Stalin’s rais: governance practices in a Central Asian kolkhoz

The article analyses governance practices in a Central Asian kolkhoz between the 1930s and early 1950s. It investigates the process of the kolkhoz’s construction, economic activities and structures of authority. Focusing on the figure of the kolkhoz chair (rais), the article scrutinizes the range of the rais’s duties and powers. By examining his relations with kolkhoz peasants, their strategies for instigating and resolving local conflicts, and their mechanisms for and the limitations on integrating his personal networks to gain authority, the article highlights the evolution of the political and social roles of the kolkhoz chair over the two decades between 1930s and 1950s. It argues that the transition of the rais from an insignificant to a powerful figure in the Soviet state was directly connected to the rise of the cotton industry in Tajikistan. The author proposes rethinking the period of Stalinism as dynamically evolving in diverse contexts, producing a variety of ‘Stalinisms’ which contradicted and amended each other.