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Standard exegetical opinion usually portrays Freud as an entrenched pessimist and a critic of communism. However in 1918, Freud did in fact call for the emergence of a popular psychoanalysis, the institutional conditions of whose mission were to be overseen by the State. In the sequence of socialist revolutions that was to unfold, a number of private polyclinics thus saw the day, in line with this approach. However it was in the country of soviets that Freud’s wish achieved its most comprehensive fulfillment, with the establishment of a State Institute of Psychoanalysis, to which was associated a children’s home. The support lent by Freud to the highly politicized analytical practices of the time, including those in communist Russia, along with the relative oblivion into which the historiography of this episode has lapsed, leave room for a critical reevaluation of the Freudian heritage and its transmission, regarding its relation to the political.