Seems naive - leaders have always lied as needed - not just "totalitarian" ones. The lie of Communism wasn't so much whether Communism would work - that was an experiment. It was lying about the results, the lack of success or utter atrocity in so many areas. Of course Havel's experience or missed 5-year plans wasn't near as bad as those under Beria's reign of terror or caught up in the Holodomor, or the 10s of millions killed in the "Great Leap Forward" and "Cultural Revolution". And the lies that "Fellow Travellers" accepted, willingly suspending disbelief.

As for Solzhenitsyn, much of his fame came from helping erase the Stalin years if he'd tried publishing in the 50s - even after the first years after Stalin's death - he would have been censored like Pasternak (Zhivago):

As a result of the Khrushchev Thaw, Solzhenitsyn was released and exonerated, and he returned to the Christian faith of his childhood and pursued writing novels about repressions in the Soviet Union and his experiences. He published his first novel, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in 1962, with approval from Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, which was an account of Stalinist repressions.

Like with the Prague Spring, Russian opening was closed in the late 60s, so Solzhenitsyn went into exile in the US, likely having more of an effect on US audiences than Russian. Whether Solzhenitsyn's conservative religious bent fits this video's thesis is another issue.