In 1985, Taruc would tell F. Sionil Jose that one of the reasons for the failure of the insurgency was that dissenters were killed. He also said that dogmatic fundamentalism scared away many potential allies. The Huk movement commanded an estimated 170,000 armed troops with a base of two million civilian supporters at the apex of their power in 1952. In 2003 he explained to historian Keith Thor Carlson that he attributed the revolution's failure to the dogmatism of members of the politburo's Russian-trained elite, in particular Jose and Jesus Lava—an accusation that runs contrary to the views of the Lava's and William Pomeroy who counter that Taruc suffered from a cult of personality.