Author Arthur Koestler

a revelation, Arthur Koestler's Blinding Darkness was a reflection of the writer's views on the inner life of the Soviet Union in the 1930s. It was from the publication of this book that he dissociated himself from communism and for many years, until perestroika in the 1980s, was betrayed by disgrace in the USSR. The book describes the last month of the life of Nikolai Rubaashov, an old Bolshevik and revolutionary, from his arrest to the court. The influence of "Blinding Darkness" was so great that Orwell in his 1984 novel largely wrote off O'Brien from the book's chief antagonist, the investigator Gletkin, who led Rubaashov's case.