“In all revolutions there comes a moment when the high ideals of the revolutionaries crash onto the hard rocks of reality,” writes Orlando Figes. “That moment came for Russia in March 1921,” he says. Figes and Aidan Flax-Clark discuss the retreat from the communist utopia that happened in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, a period known as the New Economic Policy. His essay is adapted from his most recent book, Revolutionary Russia, 1891-1991.