Communism begins as a theory of a classless, propertyless society and ends, in this film's account, as a record of one-party states that rarely matched it. The film opens with the Bolshevik revolution and Vladimir Lenin's consolidation of power, tracking the young Soviet state through civil war and the scramble to build an industrial economy out of famine and collapse. Archival footage carries much of the history, and the film adds testimony from people who lived it: members of the Red Guard, party activists, students, and factory workers who describe building what they believed would be a fairer country. Their accounts move from early conviction to later disappointment as the gap between doctrine and daily life widens. The film extends the story beyond the Soviet Union to note communism's spread and its record in other states, but the core case study stays Russian, from Lenin's early Bolshevik state through the human cost of forced industrialization. It sets Marxist theory next to lived testimony and lets the distance between the two make its own argument.