There is not one answer to this question. As a general rule, the industrial working class in the 1920s - as meager in size as it was - served as a key political support bloc for the Bolsheviks, so ostracizing them was often politically dangerous. This meant that, in practice, industrial workers enjoyed some good benefits, even in times of crisis. For example, during the dekulakization campaign of 1929-31 when thousands of peasants were targeted as 'kulaks' and arrested, deported, or worse, the Party drifted back and forth on the matter, at one point issuing a series of clarifications to provincial party officials about who is a kulak and who is not, and among those largely exempt from repression were family members of industrial workers.

Later on, after the super-industrialization plan had wrought considerable changes in the Soviet social and economic landscape, many of these early industrial workers who served as party rank-and-file cadres or who had supported the party as long-time radical workers were rewarded with swift, and sometimes undeserving, promotions.

At other times in the 1930s, certain kinds of industrial workers served as both active political agents in Stalinist programs, and earned rewards for their efforts. The most famous of these is the Stakhanovite movement, which enjoyed direct party support. They advocated greater wage disparity among workers based on productivity, while the government used productive workers as a model for others. The Stakhanovites were also active in the Purges of the late 1930s, often channeling classic industrial class conflicts into political violence, accusing managers and engineers they did not like of sabotage or espionage.

Workers also enjoyed considerable economic rights in the USSR, both under Stalin and in later, more affluent years. The 1936 Constitution - publicly called the 'most democratic in the world' by the Stalinist leadership - did guarantee to people certain rights, such as employment, pension, maternity leave, health care, and vacation. The quality of these rights was largely dependent on the wealth of the region in which a person lived, and the status of the Soviet economy at the time. However, unlike the political aspirations for democracy (which may have been fairly legitimate on behalf of the Stalinist clique - but not for ideological reasons) the 1936 Constitutional economic rights seem to have been fulfilled.

But at the same time, it would be a mistake to label Stalin as a champion of the working class or Stalin-era policies as quintessentially socialist. There are some good criticisms of left-wing socialists of the USSR. They point out, for example, that worker ownership and management of industry - a central tenet of socialist theory and advocacy - was abandoned by the Bolsheviks as early as 1918 with traditional hierarchies reimposed under political surveillance by the party (though this had little to do with Stalin). In the 1930s, as the USSR was busy building its version of socialism, industrial enterprises were still organized along traditionally hierarchical grounds - a fact that generated considerable social tension on the factory floor. The government also did not shy away from implementing austere labor requirements. For example, in 1938 the government stated that absenteeism (which had come to be rather rampant in 1937) could be punished through fines, evictions, and dismissals, or with reduced social rights. In 1940, the government went a step further, criminalizing absence from work - including tardiness of 20 minutes or more - and introducing an eight-hour day. In part this was a response to escalating war-time conditions, but it also shows that the Stalin government was not above disciplining the traditional base of political support for the regime.

I have not commented on peasants because I am interpreting your question to focus solely on industrial workers. It should be understood that certainly in the early 1930s, industrial workers were a small portion of the USSR's population. Still some 80% lived in rural villages and worked in agriculture as late as 1928. Their story is quite a bit different.

Lenin was not a politician with fake promises,

Really? So I suppose he never said something like this.

Why should we Great Russians, who have been oppressing more nations than any other people, deny the right to secession for Poland, Ukraine, or Finland?

Some things to consider:

1. The main targets of purges were members of the Communist Party. The higher up you were, the more danger you were in of being purged. The more success you had in your career, the more powerful you were, the better the chance someone would point their finger at you. As a worker, there was always a chance of being accused of sabotage ("wrecking"). However, as I understand it, those accused tended to be specialists from the Tsarist days, who despite their suspect revolutionary ideals were kept on for their technical knowledge.

2. Stalin's major contribution to USSR policy was rapid industrialization. The big debate of the day was whether to rapidly industrialize, or whether to focus more on consumer goods. If the former, the workers would have to sacrifice for future gains. If the latter, the immediate well-being of ordinary workers would become a priority. Stalin's position won out, and a culture of hard work and sacrifice emerged (as jasonfrederick points out below, this also implied an emphasis on competition between workers to boost productivity). Materially, this was bad for workers. However, while it is hard to distinguish between propaganda and reality, it seems that many workers accepted these terms.

According to [1]

1928-1934 they had food rationing, actually you had to buy the allowance of the rationing card;

1929 was a good year, so the monthly ration of a worker was 600 gram of bread daily - 300 gram per additional dependant; 1 liter of edible oil per month, 1 kg of sugar per month. From 1931 workers received additional allotments (differentiated by worker productivity)

You could buy food for higher market prices, so there were six systems of prices

• prices for rationed food
• prices for additional allotments.
• prices for food sold in workers areas ('medium-high' prices)
• free market prices (there was such a thing in the Soviet Union where farmers sold what they grew on their small private plot of land, generally very expensive)
• all sort of prices in closed stores for the privileged caste only / special stores for foreigners.

on January 1935 the restrictions of food rationing stopped, but at the same time prices were raised;

For a monthly salary In 1913 a worker could buy 333kg of bread; 21kg butter, 53kg meat, 83kg sugar

in 1936 a worker could buy 241 kg of break,13 kg of butter, 19 kg of meat, 56 kg of sugar; effectively 67% of the monthly salary of a worker was spent on food.

Also the state would practice mandatory loans that it gathered from all workers - loans that were supposed to help financing the project of industrialization. However rents (for living quarters) were low, but most workers would have to live in communal flats, a family would have a room for itself.

Punishments: you could get fired from work easily, for example for being late to work or not coming in for a day, if this happens one would be without food rations, and would be thrown out of his living quarters. From 1932 onward they introduced internal passports, this means one would not be allowed to move to another town, you were also not allowed to quit your job on your own initiative. From August 1932 they had very strict laws designed to enforce discipline - for small scale thefts one could be sentenced to death, the sentence could be commuted to ten years of labor camps. Beginning from 1939 you would have been marked as absentee by being twenty minutes late - could be fired for that; from 1940 that would be a criminal act, with punishment of six months of prison, could be commuted to withdrawal of 25% of your salary. In the late thirties a significant amount of all works was done by prisoners of the GULAG (main administration of labor camps, here they did not receive any salary at all) - that was 20% of all construction works in the whole country !)

No wonder that workers did not like it; but here they had the most progressive secret police in the world to deal with such sentiments - the NKVD (well they had some competition here, but that was the Gestapo in far away Germany, the Italian counterpart OVRA was not very serious here, only 10 death sentences between 1927 and 1940 - a joke of history).

After the war it was not very good, for example 1947/48 were quite hungry years, at the same time they exported a lot of grain during that period, so the task of feeding the Soviet population did not have the highest priority with Soviet rulers. [2] Well, during the post-war famine workers had priority over farmers.

All in all this is really crappy, based on these facts i think that only die-hard Stalinist's can claim that the live of workers in the 'workers state' was very good. The Soviet constitution of 1936 is a work of political fiction, or propaganda if you like; very appealing for western communists (or people like Leon Feuchtwanger who preferred to look the other way) but not very much grounded in reality.

[1] Тимошина Т.М. Экономическая история России ISBN 978-5-7205-0945-3 / Timoshina T.M the economic history of Russia (you can find the book pdf on the net, if you are looking hard)

[2] Michael Ellman "The 1947 Soviet famine and the entitlement approach to famines" http://www.paulbogdanor.com/left/soviet/famine/ellman1947.pdf

Communist leaders like Stalin generally have urban workers as one of their main power bases, so yes, he would have cared about urban worker sentiment. If you compare it to China today, urban worker unrest is one of the few things that make the leadership uneasy.

When you say that the Russian economy was restored under the communists, I am not sure what you mean. The economic policies implemented by Lenin caused a fall in agricultural production of around 30%, leading to the Soviet famine of 1932-33 where up to 10 million people died. The country was eventually industrialized, but that process was already well under way before WWI. The chaos of the revolution and Lenin's economic policies set back that progress by years.

I agree when you say that Lenin did not make fake promises. He said he would get rid of owners of property, owners of land, and those, like social democrats, who resisted the dictatorship. Most of these were then indeed killed, either by executions, mistreatment or starvation.