When Vladimir Lenin's Bolsheviks stormed the Winter Palace in 1917, they did so in the name of a new ideology. Millions were drawn by its promise.

In Red Flag, the people who were there—from members of the Red Guard to party activists to students—explain how Communism appealed to their deepest hopes and dreams. Through them, we hear how Communist leadership, under Lenin and later, Joseph Stalin, compromised the proletarian ideal—and how hope eventually gave way to despair.

The people remember: the storming of the Winter Palace, Lenin, Bolsheviks, civil war, mass literacy campaigns, Lenin's death, Soviets' "five-year plan," collectivization, kulaks, "show" trials, Stalin's purges.