build entire fictitious worlds, sacrificing “all factual truths” to maintain an ideologically consistent lie. For a time, these lies can mobilize and control a society. Yet “in a contest between fact and fiction, the latter may come to grief,” Arendt observes—and indeed, reality has a way of intruding. In the Second World War, for example, the Nazi regime’s fictional invincibility was irrevocably dispelled as real armies crushed them and the facts of genocide were exposed to the world. Arendt notes that Hitler’s and Stalin’s regimes, for all their power, were built on foundations of sand: when factual reality (be it military defeat or economic failure) struck, the spell was broken. What follows in those moments is often a sudden awakening—people look around and ask, “Why were we ever afraid of these clowns?” The propaganda that once thundered loses its potency in an instant of clarity.
In practice, these breakage moments often come when courage becomes collective. The fear that keeps people isolated in silence can evaporate when they see thousands of others standing up at once. Think of the night the Berlin Wall was finally breached: for years, East Germans resigned themselves to division; then, seemingly overnight, crowds of ordinary citizens gathered at the checkpoints, overwhelming the will of the border guards. The guards—those lynchpins of the regime’s might—faced a choice between firing on unarmed fellow citizens or stepping aside. In that instance, they stepped aside, and a hole opened in the Iron Curtain. Such a moment might look spontaneous, but it was the product of long-simmering dissent meeting sudden opportunity. In Havel’s Czechoslovakia, the peaceful Velvet Revolution of 1989 was essentially “the power of the powerless” made manifest on the streets: students, workers, and theater artists all refusing en masse to live the lie any longer. What had begun as private courage in one greengrocer’s shop became a society-wide reclamation of truth. Havel described it as the moment when living in truth “finally grew beyond the personal sphere” and became political—when the authorities could no longer isolate and punish the few because the few had become the many. From that point on, the regime’s aura of inevitability was gone.
Not all resistance begins in the street. Some begins in office chairs, under fluorescent lights, from people whose names are still on the roster but who quietly decide: I won’t be part of this.
Zsuzsanna Szelényi, once a reformer in Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, walked away when the system they built began hollowing out from within. Courts still held hearings. Elections still happened. But the meaning was gone. She returned—not to reclaim power, but to name the corrosion.
She reminds us: in a “tainted democracy,” the first rupture may not be public. It may be a quiet refusal to comply. A judge who rules by law. A clerk who keeps the real records. A mayor who won’t sign the lie. These acts won’t stop the regime. But they will preserve the architecture of truth—for when the walls fall, and we need someone who still remembers what it was supposed to mean.
Coordinated nonviolent action is a force multiplier. Gene Sharp notes that when people act in unison—through strikes, mass protests, noncooperation—the regime’s pillars can crumble rapidly. “Withdrawal of support,” he writes, is a political weapon that can make a dictatorship “weaken and finally dissolve”. Sometimes this withdrawal happens from below, through popular protest; sometimes it also happens from within, as insiders defect. The spell of authoritarian power often holds until a few crucial supporters—judges, generals, state media voices—suddenly break ranks. Their defection fractures the regime’s illusion of inevitability—and invites the rapid alignment of those who were waiting for the first crack. One thinks of the moment in the Philippines (1986) when the military turned against Marcos rather than carry out orders to suppress the people, or in Serbia (2000) when police units refused to crack down on demonstrators, accelerating the fall of Milosevic. These are the climactic moments of change that history books highlight, but they’re built on countless earlier acts of conscience. “Disobedience among the dictators’ forces” usually starts small and hidden—a soldier deliberately “failing to locate” a target, an official quietly warning a friend of an impending arrest. Over time, such small cracks widen. Suddenly, the regime that seemed monolithic is fissured with doubt and dissent. When a spark comes—a stolen election, a televised atrocity, or the death of a long-ruling tyrant—the pent-up frustration can flood into the streets.
Even absent a mass uprising, truth has a way of puncturing authoritarian myths. Sometimes a single image or story can reverberate so widely that it erodes the regime’s legitimacy. In Tunisia, the self-immolation of a desperate street vendor in 2010 ignited a population that saw in his story the truth of their own oppression, sparking the Arab Spring. Such moments are essentially a broad daylight exposure of what people had whispered to each other in the dark. Szelényia emphasizes how authoritarians maintain a façade of democracy to legitimize their rule. In tainted democracies the spell lies in convincing people that nothing has changed—that they still live in a democracy even as one man centralizes power. Orbán’s Hungary, as Szelényi recounts, loudly advertises its elections and constitution even while packing courts, muzzling media, and demonizing enemies. The effect is a kind of mass hypnosis: citizens are kept passive with bread, circuses, and a narrative of national greatness, all while democratic institutions are hollowed out. But Szelényi reminds us that this process, though gradual, is not infallible. The very need for constant propaganda and “permanent campaigns” in Orbán’s regime shows that consent is manufactured, not natural. And manufactured consent can unravel. If the economy sinks or an undeniable corruption scandal surfaces, suddenly the illusion of democracy can collapse into public outrage. Szelényi’s warning is also an encouragement: because the destruction of democracy often happens by stealth and consent, its restoration can begin with people simply withdrawing that consent—refusing to play along with the pretenses. When enough people stop believing the fiction, the fiction evaporates.
Hope travels in this knowledge: no authoritarian spell is permanent. As Gessen counsels, “Remember the future. Nothing lasts forever.”
The very forces that autocrats use—fear, lies, division—have a way of backfiring. Terror can keep people obedient, but it also builds deep wells of resentment that can overflow unexpectedly. Lies can brainwash, but when they are dramatically exposed (as when state media narratives are contradicted by what people themselves experience), the backlash can be fierce. Division can weaken opposition, but it can also inspire oppressed groups to find unity in solidarity. History shows that the collapse, when it comes, often feels sudden and inexorable. One day the statues are pulled down and the political prisoners walk free, and everyone wonders how the regime lasted as long as it did.
None of this is to suggest that one should passively wait for tyranny to fall of its own weight. Rather, it’s a reminder that the long night will end—and one must be ready. That preparation is spiritual, mental, and tactical. Spiritually, it means keeping faith that no lie can live forever. Mentally, it means staying informed and remembering, as Solnit says, that the past and its lessons are “a torch we can carry into the night that is the future”. Tactically, it means building the networks and skills of resistance before the breaking point arrives—so that when a window opens, people can move through it together. It means preserving documentation of abuses, nurturing leaders (or councils of citizens) who can step in when the old order falters, and maintaining channels of communication among the oppressed. Surviving the long night is not just about outlasting the darkness; it’s about being poised to seize the dawn. For some, this means preparing the scaffolding for daybreak—so that when collapse comes, what rises is decentralized, resilient, and ours. When the moment comes—a mass protest, a general strike, a fissure in the ruling elite—a population prepared by years of small resistance can turn a crisis for the regime into a liberating revolution for themselves.
█ Remember: Hope travels in this knowledge. No authoritarian spell can last forever. Regimes built on lies and fear will eventually face a moment of truth—often triggered by collective courage or the regime’s own failures. By keeping hope alive and resistance organized in the darkness, ordinary people prepare for the day the illusion shatters. And when that day comes, the fall of the tyrant can be astonishingly swift, powered by all the truths and solidarity that endured in secret. The long night gives way, and a new morning finds the people, battered but unbroken, stepping into freedom.
IV. Epilogue: Hope Against Darkness
What to Build in the Dark
Memory alone is not enough. Survival is not enough. One day, the night will break—and what rises in its place will depend on what we prepared while no one was watching.
Begin small. Build relationships that do not route through the regime. Teach people to organize without permission, to speak without microphones, to listen for the signal beneath the noise.
Keep a physical ledger—names, dates, abuses, disappearances—something that lives off the server, beyond the reach of edits, deletions, or surveillance.
Form quiet compacts. Three, four, five people you trust without question. Share food. Share information. Know who leads if one vanishes.
Draft small blueprints. Not for protests, but for continuity: how to reopen a school if federal systems fail. How to protect a neighbor if the police become unrecognizable. How to convene a council if the state dissolves.
You are not just enduring tyranny. You are keeping open the future.
Because every collapsing regime leaves behind a dangerous freedom—a moment when power is unclaimed. And if we are not ready, that vacuum will be filled by the next strongman in line.
What you build in the dark is what others will inherit in the light.
Build well.
Living In the Darkness
Living under authoritarianism can feel like eternal midnight—a time devoid of justice, full of danger, where each person’s isolation seems absolute. But the testimonies of Mandelstam, Klemperer, Havel, Solnit, Arendt, Sharp, Gessen, Szelényi and so many others whisper to us through the darkness. They say: You are not powerless. Your mind is your own, and truth still lives there. Your quiet integrity matters—it is the soil from which freedom reblooms; it is the rootstock of the future. They remind us that others have survived such nights before. They got through by hoping against hope, by helping one another, by small acts of courage that the powerful didn’t see or couldn’t stop. Over time, those acts formed a subterranean network, a mycelium of defiance, spreading until one day it sent up fruit—visible, collective resistance—that even the tyrants could not crush.
If you feel powerless now, remember that history’s pendulum swings. Today’s loneliness and fear can evolve into tomorrow’s community and courage. Read the diaries and memoirs of those who endured; you will find your own fears and longings in their pages, and you will learn that the human spirit has extraordinary resilience. Rebecca Solnit urges us to hold onto an “uncertainty” that is in fact empowering: the knowledge that the future is not yet written, and thus it can be shaped. This is not a facile optimism—it’s an acknowledgment that oppressive systems seem unassailable right up until they implode. Remember, the meaning of events unfolds over generations. Likewise, it may be too soon to tell what impact your quiet resistance will have. But that it will have impact—in ways you cannot foresee—is nearly certain.
In the end, surviving and resisting authoritarianism comes down to preserving two fundamental things: your self and your solidarity. The self—your conscience, your ability to distinguish truth from lie, your capacity for compassion—is your personal stronghold. Guard it fiercely. Solidarity—your connection to others who share your values or your plight—is the bridge that can lead an entire society out of oppression. Build it quietly if you must, one relationship at a time, across lines of division. A regime’s greatest fear is that its subjects will discover their common strength. Help realize that fear. Whether in whispers or in shouts, keep reaching out to others. The long night can make people feel like lone stars scattered in an immense darkness, but when those stars align, constellations are born—patterns that can guide lost sailors home.
The writers and dissidents we have drawn from often speak of hope. Not the flimsy hope of wishful thinking, but what Solnit calls “an axe you break down doors with in an emergency.” It is an active, muscular hope—a refusal to accept that current conditions are final. It lives in Nadezhda Mandelstam writing memoirs so future generations would know the truth of Stalin’s terror. It lives in Klemperer preserving the German language from Nazi corruption, in Havel dreaming of “living in truth” until it became a reality, in Sharp painstakingly detailing how people with no guns can unseat those with tanks. Hope lives in Gessen’s unwavering insistence on calling a lie a lie, and in Szelényi’s decision to fight an “illiberal” regime by exposing it from the inside. These individuals, in different times and places, all kept a light alive in dark times—a light we can still read by today.
So if you find yourself in darkness, do not adjust your eyes to night vision too quickly. Do not forget that sunlight exists. Nurture the small flame of truth within yourself—protect it, feed it with memory and evidence. Find others carrying their own small flames.
One day, those scattered embers will ignite into a signal fire no regime can extinguish—at once a torch to carry and a beacon to follow. It will be warning, memory, and the first warmth of dawn. The past will not be buried.
As Rebecca Solnit beautifully writes, “The past is set in daylight, and it can become a torch we can carry into the night that is the future.”
Armed with the torch of shared memory and the knowledge passed down by those who came before, we walk forward into the darkness. We do not walk alone. And we carry inside us the unshakeable certainty that morning will come—because we are, each of us, already smuggling a piece of the dawn.
█ When the day comes and the walls fall—remember those who survived beside you. Build with them. They are the first stones of the new foundation.
There will come such a day. Your job is to survive, and to carry the memory of freedom forward.
Reading List
Our recommendation? Choose one of these. Buy a copy. Hide it away. Just in case.
Nadezhda Mandelstam – Hope Against Hope
A memoir that chronicles the terror under Stalin’s regime and the personal cost of survival in an authoritarian society.
Hope Against HopeMasha Gessen – Surviving Autocracy
An analysis of modern autocracy drawing lessons from Soviet experiences, emphasizing the importance of acknowledging harsh truths for survival.
Surviving AutocracyVictor Klemperer – The Language of the Third Reich
A secret diary that reveals how language and fear were manipulated under Nazi rule, underscoring the role of truth in preserving one’s humanity.
The Language of the Third ReichVaclav Havel – The Power of the Powerless
An influential work that illustrates how small acts of defiance—like the greengrocer’s refusal to display propaganda—can challenge an authoritarian regime.
The Power of the PowerlessGene Sharp – 198 Methods of Nonviolent Action
A comprehensive catalog of subtle, everyday actions that can cumulatively undermine oppressive systems and spark significant change.
198 Methods of Nonviolent ActionGene Sharp – From Dictatorship to Democracy
A revolutionary blueprint for overthrowing dictatorships by nonviolent means, outlining 198 specific actions—from sit-ins to hunger strikes—that have inspired movements around the world. Available as a library ebook via Libby.
From Dictatorship to DemocracyRebecca Solnit – Hope in the Dark
A reflective work on the transformative potential of hope and small, persistent acts of resistance even during the most oppressive times.
Hope in the DarkHannah Arendt – The Origins of Totalitarianism
A seminal study that dissects the mechanisms and mythologies underpinning totalitarian regimes, highlighting the fragile nature of authoritarian power.
The Origins of TotalitarianismZsuzsanna Szelényi – Tainted Democracy
A critique of modern “tainted democracies” where the semblance of democracy masks internal subversion, urging vigilance and reclaiming genuine democratic values.
Tainted Democracy