Kazakh nomads, social class transformations and Soviet power during the period of collectivization

Abstract

ABSTRACT This research is devoted to the history of the political adaptation of tribal structures to the conditions of social class interactions in the Kazakh aul in the 1920s. Newly uncovered archival materials show how patrimonial and hierarchical institutions tried to adapt and adjust themselves to the system of socialist construction in the Kazakh steppe. The authors have identified three directions that most clearly demonstrated the behavioural motives and adaptation practices of Kazakh tribal cattle-breeding society: the formation of the Soviet apparatus of power in Kazakhstan; the participation of the tribal elite in elections to enter the Soviet institutions of power; and confiscation as a policy of struggle against ancestry and descent groups.