Since the mid-1950s, Myrdal had grown critical of the Soviet Union and he now gave voice to these misgivings, including in works on Turkmenistan and Soviet Central Asia. As his heterodox Marxist-Leninist and anti-colonial ideas drew him to Maoist-style Communism, he became a stalwart defender of Mao Zedong's Chinese government and, later, of the Cultural Revolution. His 1963 book "Report from a Chinese Village" achieved some international success when released in English in 1965, offering a then very rare socio-political study of life in rural China, albeit from a clear pro-Maoist perspective. Several of Myrdal's works were subsequently banned in the Eastern Bloc.