In the heyday of the Soviet era, Communist leaders were described
by the dissident Yugoslav theorist Milovan
Djilas as the "New
Class," whose power lay not
in ownership of wealth but in control of
it: all the property of the state was at their beck and call.
There was
the apocryphal but appropriate story of
Brezhnev's showing his humble mother around his
historic office, his magnificent collection
of foreign
luxury cars and his palatial dacha with its superb
meals,
and asking for her impressions --to which she replied:
"It's
wonderful, Leonid, but what happens if
the Bolsheviks come back?“
