In 1949, five of the world’s greatest living writers — Andre Gide, Richard Wright, Ignazio Silone, Stephen Spender and Arthur Koestler — and the American foreign correspondent Louis Fischer contributed essays to a collection called "The God That Failed," in which they reflected on their embrace, rejection and disavowal of communism.
Liz Cheney — one of Donald Trump’s most prominent Republican critics, who was just routed in a party primary, denying her the chance to defend her seat in the U.S. House of Representatives in November — might be able to relate.
The 20th century was the heyday of ideological commitment and political disillusion. The communist cause seemed to many people, particularly literary intellectuals, to offer a path toward personal fulfillment and social justice, even a kind of salvation. By the time Gide, Koestler and the others put their disillusionment down on paper, this belief was well and truly behind them. But they understood that for many — particularly their intellectual peers — communism’s spell had yet to be broken.