Sentence:  With justified bitterness the author speaks of `` what <WSD>seems</WSD> to me to have been an inexcusable body of ignorance about the nature of the Russian Communist movement , about the history of its diplomacy , about what had happened in the purges , and about what had been going on in Poland and the Baltic States '' . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  give a certain impression or have a certain outward aspect