This chapter attempts to reconstruct the elite identity of the Provincial Komitetchiki. It presents common themes about self, service, and state expressed by the Provincial Komitetchiki at the time of their promotion to positions as regional leaders. In the words of Leopold Haimson, I seek to uncover “who they were in order to determine, how they should feel, think, and ultimately to act.” The elite identity of the Provincial Komitetchiki expressed the value culture of Russia's new radical socialist regime. The personal traits and experiences emphasized in this identity revealed the sources of elite status in the new state. On the basis of belonging to this intraparty status group, the Provincial Komitetchiki would make a claim on special privileges and powers conferred by the state.

In the postrevolutionary period, the sources of elite status of Russia's old regime had become discredited. Noble inheritance, familial lineage, bureaucratic position, and lavish lifestyle were no longer markers of elite status. Indeed, persons identified with these attributes were sometimes labeled class enemies and risked severe reprisals. The formal administrative structures of the tsarist state were in disarray and its formal elite structure, the table of ranks, was in disrepute. Nor was elite status conferred on the basis of the personal attributes common to other twentieth-century states, such as ethnicity, wealth, and merit.