Just a week after the Revolution, Lenin wrote that highly qualified professionals would need to retain their privileged position “for the time being.” While the idle rich had to be stripped of their possessions, the highly trained had to be enticed to work for the new regime. The Marxist principle of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” was replaced with the more pragmatic approach of paying what the state could pay for extracting the maximum from those with high ability.
