Assignment in Utopia

Rating:
Summary: Stalin's USSR the Way It Was
Review: Eugene Lyons was a clever and amusing fellow. Assigned to be a reporter in Moscow during Stalin's rule he broke the mold: he, unlike Walter Duranty of the Times, would tell the truth. Initially attracted to the Great Experiment, Lyons soon learned the misery and death suffered by the eggs broken in Lenin's omelet: the NEP men slaughtered when the New Economic Policy fell from favor, the kulaks liquidated as a class, the Ukraine nearly exterminated. Though tragic, Lyons recounts the times with wit and pathos, and with a grasp of English not unlike a cross between Conrad and Nabakov.