In September, 1963, Mr. Krotkov, one of a visiting delegation of Soviet film-workers, walked out of his hotel and down the Bayswater Road wearing his three shirts and two suits one on top of the other and asked for political asylum in Britain. [The Angry Exile] is an attempt to record the thoughts and experiences that brought him to this decision and at the same time to expose to the English-reading public the Soviet myth.

There is no doubting that Mr. Krotkov is a sincere man, and an angry man, as he reiterates. He was also a brave man…. But these qualities are not enough in themselves to make for a convincing denunciation of Soviet society…. Sometimes Mr. Krotkov is willing to repeat hearsay when his book's chief claim on our attention is that it is a record of direct experience; at other times he falls back on extremely...