“The Soviet Union was allowed exclusive inheritance of the Enlightenment in its own self-presentation as the secular progeny of the historic breakthrough to reason and science. That this proprietary relation to the Enlightenment was implicitly granted looks in retrospect almost like a confession: Cold War liberals were not sure they could defend the Enlightenment from Soviet appropriation, or even that they wanted emancipation, when communists arrogated the project for themselves. It is both regrettable and revealing that, instead of opposing the claim of enemy communists to inherit the Enlightenment by showing how opportunistic it was, Cold War liberals accepted the communists’ claim and indicted the Enlightenment instead.”