Russia and the Monthly Review

IT WAS ONLY after the second world war that one became aware of a new political type—the public figure who spoke favorably of Russia not because he had illusions about the nature of Stalinism but beause he did not. One had become accustomed to Stalinists who sincerely believed that Russia was a democratic and proletarian state; people who in some corrupted way still gave formal allegiance to democratic and humane values. But now, in the work of such writers as Frederick Schumann, the traditional democratic rhetoric was brushed aside and Stalinism justified as a power structure that was functional and enduring.

With time there arose an even more dubious type: one who suffered no illusions about democracy in Russia, found acceptab...