The important thing in this case isn't the absolute degree of income inequality, but rather how it is perceived. When state propaganda talks non-stop about how everybody's equal in this new paradise, yet every day you see things - even little ones - demonstrating that some animals are manifestly more equal than others, that can grate a lot more than a similar relative difference in a society that openly puts inequality on its shield.

And there was no shortage of those little things. Well, I can't speak for Poland, but even in the late USSR (which was comparatively less unequal than Stalin's one, ironically), there was still blat and Beryozkas.