During the era of Soviet communism, important officials in the Soviet Union had access to special shops selling delicacies unavailable to ordinary citizens. Before China allowed capitalist enterprises in its economy, travelling by car was a luxury limited to tourists and those high in the party hierarchy (and their families). Throughout the ‘communist’ nations, the abolition of the old ruling class was followed by the rise of a new class of party bosses and well-placed bureaucrats, whose behaviour and lifestyle came more and more to resemble that of their much-denounced predecessors. (George
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