Soviet historian Robert Conquest looks to the literature of the Communist world in this book which considers the nature of truth and truth-tellers under what he still sees as a tyranny. He calls in evidence literature - Pasternak, Djlias, Solzhenitsyn, and political figures, such as Sakharov, Lenin and Kremlinologists, to form critical theories about the Soviet Union and its writings. The author has previously published The Great Terror, The Harvest of Sorrow and The Egyptologists (with Kingsley Amis).