Despite the Bulletin and the fact that Robert Menzies’s conservative party was in office, the country’s intellectual and cultural life was dominated by the pro-communist Left, and a shallow, reflexive, progressive orthodoxy prevailed. A man widely regarded as Australia’s leading historian—Manning Clark—went to the Soviet Union at this time and wrote a glowing book called Meeting Soviet Man. He singled out for special praise—a “very great man”, one of “earthy images and folk wisdom”—none other than Alex Surkov, the thuggish secretary of the Soviet Writers’ Union. The Fellowship of Australian Writers was so impressed that, shortly after the Hungarian Revolution, it invited that tormentor of Russian writers to Australia as its guest. And so it went.