The truth to Gide was always more important than the consolations of ideology. He had seen through the deceptions of the French colonial authorities in the Congo, and simply reapplied the same instincts to the USSR. But the most damning evidence came long after the fury of Kravchenko’s court case was over, when few people could remember the ferocious arguments his name had once evoked. As with so many other Russian defectors before him, no one had taken seriously Victor Kravchenko’s repeated claims that Soviet agents were trying to kill him. In 1966, his body was discovered in his Manhattan
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