Robert Conquest and the anti-communist venture

Robert Conquest played a huge role in Western anti-communist endeavors.  He even wrote speeches for both Margret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.  His methods were never scientific but his cause was so dear to the hearts of Western mainstream that very few took him on (Jerry Hough and Alexander Cockburn comes to mind).  His calculations of victims of Stalin in "the Great Terror" were mostly anecdotal and anti-scientific.  In the 40th edition of the Great Terror he even conceded this: saying that one never knows and that one is not certain.  A million here more or ten million more there, who cares as long as the cause of anti-communism is served.  His counting first relied on accounts of Nazis, Nazi collaborators, fascists and works of fiction.  He then jumped on the bandwagon of the Ukrainian famine, ignoring the problems of delivery of food to Ukraine in the 1920s. Thus, all the problems of Ukraine and distribution of food and civil war become part of his calculations.  I am not sure that Conquest even ever studied Russian although he cited Russian sources in his books.  I know he did hire Russian interpreters for meetings--one former PhD from UC Berkeley admitted playing that role for him.