A sample of high‐redshift X‐ray clusters was compiled by combining our ROSAT observations of four distant clusters with results avaiable in the published literature. This sample of 26 distant clusters is divided into two subsamples, those with and without FRII radio sources. It is found that the clusters with FRII radio sources tend to be less luminous X‐ray sources than the high‐redshift clusters that do not have FRII radio sources, though there are exceptions.In addition to comparing the two high‐redshift subsamples, each subsample is compared with a low‐redshift sample of clusters with known optical and X‐ray properties. The high‐redshift clusters with FRII sources also tend to be underluminous in the X‐ray relative to low‐redshift clusters with similar optical properties (richness), and significantly underluminous in the X‐ray if the expected X‐ray emission from the radio sources is taken into account, though the highest power FRII sources appear to be exceptions. The high‐redshift clusters without FRII radio sources show no tendency to be underluminous relative to optically similar low‐redshift clusters.This suggest that the evolution of the environments of FRII radio sources with redshift is closely linked with the evolution of the intracluster medium. It is interesting to note that the fraction of clusters in our distant sample that contain FRII radio sources and are underluminous X‐ray sources is similar to the fraction of clusters missing from the high‐redshift X‐ray luminosity function relative to that for low‐redshift clusters. If further investigations indicate that high‐redshift clusters with and without FRII radio sources are of similar richness, this would imply that the evolution of the cluster X‐ray luminosity function is more strongly linked with the evolution of the intracluster medium than with X‐ray luminosity established for low‐redshift clusters evolves with redshift. ©1994 American Institute of Physics