One reason is that the Soviet government went to a great deal of trouble to present a false picture, including “model prisons” that betrayed no trace of the immense state machinery of torture and death. Another reason was the credulity of the observers themselves. In some cases, like Duranty’s, they were blinded by an ideological allegiance to the idea of a socialist state.

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Cap…, loc. 1132