“The leadership of the Soviet Communist Party has, from its early days, been profoundly elitist in its attitudes,” Mervyn Matthews, a British scholar of Soviet society, wrote in the 1970s. “It has regarded itself as an enlightened band which understands the march of history and is destined to lead the Russian people—indeed the whole world—to communism. In daily life it has always ensured for itself and its close associates privileges commensurate with these awesome demands.”
Ah. There is the rub.
