Your comment makes me think back to individuals such as Langston Hughes and Claude McKay during earlier Soviet days and McKay's autobiography "A Long Way from Home" where he talks about being used as nothing more than a prop for the Soviets.
McKay’s political leanings, as he makes clear throughout his memoir, coincided with The Liberator and other socialist and Communist organizations; however, he always viewed himself not as a social activist but as a poet. Writing about the above incident, McKay says, “I said that my social sentiments were strong, definite and radical, but that I kept the, separate from my esthetic emotions, for the two were different and should not be mixed.” McKay drives this point home during his trip to Russia when the Communist Party wants him to speak about the conditions of African Americans in the United States. McKay constantly tells them he came to Russia “as a writer,” to chronicle Soviet Russia and its achievements “for the Negro press.” Yet, the party worked to present him as a mouthpiece, as a token to promote their party positions, and McKay did give “political” speeches, but he states that he felt wrong giving them.
