Slonim was viewed with caution by the American Esers. They investigated his REOD activity and concluded that he had shown callousness, and had mixed with NKVD envoys, but cleared him of allegations that he had been a spy himself. Following the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union, Slonim and his colleagues, reunited in New York City, resumed the "defensist" line, unconditionally; Chernov took a more moderate stance. In February 1945, Slonim finally met Nabokov at a dinner party in New York. Nabokov dismissed him as a Soviet agent, and probably used him as an inspiration for the novella "Double Talk". Nabokov's reading is dismissed by his exegetes: Vladimir E. Alexandrov speaks of Nabokov's "unjustified suspicions, including his snubbing of Marc Slonim"; Brian Boyd also notes that Slonim "was in fact firmly against Stalin and the Soviet system." Before 1950, Slonim was again banned in the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc: copies of "Le Bolchévisme vu par un russe" were confiscated on sight by the Romanian Propaganda Ministry.