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Cover -- Endorsement Page -- Half Title -- Series Page -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- Foreword -- Preface -- Abbreviations -- Chapter 1: Introduction -- Informal networks, nationality, and Soviet power in the periphery -- Bolshevik institutionalized authority and local "capture" -- Abkhazia - the Soviet "Riviera" -- Nestor Apollonovich Lakoba and Caucasian clientelism -- Notes -- Chapter 2: "Kiaraz" and the formation of an early Soviet ethnic leadership cohort -- National awakening and revolution -- The February and October revolutions -- The first Bolshevik attempt to seize power in Abkhazia and the "Sukhum Commune" - April-June 1918 -- The defeat of the Sukhum Commune and return to the underground -- Soviet power comes to Abkhazia - Spring 1921 -- Notes -- Chapter 3: Consolidating leadership in early Soviet Abkhazia -- Lakoba's Kiaraz-based grouping establishes its leadership position -- The break with Eshba: status vs. rents and privileges -- Ethnicity, legitimacy, and Soviet power -- Lakoba vs. "the opponents" - November 1922 -- Lakoba vs. the Alexei Agrba group - 1923-1924 -- Notes -- Chapter 4: The "Rif Revolt" -- Much ado about tobacco -- The "Abkhazian question" and the Azatyan commission -- The sparking of the "Rif Revolt" - the Gudauta meeting -- The gathering at Alaniya's apartment -- The 41 allegations -- The Beria and Stel'makh commission -- At the Presidium of the Georgian central committee -- The recall telegram and the Bakhtadze declaration -- The final showdown in Tiflis -- Lakoba triumphant -- Notes -- Chapter 5: Patronage, nationality, and Tsebelda tobacco -- Managing patrons -- Nationality and clientalism -- Tsebelda and tobacco -- A joint meeting of the Party cells -- Notes -- Chapter 6: The Mirzabekyan Commission - 1928-1929 -- The gathering storm.

The Tiflis-born Stepan Shaumyan (1878–1918) was one of the most active revolutionaries in the Transcaucasus and a prolific theorist about the "national question" who corresponded regularly with Lenin and other leading Bolsheviks. In a crucial moment in the spring of 1918, as the Russian Empire was disintegrating and the Russian Civil War was breaking out, Shaumyan, appointed by Lenin as Commissar Extraordinary for the Caucasus, attempted to create a compelling internationalist and "Soviet" appeal to challenging the emerging nationalist paradigm in the Transcaucasus. Shaumyan's efforts to consolidate Bolshevik rule in the "Baku Commune" in 1918 contributed to a bloody ethnic massacre, and his attempts to spread Soviet Power in the region failed, resulting in his execution together with the other "26 Baku Commissars" in September of that year. Making extensive use of Shaumyan's writings, including his early work held in manuscript form in the Georgian Party Archives in Tbilisi, this article examines Shaumyan's conceptions of the "nationality question" and their implementation in the Transcaucasus under his leadership in 1918, and the lessons that the Bolsheviks may have drawn from failure of his program for the later formulation of Soviet nationality policy.

This article is a micro-study of a case of peasant rebellion in a periph­eral region of the early Stalin-era Soviet Union that was dominated by an ethnically based local patronage network. Using primary source materials (especially secret police reports) from the Georgian party archives and from Nestor Lakoba's personal archive, the article examines the significance of nationalism and ethnically constructed identity for peasant resistance under Stalinism within the context of imperial exceptionalism. The study explores the role of the center-periphery relationship in the attempts of the local lead­ership to accommodate the peasants' demands and to resolve the incident peacefully, and also the resulting trajectory of the incident in local histori­cal memory, in order to demonstrate the ways in which the complexity and diversity of the Soviet empire presented both challenges and opportunities for both the center and the periphery. In so doing, the study draws upon and consolidates recent approaches to peasant resistance, subjective mentality, and imperial diversity under Stalinism. Статья Тимоти Блаувельта представляет собой микроисследование крестьянского восстания в периферийном регионе довоенного СССР, где существовал местный специфический режим патронажа, основанный на этническом родстве. Речь идет о достаточно уникальной для раннесоветского политического контекста ситуации в Абхазии, которую автор не только реконструирует, но и анализирует в рамках подходов, характерных для изучения крестьянских движений и субъективной ментальности. Однако основной рамкой анализа выступает имперское разнообразие и проблема имперской исключительности. Автор решает вопрос о роли национализма и этнических идентичностей в крестьянском протестном движении в Абхазии в указанный период, опираясь на источники из архивов Грузии и личный архив Нестора Лакобы. Действия местного партийного руководства, стремящегося удовлетворить требования крестьян мирными средствами, часто вопреки давлению из центра, он анализирует в контексте отношений центра и периферии в Советской империи, указывая на вызовы и дополнительные возможности недетерминированного действия, которые создавала реконструированная им имперская ситуация.

Lavrentii Beria built up one of the most powerful patronage networks in Soviet history. Its success represents a unique case in Soviet history in which a regionally based secret police patron-client network, comprised primarily of representatives of ethnic minorities, took control first of the civilian leadership of one of the major regions of the Union, and then of the most powerful institution in the USSR, the national secret police, and subsequently became one of the main competing factions in the "crypto-politics" of the late-Stalin era. The fact that the Beria network emerged from the secret police gave it certain advantages in the political struggles of the period, but it also held weaknesses that played a role in Beria's final undoing. The evolution and political struggles of Beria's network also shed light on the inner workings of the competition among informal networks that made up the crypto-politics of the period. Using recent memoirs, new archival sources and interviews, this article will examine how Beria developed, managed and advanced his informal network, giving particular attention to the specific and unique outcomes that resulted from the rooting of this network in the secret police, at five critical junctures in Beria's career.

This paper will examine the phenomenon of betrayal in patronage networks in Soviet higher politics by considering one of the most high-profile and significant cases: the betrayal of Lavrenty Beria by two of his top lieutenants, Sergei Kruglov and Ivan Serov, during the post-Stalin succession contest in the spring of 1953.