These writers embraced communist ideology with great zeal and saw it as the only way to end inequality in the world. Instead, through their personal experiences in Soviet Russia or in their own countries, they gradually saw its flaws and drifted away from those principles they held dear. The immorality of the elites, the liquidation of the opposition, censorship, fear of extermination and the Nazi-Soviet pact distanced all these intellectuals from what they thought was an imminent utopia. “Russia has failed to become a God and will never emerge from the flames of the Soviet ordeal” (Gide,