The workers, or some of them, sensed its meaning: that the freedom and end of privilege, which they had thought the revolution was to bring, were giving way to a new form of class rule. They tried to prevent power from getting out of the hands of their Committees. They refused to accept the managers, sometimes drove them out or even killed them. But at each decisive step, the state (the “workers’ socialist state”), whether under Lenin or Stalin, backed not the workers but the managers.
