The Formation of National Elite of South Ossetia in the 1920-1930s
The purpose of the article to use periodicals and documents from State Archive of the Republic of South Ossetia, to study the mechanisms of formation of the administrative and political elite of South Ossetia from among the former red partisans of the Civil War in the conditions of the early Soviet modernization. The objective of the research is to disclose processes occurring not only within the community of combatants, but also in the post-war society by reviewing over 300 worksheets of combatants. Through the method of comparative historical analysis, the reasons for the selective use of former partisans in the formation of the “regional elite” were established. It can be considered that the state of not only socio-economic, but also the socio-political sphere depended on the composition, behavior, abilities, choices of the military leaders as the main socio-political forces in the postwar socialist society. The impossibility of overcoming the aspects of “Soviet ideology” and creating proper conditions for fruitful work of the “intellectual part of the society of partisans”, who were rightly away from the system, affected the overall quality of the region’s future development and caused the state’s crisis in the institutional exhaustion phase. The study of the documents and materials on South Ossetia in the 1920s and 1940s showed a gap between the ideal political structures created by the “Bolshevized” top of the ruling party and social reality.