The fact that Marxist–Leninist regimes confiscated private businesses and landholdings radically increased income and property equality in practice. Income inequality dropped in Russia under the rule of the Soviet Union, then rebounded after its demise in 1991. It also dropped rapidly in the Eastern Bloc after the Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe at the end of World War II. Similarly, inequality went back up after the collapse of the Soviet system. According to Paul Hollander, this was one of the features of Communist states that was so attractive to egalitarian Western intellectuals that they quietly justified the murder of millions of capitalists, landowners and supposedly wealthy kulaks in order to achieve this equality. According to Walter Scheidel, they were correct to the extent that historically only violent shocks have resulted in major reductions in economic inequality.