She was also what would later be called, in irony, a “premature antifascist”—an early opponent of Mussolini and Hitler. When a professor gave her Max Eastman’s Artists in Uniform, hoping that it might serve as a sobering antidote to her woolly-headed admiration of Russian communism, Jean confided to a friend, “I just wouldn’t want to go on living if I didn’t believe that in Russia everything is better.”
