There has been extensive debate on changing attitudes within the French left-wing intelligentsia in the decades following the Second World War and more specifically on why so many intellectuals became fellow travellers and were attracted to Stalinism in the period between 1945 and 1953. Esprit's reactions to de-Stalinisation from the time of the Russian invasion of Hungary in 1956 to the Soviet suppression of the Czech attempt to reform communism from within in 1968 are of interest, since Esprit was the most prominent Catholic left-wing but non-Marxist journal in France. In view of Esprit's very strong reaction to the Hungarian Revolution, its relative silence in 1968 on the drama that was being played out in Czechoslovakia requires explanation. Finally, because Esprit broke with communism in late 1956, intellectuals writing for that journal experienced little difficulty in adjusting to the new French intellectual climate of the mid-1970s.