" They hoped we had got the information we came to get. They drank our health again and again. We answered that we had not come to inspect the political system, but to see ordinary Russian people; that we had seen many of them, and we hoped we could tell the objective truth about what we had seen. Ehrenburg got up and said that if we could do that they would be more than happy. A man at the end of the table then got up and said that there were several kinds of truth, and that we must tell a truth which would further good relations between the Russian and the American people. And that started the fight. Ehrenburg leaped up and made a savage speech. He said that to tell a writer what to write was an insult. He said that if a writer had a reputation for being truthful, then no suggestion should be offered. He shook his finger in his colleague’s face and told him in effect that his manners were bad. Simonov instantly backed Ehrenburg, and denounced the first speaker, who defended himself feebly. "
― John Steinbeck , A Russian Journal