Despite the immediacy of catastrophic evil, Duranty’s article describes the Constitution of the USSR as one of the “the most democratic in the world… a foundation on which a future democracy may be built.” In addition to praiseworthy descriptions of the Red Army, free education and medical care, communal housing, and equality of the sexes, there is an upbeat commentary in which the “great purge” is breezily described as “one of the periodic cleansings of the Communist Party.” Duranty reports that this “cleansing” is “now over,” and people are “repairing the damage,” as if the country were tidying up after a particularly nasty winter storm. In fact, the Stalinist pattern of violence, imprisonment, exile, and execution merely shifted its focus with a swift and terrifying ferocity to the Baltic and eastern Poland.

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Cap…, loc. 1130