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 their own countries, they gradually understood the flaws and moved away from the principles they held dear. The immorality of the elites, the liquidation of the opposition, censorship, the fear of extermination and the German-Soviet pact distanced all these intellectuals from what they thought would be a future utopia. “Russia has failed to become a God and it will never again recover from the fires of the Soviet ordeal” (Gide,