He was a gifted prose stylist and very learned. His principal and most significant characteristic, however, was intellectual dishonesty characteristic of the age in which he grew to maturity. He made the choice for Soviet Communism, for perhaps understandable personal reasons, at 14, and remained true to his choice for 81 years, long after there ceased being any possible excuse for doing so. At least no one could accuse him of being a turncoat: he supported a radical form of evil from his early adolescence to his late senescence.