See, I was wondering if I had the parallels right! I had almost forgotten about the Chinese Communist movement (which is a shame on my part, since it was a big part of my Political Ideologies class). Thanks for reminding me! And yeah, I've always been uneasy about the way the Communist movement is portrayed in popular culture, too. Both Russia and China for a long time never really had a middle class, I don't think---you were either on the rich spectrum of society or you were on the poor end of society. And since the wealthy oftentimes kept the privileges of of being rich to themselves, the poor were often exploited, so their outrage wasn't uncalled for, they did so for legitimate reasons.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is, yes, the Communist movement was definitely more complicated than just very poor people wanting to grab everything the rich had for themselves (and Anastasia has often bothered me for that reason, too :)).