Institutional and “Clan” Conflict in the Interwar Georgian and Transcaucasian Political Police, 1921–1939

Some have framed the conflicts between the Georgian and Transcaucasian levels of the Soviet political police during the 1920s and 1930s as contestations between the layers of the early Soviet federal structure over their institutional interests. Yet, these established prerogatives seem to have competed with the particularistic agendas of individual actors and their entourages, comprising informal networks or “clans” that developed in the security organs for mutual protection and advancement. Combining published biographical and documentary sources with extensive new archival materials from the Georgian Party and KGB archives, this article reexamines the intersection of the institutional, individual, and network interests and motivations at play in these interactions. Its aim is to gain an insight into the workings and internal politics of the security services in the early Soviet periphery in order to better understand the role of informality, networks, and inter-network conflict in the first decades of the Soviet state.