At the beginning of the story, Kira returns to Petrograd with her family, after a prolonged exile due to the assault of the Bolshevik revolutionaries.

Having given up all hopes of regaining their past possessions after the victories of the Red Army, the family returns to the city in search of livelihood.

Life is excruciatingly difficult in these times; living standards are poor, and weary citizens wait in long queues for meager rations of food and fuel.

At the Institute, Kira meets fellow student Andrei Taganov, an idealistic Communist and an officer in the GPU (the Soviet secret police).

Kira's efforts to finance his treatment fail, and her appeals to the authorities to get state help fall on deaf ears.

He opens a food store that is a front for black market trade, bribing a GPU officer to look the other way.

Disillusioned about both his personal relationship and his political ideals, Andrei secures Leo's release and shortly thereafter commits suicide.

[3] Concerned about her safety due to her strong anti-communist views, Rand's family helped her emigrate to the United States in 1926.

Associate editor Granville Hicks, then a member of the Communist Party USA, was strongly opposed to publishing Rand's novel.

Canadian writer Barbara Branden said that "Some of her readers were disturbed when they discovered this and similar changes",[20] but insisted that "unlike Nietzsche, she rejected as unforgivably immoral any suggestion that the superior man had the right to use physical force as a means to his end.

"[21] Robert Mayhew cautioned that "We should not conclude too quickly that these passages are strong evidence of an earlier Nietzschean phase in Ayn Rand's development, because such language can be strictly metaphorical (even if the result of an early interest in Nietzsche)".

[24][25] In The New York Times, reviewer Harold Strauss said Rand had "a good deal of narrative skill", but the novel was "slavishly warped to the dictates of propaganda" against the Soviets.

[27] In his syndicated "A Book a Day" column, Bruce Catton called it "a tragic story" about the harmful impact of revolution on the middle class.

[28] Ethel Lockwood recommended it as a realistic look at the impact of Soviet policies, but warned it was not for the "squeamish" or those unaccustomed to "the continental viewpoint toward sex relationships".

In the Australian Women's Weekly, news editor Leslie Haylen described the novel as "very vivid, human, and wholly satisfying", saying it described Russian life without taking sides.

[31] The Wodonga and Towong Sentinel called it a "vivid story" that showed Russia "dispassionately, without once imposing any preconceived ideas on the reader".

[32] Rand scholar Mimi Reisel Gladstein compared it to two of her later novels, saying, "While it does not have the power of The Fountainhead or the majestic sweep of Atlas Shrugged, We the Living is still a compelling story about interesting characters.

[35] Shortly after the novel was published, Rand began negotiations with Broadway producer Jerome Mayer to do a theatrical adaptation.

Helen Craig took the lead role as Kira, alongside John Emery as Leo and Dean Jagger as Andrei.

In 2014, Palgrave Macmillan published a volume with both the final script and an earlier version, edited by Robert Mayhew.

Prior to their release, the films were nearly censored by Mussolini's government, but they were permitted because the story itself was set in Soviet Russia and was directly critical of that regime.

After several weeks, German authorities, who were allied with the Italian government, insisted that the film be pulled from distribution because of its anti-Fascist themes.