The Communist party alleged that the anarchist "putsch" was motivated by their resentment of the centralized military command sought by the Communists and their allies in Lluís Companys's Catalan government and their desire to seize political power. The anarchists and Trotskyists saw the events as an attempt by the Communist Party (in close contact with the Stalinist NKVD) to rule over all revolutionary activity and blamed the Communists for authoritarianism. They contrasted the Communists' police state to the egalitarian conditions that obtained prior to the May 1937 events.