It was superficial, of course, only in light of what a few knew and more suspected was occurring in Stalin's Soviet Union. The United States' views of postwar Russia were, in fact, profoundly troubled. As Arthur Miller observed in his autobiography, Timebends, by 1947 "the Germans clearly were to be our new friends, and the savior-Russians the enemy, an ignoble thing it seemed to me… this wrenching shift, this ripping off of Good and Evil labels from one nation and pasting them onto another, had done something to wither the very notion of a world even theoretically moral." In these liminal years, the Soviet Union was a place few comprehended. A 1948 response to the book by a Ukrainian professor, then living in Munich, is entitled "Why Did You Not Want to See, Mr. Steinbeck?" What more could Steinbeck have seen is perhaps a better question. He knew more than he says, certainly-he'd been in the Soviet Union before, although he never commented on his and Carol's 1937 trip. But in 1947 he writes only what he sees-and he sees with a great deal of emotion and understanding-because those are the artistic parameters he set. And, once again, he saw only what the Russians permitted him or any other visitors to see, an updated version of the Potemkin village.

Other American reviewers found the book highly satisfying, "objective, impartial" and "readable because [Steinbeck] loves real people and because he has a sense of humor that never lets him down." "This is one of the best books about Russia since Maurice Baring wrote his 'Puppet Show of Memory' in 1922," effused the reviewer for the New York Sun. Steinbeck "has a most observant eye, a deadpan humor and a command of the English language unsurpassed by any American of our time. The Steinbeck style is one of the marvels of the age. It is entirely unpretentious…" Bernstein, among others, praised Capa's lens, which "suits the prose which surrounds it, lean and restrictive, without the furbelows of the self-conscious artist, and yet full of sensitivity and attention to detail." And supportive reviewers acknowledged that Steinbeck and Capa's book would help the West better "understand the Russians emotionally," a real contribution.