Here's another excerpt from Amity Shlaes's book. This follows a paragraph that tells about how Herbert Hoover, then a mining engineer and not yet president of the U.S., was working on a mining estate in Kyshtim, Russia, which provided a livelihood for 100,000 and was rich in copper and other metals. Page 30:
The events in Russia had strengthened Hoover's conviction about the need for firm leadership in Europe and even the United States. In 1916 Bolsheviks began agitations at his own Kyshtim plants. In 1917 the Communists took power, throwing out the ownership and management at Kyshtim and giving themselves a 100 percent raise. The Americans on the project were sent off on trains to Vladivostok, but the Russian experts were brutalized or even killed. What made it worse was that without the experts the delicate Kyshtim furnaces broke down within a week; the Communists could not read the blueprints left behind that would have told them how to do repair work. "In a week the works were shut down, and 100,000 people were destitute," Hoover recalled, rightfully disgusted, in his memoir.