Spoiler alert: the movie sheds some light on the issue you raise in your final paragraph. Here's another: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism https://en.

Spoiler alert: the movie sheds some light on the issue you raise in your final paragraph. Here's another: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism A publicly-expressed faith in communism survived longer among intellectuals elsewhere, but the example of the Soviet Union eventually wore down all but the most committed.