Eighty years ago, many American intellectuals, particularly those who regarded themselves as the vanguard of progressivism, were devout Stalinists. That is, they believed—and believed passionately—that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, not the United States, represented the wave of the future. Guided by Joseph Stalin, the USSR was pointing the way to more humane, equitable, and peaceful global order. During the 1930s, according to Lionel Trilling, in his day the very embodiment of highbrow sophistication, “a large and influential part of the intellectual class” treated Stalinism as “sacrosanct.” Belief was mandatory. To hold a contrary view was to risk becoming a pariah.
In September 1932, to cite one example, a manifesto signed by several dozen leading lights of the American literary scene described the Soviet Union as a place where unemployment had been “wiped out” and a “cultural revolution of many dimensions has been won on many fronts.” In the USSR, “for the first time in recorded history a civilization has emerged unified by a living faith in man’s ability to create a classless society.” The signatories—including such notables as Sherwood Anderson, Theodore Dreiser, John Dos Passos, Sydney Hook, Langston Hughes, Lincoln Steffens, and Edmund Wilson—urged “writers, artists, scientists, teachers, engineers,” and all “honest professional workers” to vote for the Communist Party in the upcoming presidential election. A Communist victory, they said, would enable the United States to embrace the Soviet model and Soviet policies, thereby ending the Great Depression and advancing the cause of social justice.  
American intellectuals of this era saw Stalin himself as a model of enlightened leadership. Simply put, he was The Man. The Soviet chief was all but single-handedly transforming his country into a worker’s paradise. In 1933, when the Nazi Party gained power in Germany, Stalin’s standing in the eyes of his American admirers increased further. Fascism seemed everywhere on the rise. Stalin alone appeared to grasp the threat. He alone possessed the courage and the will to address it.
So when the Moscow Trials of 1936-1938 suggested that the Soviet leader might not be Mr. Nice Guy after all, American Stalinists rushed to his defense. “A Statement by American Progressives,” signed by the likes of Nelson Algren, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Dashiell Hammett, Lillian Hellman, John Howard Lawson, Dorothy Parker, George Seldes, and Irwin Shaw, paid tribute to Stalin’s stupendous achievements, which included:
the peaceful and progressive solution of the problems of all minority peoples and nationalities within its borders; the magnificent gains in industry and agriculture; the increase in the standard of living; the growth of educational and cultural opportunities and health facilities; the active participation of the overwhelming majority of the people in the processes of social development; [and] the sane foreign policy that makes the Soviet Union an outstanding leader for the preservation of peace.
The guilt of those Stalin was hauling into the dock was incontrovertible. The “sheer weight of the evidence,” the Americans insisted, showed that those being purged—their loyalty to the revolution hitherto unquestioned—were getting what they deserved. The accused had “resorted to duplicity and conspiracy and allied themselves with long-standing enemies of the Soviet Union—nationalists who had ties with capitalist, fascist, and White Guard allies, and even with former czarist agents provocateurs.” By extension, anyone disputing these propositions was both an enemy of truth and an ally, whether witting or not, of Hitler and Mussolini. Among progressives, dissent on these matters was not to be tolerated. To publicly express a different opinion was to invite expulsion from the ranks of the intelligentsia.