During the 1920s and 1930s thousands of European and American writers, professionals, scientists, artists, and intellectuals made a pilgrimage to experience the ""Soviet experiment"" for themselves. Showcasing the Great Experiment explores the reception of these intellectuals and fellow-travelers and their cross-cultural and trans-ideological encounters in order to analyze Soviet attitudes towards the West. Many of the twentieth century's greatest writers and thinkers, including Theodore Dreiser, Andre Gide, Paul Robeson, and George Bernard Shaw, notoriously defended Stalin's USSR despite the