The Dream We Lost: Soviet Russia Then and Now

Abstract

This book is in part a record of my personal experiences in the U.S.S.R. during the five and a half years I lived there, and in part an account of the new system of exploitation developed in Russia by the Communist dictatorship. This new system is one which not only orthodox Communists, but a whole host of socialists, liberals, and so-called progressives of various kinds, call "socialism," and regard from afar as a beacon light of hope for a crisis-ridden and war-torn world. Perhaps this new system is socialism, but anyone who knows what life is like in Russia must recognize that this new society has nothing in common with the society of the free and equal which socialists believed would follow the breakdown of the capitalist system. I hope that those socialists and Communist fellow travelers who still reason, and whose humanitarian impulses have not been entirely destroyed by "religious" zeal and scholastic dogma, will have the patience to examine the facts here presented, and to listen to the experiences of one who once also believed that the Communists would emancipate mankind.