The Role of Local Authorities in Implementing the Confiscation of Bai Households in the Petropavl District in 1928

Abstract

This article examines the role of local authorities in the implementation of the 1928 campaign to confiscate the property of wealthy Kazakh households (bais) in the Petropavl District. The campaign, initiated by the Soviet leadership, was formally aimed at dismantling the “remnants of feudalism” and promoting the Sovietization of the Kazakh aul (traditional rural community). However, as this study demonstrates, it served broader political purposes, acting as a foundational element in the expansion of state control and repression in rural Kazakhstan. Drawing on previously underutilized archival materials from national and regional archives, as well as documentation from the State Commission for the Full Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repressions, the authors reconstruct the mechanics of this policy at the regional level. The research reveals that local authorities did not merely carry out central orders but adapted and expanded them. This included the artificial merging of extended family households, falsification of social statuses, and arbitrary reclassification of communities to meet confiscation quotas. The analysis also shows that the promised redistri bution of confiscated livestock and property to poor peasants had limited effect. A significant share of the as sets was absorbed by collective farms or used to settle state arrears. The findings challenge the notion that the campaign was a genuine tool of social justice. Instead, it is argued that the confiscation campaign was a polit ically motivated operation designed to eliminate traditional elites, consolidate ideological control, and prepare the groundwork for forced collectivization. The article contributes to the broader historiography of Soviet repression by offering a regionally grounded and source-rich case study of early Stalinist transformations in
Kazakhstan.