Institutional co-optation channels trusted regional leaders

Evidence

Opportunism channeled by the old regime’s own institutions undid the regime. Russia’s Communists had long dealt with non-Russian regions by co-opting regional leaders who were loyal to their cause. The regime had integrated such leaders into the Communist party, recruited their successors from among the most promising members of designated nationalities, but trained them in Russia and accustomed them to doing business in Russian. Candidates for regional leadership made long stays in Moscow under close supervision. The ones who proved smart, tough, and reliable returned to their respective homelands to lead the Communist parties. — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 1238

Categorization

• XREF: The co-optation-and-training mechanism is exactly the ‘institutional absorption’ the reader is testing defensively — it absorbed regional elites into the regime. The interesting question for the reader’s hypothesis: did this absorption defuse subordinate politicization of non-Russian regions, and did it fail as capacity declined? — connects to: Dominant groups build institutions that co-opt subordinates rather than merely repress them — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 667
• QUESTION: If co-optation absorbed regional leaders, what happened to the politicization of the regional masses? The framework question the reader poses — does absorption defuse subordinate politicization while legitimating dominant politicization — remains untested here; this passage suggests absorption worked on elites, not necessarily on populations.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 1238

Broader Connections

• Dominant groups build institutions that co-opt subordinates rather than merely repress them #expands (0.78) — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 667