State and Society

The focus of this chapter is on the difficult state-society relations in the North Caucasus developing during the 1920s. Despite the Bolsheviks’ disarmament campaigns and the purges of Muslim leaders, the rural and non-Russian-populated areas remained largely detached from the modernizing processes that characterized developments in the few Russian- and Slavic-populated cities such as Groznyi and Vladikavkaz. During most of the 1920s, Soviet state institutions and party organizations were still practically non-existent in the countryside. One way in which the Bolsheviks sought to establish their rule over the rural areas was through their program of korenizatsiia (“indigenization”), the promotion of national languages and cultures and the creation of a Soviet-trained indigenous elite. Another was to draw young North Caucasians into the industries of the cities and merge individual ethnic territories into larger units. Through the fate of a contemporary, Abdurakhman Avtorkhanov, some aspect of life in Chechnia during the 1920s are exemplified.