Kirkus Reviews QR Code
THE DREAM WE LOST by Freds Utley

THE DREAM WE LOST

By

Pub Date: Aug. 9th, 1940
Publisher: John Day

This is a challenging book, a book with which many will violently disagree, and which many, who might agree, will find difficult reading. The first two thirds of the book is a penetrating analysis of the facts of Communism as it has developed in Stalinist Russia, presented by a woman who was a British Communist, married to a Russian, who spent six years working for the Communists in Russia, and who escaped with her young son, when her husband was exiled to an Arctic concentration camp, and disappeared. She shows where her optimism was betrayed by the facts; where ideals gave way to tragic realities; where terror held the people of Russia in spell to a tyrant the like of whom the world has never seen. She calls the Bolshevist party a lifeless organization drained of its lifeblood and links the Nazis and the Communists as birds of a feather, with greater efficiency and less reliance on terror in the Nazi camp. Stalin's foreign policy is dictated by fear and disunion within the ranks, but if there is a stalemate between Germany and England, the Russian brand of terrorism will seize upon ruined Europe. She presents her plea for a negotiated peace before it is too late. Her approach to modern Russia closely parallels that of Souvarine.