sentences:  They also learned to use Soviet affirmative-action policies for titular nationalities as channels for promoting kinfolk within the Soviet system.During the three decades under Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev, moreover, Moscow intervened relatively little in Central Asia’s republic-level politics, and both larger and smaller clans were able to maintain their networks with resources from the Soviet state.After Brezhnev’s death in 1982, the decline of the Soviet regime brought new instability to Central Asia.