Stalin got rid of Lenin’s New Economic Policy, which allowed small-time private enterprise, not because he doubted its results but because he had correctly judged that any such enterprise was a threat to the regime. Stalin bestowed upon his courtiers royal privileges, grand state apartments, cars and dachas, but the ownership of all these assets stayed with the Kremlin. The fact that nothing could be sold or bequeathed bred a sense of dependency and impermanence.
