Indeed, with words like these, Kolakowski, with Solzhenitsyn, Sakharov, and other kindred souls, ultimately did as much as the trillions of dollars spent on weapons to speed the demise of the totalitarian Soviet empire. Kolakowski paid dearly for his free thinking – less than two years after his speech in Warsaw, he was deprived of his teaching position and forced into an exile that would last for over 20 years.