Read about Walter Duranty, the Moscow Bureau Chief of the New York Times for fourteen years (1922-1936), who wrote story after story praising Stalin and the Soviet Union during the great purges. Many liberals of the day ate his stuff up, and of course the Times never saw fit to repudiate the Pulitzer that he got for his false reporting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty
And Henry Wallace, FDR's Vice President until 1944 (when he was wisely dumped), was so pro-Soviet that he had to write an article, years later, "Why I was Wrong", in which he admitted that his earlier stance in defense of the Soviets had been wrong.
"In 1952 Wallace published Where I Was Wrong, in which he explained that his seemingly-trusting stance toward the Soviet Union and Joseph Stalin stemmed from inadequate information about Stalin's crimes, and that he now considered himself an anti-Communist."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_A._Wallace
Wallace was about as liberal as they came in those days.