ABSTRACT
THE CLOSE OF WORLD WAR II left the Soviet Union and its supporters with a moral capital they had not enjoyed even during the "heroic years" of the revolution. Stalingrad had clearly been the critical battle of the war, and no country had suffered losses in lives and resources on a scale anywhere approaching the USSR. The nature of the concentration camp universe constructed by Stalin had not yet been fully revealed, and the Moscow Trials were just a memory. The sectarianism of the twenties and the deceit of the 1930S were forgotten. The USSR seemed bathed in a heroic aura that derived from the outstanding services rendered by European communists in the antifascist resistance.
