The article offers an analysis of Nina Berberova's book "The Kravchenko case", containing the reports of the trial for defamation started by Victor Kravchenko, a former attaché to the Soviet trade mission to the USA, against the newspaper "Les Lettres françaises". Berberova followed all the hearings of the trial and published her reports in the weekly newspaper "Russkaja Mysl" (La pensée russe). Through the narration of the hearings, each conceived as a tale in itself, the writer conveys the profound meaning that the trial had acquired for her and for the Russian diaspora, which shared her vision of the Stalinist regime, a vision that raised a sentiment of hostility in several French intellectuals, unresponsive for superficiality, ignorance or reluctance to open up a dialogue with those who were questioning the Soviet authority
