[jhbadger]

There were really was a belief among orthodox Western Communists that the Soviet Union was the future and that Stalin was a great man. They often became Rusophiles who learned Russian and went on trips to the Soviet Union where they were given carefully controlled tours which made the place seem like Utopia. That was different from just a belief in Communism -- as Orwell notes, there certainly were the Trotskyists, who believed that Lenin's revolution in the USSR had been betrayed by Stalin, but they had their own parties and organizations (and weren't that numerous).