In 1940, Edmund Wilson published To the Finland Station, a study of the growth of the idea of communism. This book examines the lives of such men as Bukharin, Koestler, Gide, Diljas, Silone and Dubcek, and describes the self-deception and despair of those who embraced and recoiled from communism. Murphy argues that the self-deception of the communist is not merely a product of circumstance, but integral to the very idea itself.