Formation of the Kazakh Soviet bureaucracy in 1920s: bolshevization or ethnicization?

Abstract

The formation of the Soviet state, its transformation and stabilization in the 1920s and 1930s on the example of how the political elite of Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic was formed and restructured portrays the dynamic nature of political culture and ambivalent character of Soviet ethnopolitics. Personalization of the relationships of management and subordination, dynamic development of bureaucratic structure and its culture indicate the multi-threaded character of mutual relations between the traditional society and the emerging modernising factors. An important issue are also ways of strengthening the political culture of federative statehood through consolidation of the ruling elite and consolidating the mutual relations between the central authorities of the Soviet Union and authorities of the republics which the Union comprised. The author analyses processes occurring during the formation of Soviet bureaucracy in Kazakhstan. She portrays the degree and areas of its unification or modification under the influence of ethnic and social factors as well as peculiarities and modernising processes taking place within the bureaucratic system.