| This paper investigates the enthusiastically positive reports published by American "fellow travelers," non-Communist but pro-Soviet intellectuals, who visited the Soviet Union during the 1930s. Although the Soviet Union experienced tremendous growth in the 1930s, these were also years of terrible hardship, with food and housing shortages, difficult working conditions, and an oppressive secret police presence. Nonetheless, fellow travelers often returned from the Soviet Union with accounts that were extremely favorable, frequently containing conspicuous inaccuracies. This paper will document the more widely reported inaccuracies, and will provide possible explanations for them.;In an effort to understand the motivations of fellow travelers in general, the backgrounds of four prominent American fellow travelers will be explored, and the intellectual, political, economic and social atmosphere of the era will be investigated. This paper will show that understanding the inaccurate writings of the fellow travelers requires multiple interrelated explanations. |
