There is no doubt that the cruelty Freda Utley suffered at the hands of the Soviet regime--for years she was kept in ignorance of whether her husband was even alive--to some extend affected her judgment in balancing the relative evils of Hitlerism and Stalinism. Even when passion blinds one to the presence of some positive features in what is hated, it sometimes enhances the perception of other features. What Freda Utley saw in the Soviet Union, its institutions and policy, was there and has been memorialized in her volume, THE DREAM WE LOST. [WFV: This book was rewritten and published as LOST ILLUSION, Fireside Press, 1948] She was really made of the same stuff as the great Russian women revolutionists of czarist times. In addition to her fearlessness, her great moral courage, and ready intelligence, she possessed a quality not always in evidence among the heroic women of the past. She had a tenderness and radiant warmth for human suffering wherever she encountered it. When I visited West Germany in 1948, I heard tales about “this wild woman” from individuals high in the American civilian and military service. It seems that she would tour the American canteens and clubs and upbraid those present for eating more than their fill while German women and children were starving and freezing amidst the rubble of the bombed-out cities. (From Out of Step, Harper & Row, 1987, Ch. 20)
Please read the rest of Hook's remarks about Utley as well as Henry Regnery's here.
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