Personal Experiences of Nationality and Power in Soviet Kazakhstan, 1917-1953
Journal: Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard (DASH) (Harvard University)
Year: 2018

This dissertation examines the first generation of Kazakhs who joined the Communist Party and entered Soviet Kazakhstan’s political elite. Because conditions in the Kazakh steppe were so far removed from the Marxist revolutionary program, the backgrounds, motivations, and career trajectories of these early Party activists are essential to comprehending the interrelated processes of nation-building, modernization, and Sovietization in Central Asia, and in the Soviet Union more broadly. I argue th