Kazakhstan’s “Little October”

This chapter examines Moscow’s initial assault on Kazakh nomadic life under the auspices of the “Little October,” a belated October-style social revolution begun in 1928. It shows how Moscow invited and encouraged Kazakh participation in the “Little October,” a strategy that successfully began to unravel Kazakh society from within. Challenging a literature that has argued that the Stalinist regime’s violent assaults on non-Russian groups were carried out largely by outsiders, this chapter shows that the peculiarly destructive nature of the Little October campaign was due to the fact that it was primarily carried out by insiders, rather than by outsiders. By the end of 1928, Kazakhs’ descent into hunger had begun.