Soviet efforts to concentrate vertical power issued in a deluge of horizontal disintegration that was foreshadowed by early Soviet ethnic policies. As these events swept across the broad Soviet stage, their Dagestani resonances acquired distinctively ethnic and religious tones. The period of "socialist construction" was marked by the rapid growth of ethnic self-consciousness and the development of national languages and cultures for all Dagestani groups As a consequence of this ethno cultural heterogeneity, on the one hand, and the social and political indivisibility of Dagestan, on the other hand, it became necessary to establish means of ensuring proportionate ethnic representation at the highest levels of authority in the republic.