Аннотация
The article reviews the polemics among the soviet researchers upon the social relations of Kazakh society in the pre-soviet era. The findings of authors had different approaches regarding this issue: one group of researchers considered Kazakh society classless, with the intact tribal relations, whereat the tribe was the core autonomous subject of law; other researchers believed that the development of commodity exchange economy and different noneconomic forces had led to social class differentiation into two polar groups.