“8. The lie. We lambs were forbidden to lie, but the interrogator could tell all the lies he felt like. Those articles of the law did not apply to him. We had even lost the yardstick with which to gauge: what does he get for lying? He could confront us with as many documents as he chose, bearing the forged signatures of our kinfolk and friends— and it would be just a skillful interrogation technique.
“Intimidation through enticement and lies was the fundamental method for bringing pressure on the relatives of the arrested person when they were called in to give testimony. “If you don’t tell us such and such” (whatever was being asked), “it’s going to be the worse for him. . . . You’ll be destroying him completely.” (How hard for a mother to hear that!) “Signing this paper” (pushed in front of the relatives) “is the only way you can save him” (destroy him).”
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Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr I.. The Gulag Archipelago (pp. 65-66). Harper Perennial. Kindle Edition.
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn ... (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008) ... was a Russian novelist, philosopher, historian, short story writer, and political prisoner. One of the most famous Soviet dissidents, Solzhenitsyn was an outspoken critic of communism and helped to raise global awareness of political repression in the Soviet Union (USSR), in particular the Gulag system. | From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn