SUMMARY:

This article narrates the story of the founding of the Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in 1922, at the beginning of the Soviet policy of “indigenization” (korenizatsiia). The author transcends the binary opposition of the two main interpretations of this policy, as either the result of the Bolsheviks’ calculated social engineering or the product of indigenous plans for nation-building that had been developed long before the Revolution and were merely endorsed by the new regime. The Yakut case highlights the exceptional role played by Yakut intellectuals, who had brought the project of establishing the national republic to fruition despite opposition from the Soviet central authorities. At the same time, those national-minded intellectuals themselves were an integral part of the all-Siberian and all-Russian public (obshchestvennost’) and products of a long historical process of integration into the imperial society. They appropriated ideology and discourse that allowed them to play active roles as autonomous actors and to exercise influence over metropolitan ideologues, experts, and politicians.