Some Issues of the RSFSR Federal Construction in the 1920s

The author considers the problems of the relationship between the multi-level authorities and management, and the center and national autonomies in the RSFSR, as among the most complex hierarchical arrangement of the USSR. The author reveals the place and significance of the so-called private meeting of national workers (November 1926) and the discussion of its results on the ground in solving the key issues of nation-building and Soviet modernization of the multi-ethnic country. The research is based on the published materials, as well as archival documents related to the meeting in Moscow in November 1926 and its discussion in: the autonomies (the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (F. 17 - the Central Committee of the Russian communist party of the Bolsheviks - All-Union Communist Party, F. 78 - M.I. Kalinin), the Archive of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan (F. 141 - the Kazakh Regional Committee of the Russian communist party of the Bolsheviks - All-Union Communist Party), and the State Archive of the Russian Federation (F. 3316 - Central Executive Committee of the USSR). The author concludes that the federal construction was accompanied by intense search for balance between state bodies, and the discussions between representatives of the center and autonomies concerned: the determination of the status of the autonomies, the adjustment of the management mechanism, the distribution of powers and interaction of all-Russian and autonomist structures, the role of the center and ethno-political elites in the implementation of the tasks of ethno-national policy, and the strengthening of statehood.