Of course not everyone was thrown into prison, or stood in breadlines. Experiences depended on your relative social standing under the old regime and how that social standing was viewed under the new regime. The revolution for the laborers, but the most successful labors? Blood enemies of the people.
Plenty of people were born into relative privilege under the communist system. Children who quietly got to go to foreign universities, while their parents talked about the need for the lower classes to sacrifice their children for the revolution. Those same children who now run very successful businesses thanks to their family connections.
And there was the flip side, which the author doesn’t like the focus on. The ones who were successful businessmen or even farmers but after the revolution thrown into prison as “dangerous counter revolutionaries”. Or the families of that person who had to pay penance for their bloodlines sins - their children denied an education. Of course the assets stripped from the family were given to the “people”, the the most generous portion reserved for those most loyal to the revolution.