Socialist countries are not the classless society envisaged by Marx and Lenin. Officially, social class was abolished in the countries of the former Soviet Union. But, as some sociologists acknowledge, 67 years after the Bolshevik takeover, class-consciousness is reappearing. There is a large and powerful state bureaucracy founded on privilege rather than private property and the nouveaux riches want all the ornaments of class superiority. This re-emergence of class attitudes is a cause of concern to the Soviet authorities, who are anxious that the better-off should not come to regard the 'lower classes' as inferior or even criminal.