p Socialist society has two friendly classes, the working class and the peasants. This is because under socialism two forms of socialist property—state and co-operative collective-farm—are preserved, as a result of which essential distinctions between town and country remain. Under socialism there is also the intelligentsia, a large and important social group which owes its existence to the still existing essential distinctions between manual and mental labour.

p That is why the process of eliminating both class differences and the distinctions between the intelligentsia, on the one hand, and the workers and the peasants, on the other, actually entails the abolition of the distinctions between town and country, between mental and manual labour. “The Party’s policy,” notes the Report of the CPSU Central Committee to the 24th CPSU Congress, “is directed towards helping to bring the working class, the collective-farm peasantry and the intelligentsia closer together, and gradually erasing the essential distinctions between town and countryside and between brainwork and manual labour. This is one of the key sectors in the building of a classless communist society.”  [259•* 

Social distinctions in Soviet society are gradually erased on the basis of the steady development of the productive forces and socialist production relations and their development into communist relations.