I found the book pretty balanced in the critique of the communist system and especially Stalinism but I think it was too appeasing regarding the purges, meaning the author tries to paint Staling and his administration as almost justified in making the purges and he states that the purges only affected a few million people. I think this was due to the lack of data available to the author at that point, himself not being directly affected by the purge and his good will towards communism. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was much more critical of the purges and he had an inside view and better data available after the death of Stalin.