SOURCE: Bradford Gow, Haven. “A Retreat from Utopia.” Modern Age 18, no. 4 (fall 1974): 426-29.

In the following review of Chronicles of Wasted Time, Volume I: The Green Stick, Gow praises Muggeridge for pointing out the hypocrisy of Soviet communism's claim to value humanity, and the hypocrisy of liberal intellectuals who defended the Soviet system.

I used to believe that there was a green stick buried on the edge of a ravine in the old Zakaz forest at Yasnaya Polyana, on which words were carved that would destroy all the evil in the hearts of men and bring them everything good.

—Leo Tolstoy

The Stalinist intellectuals of the 1930's, as George Watson informed us in the December, 1970 issue of Encounter, are nowadays something of a joke. How could such intelligent men of the world as George Bernard Shaw and Sidney Webb support Stalinist Russia? Could they have been deceived? Mr...