The leaders of Russia's Communist revolution proclaimed their ideas and actions in the name of the workers. By "workers," Marx, Lenin, and their followers meant the masses of industrial laborers who worked for low wages and for the benefit of factory owners and, in turn, the capitalist governments. It was for the workers that the revolution was made, and it was for the workers that the Soviet government, according to its own propaganda, had abolished the unjust and corrupt system of capitalism and had replaced it with a society modeled on socialist principles.

Many workers did see their conditions improve after the revolution. Others believed that the sacrifices they made were worth the ultimate goal: a Communist utopia. Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader of the 1950s and early 1960s, had suffered great privations as a young coal miner. But as he wrote...