Uzbek women and the veil: Gender and power in Stalinist Central Asia

This dissertation examines the character and consequences of the encounter between Soviet colonial authorities and southern Central Asian society during the period 1927--1941, one expressed fundamentally through the language of gender relations and family life. I focus on Uzbekistan to argue that this encounter shows the complex and unexpected consequences of colonial policies of "liberation," and in the end came to define and ultimately to transform both sides. In particular I focus on the contest over the veiling and seclusion of Uzbek women, a contest which was expressed most dramatically and centrally through the campaign of hujum [attack] which was launched win 1927 against the horsehair and cotton veils known as paranji and chachvon. The dissertation considers both the reasons for this campaign being placed at the very center of Soviet policy in Central Asia and the effects the decision to invest it with such a high priority had on both Bolshevik and Uzbek self-conceptions. In the end it reaches conclusions which both question the nature of central control and illuminate the complex mechanisms of cultural response and resistance which existed even at the height of Stalin's power.; I examine the implications of substituting gender for class as a target of Bolshevik liberation; the character and meaning of "Stalinism" in Central Asia during the 1930s; and the problems, that arose over issues of female agency among both supporters and opponents of the hujum . The dissertation is based upon Uzbek- and Russian-language materials, and draws extensively from archival collections in Uzbekistan and Russia as well as from a wide range of published sources. The centrality of the unveiling campaign to the Bolshevik effort and the fierceness of the conflict that ensued over it show how intricately gender relations were interwoven with---and indeed came to define---relations of social and political power in Central Asia, and how women came to be central to, and emblematic of, an emerging Uzbek national identity. Both sides---Soviet activists as well as their so-called "traditionalist" opponents---were transformed by the contest. In the Soviet empire, gender became a fundamental language of identity, loyalty, and power.