The gullibility of the intellectual community

Simon Karlinsky wrote in his introduction to Dear Bunny, Dear Volodya: The Nabokov-Wilson Letters, 1940-1971:

...the groundswell of enthusiasm for Soviet Russia among America’s intellectuals which came just as Stalin was consolidating his power and plunging the country into the worst nightmare in its history. What amazes a person even minimally acquainted with Soviet realities about the intellectual climate of America in the thirties is the almost inconceivable gullibility of the intellectual community, its lack of any meaningful criteria for comparing the situations in the two countries.