Set in the midst of Stalin’s 1936–1938 purges—when Stalin executed as many as 1.75 million peasants, government officials, and Communist party members—Darkness at Noon is the story of a man named Rubashov, who is arrested in the middle of the night by the state’s secret police. The Party he has long served tortures him and demands he confess to crimes they know he has not committed. Darkness at Noon sold over 400,000 copies when it was published and its portrait of Communism was a major factor in the Communist Party’s defeat in France.