Reconstructing the State: Personal Networks and Elite Identity in Soviet Russia

by Gerald M. Easter

• ISBN13: 9780521660853
• ISBN10: 0521660858
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-01-13
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Why do some state-building efforts succeed when others fail? Using formerly unavailable archival sources, this book presents an explanation for the rise and subsequent collapse of the Soviet state. The study explains how personal networks and elite identity served as informal sources of power that influenced state strength. Reconstructing the State also offers alternative interpretations of how the weak Bolshevik state extended its reach to a vast rural and multi-ethnic periphery as well as the dynamics of the center-regional conflict in the 1930s that culminated in the Great Terror.

Table of Contents

Preface	xi
Introduction: Explaining State-Building Outcomes and the Soviet Russian Case	1	(24)
Part I Structure and Identity in the Postrevolutionary State Elite
Anatomy of a Regional Elite: The Rise of the Provincial Komitetchiki	25	(22)
Constructing an Elite Identity: Images of Self, Service, and State	47	(20)
Part II Informal Sources of Power in the Postrevolutionary State
Extending the Reach of the State: Personal Networks and Territorial Administration	67	(22)
The Constraints of Power: Personal Networks and Central Rulership	89	(20)
Part III Intrastate Conflict and the Constraints of Power Redefined
Center and Regions in Conflict I: Collectivization and the Crisis of Regional Leadership	109	(24)
Center and Regions in Conflict II: The Fall of the Provincial Komitetchiki	133	(28)
Conclusion: State Building and the Soviet Russian Case Reconsidered	161	(14)
Notes	175	(30)
Bibliography	205	(12)
Index	217