The thing that strikes me the most about Hope Against Hope - along with other accounts I've read of totalitarian states - is the way fear is used to completely eliminate the ability for citizens to trust one another.
In the text, we are frequently reminded and informed of how deep Stalin and the secret police had their eyes & ears in everyday society, with denunciation and accusations a regular threat. The idea that anyone could be an informant destroys any opportunity for those opposing the state to truly organize/take action, because they have no way to trust one another. Mandelstam discusses this throughout the text, even sympathizing (to an extent) with how certain people are given virtually forced into becoming informants (she mentions young scholars being used to gather information on Osip early on).
The idea that the only thoughts that are truly safe are the ones kept in your head is a reality that is almost too alien for me (and the rest of us, presumably) to understand. As individuals who are pursuing a life of creating and distributing information and original thought, it's frankly terrifying to think that all semblance of individuality and original thought could be undermined so effeciently by destroying the ability to trust one another.
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