Gender and ethnicity in the Soviet Muslim peripheries: a feminist postcolonial geography of women’s work in the Tajik SSR (1950–1991)

ABSTRACT

This article explores the articulation and experience of Soviet gendered ideology regarding work in the Tajik SSR, one of the Muslim Soviet peripheries, during the post-war period ending with Perestroika. Central Asian women’s work was used for economic purposes, as well as being a key driver for fulfilling the ideological objective of emancipating Central Asian women from religion and tradition. Through a feminist postcolonial geography approach, attentive to questions of discourse and material lived experiences, this article explores the ways in which gender and ethnicity were co-produced by Soviet ideology. Analysis of scientific publications produced by Tajikistani female researchers, and of women’s magazines from the 1950s, is contrasted with ethnographic data on workers from various collective farms and semi-urban places, including ‘work heroines’ (peshqadam). Our findings illustrate the hybrid nature of the Soviet regime, advancing theoretical debates on the use of postcolonial theory in Soviet Central Asia.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender
• ethnicity
• work
• feminist postcolonial geography
• Soviet women
• Tajikistan

Acknowledgements

We would first like to express our deepest gratitude to all our research participants in Tajikistan. We would also like to warmly thank Prof. Judith Pallot, Prof. Patricia Daley, Prof. Linda McDowell and Dr Madeleine Reeves for their engagement with this article. We are indebted to our various funding bodies for making this research possible. Finally, we are grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Throughout this article, ‘Central Asians’ refers to people identified or self-identified as Tajik, Uzbek and other minorities living in Tajikistan and holding Tajikistani citizenship. ‘Europeans’ refers to people identified as Russian, Ukrainian or German living in Tajikistan, who might or might not hold Tajikistani citizenship.

2 Some authors studying Soviet elites of the 1920s, the ’30s or the post-war period highlight the anti-colonial or at least non-colonial nature of the Soviet project (Kassymbekova 2011; Kalinovsky 2018), while others highlight the socialization of local workers as a form of violence (Bahovadinova 2018).

3 See the section ‘Soviet ideology regarding women’s work (1950s to Perestroika)’ below.

4 The magazine Boh rohi Lenini (Following Lenin) ran from the 1930s to the fall of the Soviet Union. Zanoni Tojikiston (Women of Tajikistan) was first published in 1932 under another name, then stopped during the Second World War, and resumed in 1951 with a print run of 1000 copies. In 1955 it changed its name and continued with a print run of 130,000 until 1991.

5 The ethnographic work of Negar Elodie Behzadi focused on men, women and children; of Lucia Direnberger, on women.

6 One interview with a Russian ethnic Tajik woman in Sarvoda was undertaken in Russian with the help of a translator.

7 The objective of this article is not to review the literature on postcolonialism in Central Asia. For such a review, we refer readers to Heathershaw (2010), Kandiyoti (2002b), and Abashin (2014).

8 This debate is best encapsulated in the discussion of the unveiling campaigns of the 1920s and ’30s (hujum). Massel (1974) argued that in the absence of a working class in Soviet Central Asia, women were used as a ‘surrogate proletariat’. Northrop (2004) later used this claim in his analysis of the hujum as postcolonial resistance, while Kamp (2006) rejected such an analysis, which, she argued, denies Central Asian women’s agency and participation in the Soviet project.

9 For a detailed analysis of the production of tradition, see Gillian Tett’s (1996) ethnographic work on the last years of Soviet rule in Tajikistan. Tett shows that traditional family ties centred around the household unit were retained during the Soviet period as they provided a way for villagers to overcome the shortcomings of the Soviet economic system. The maintenance of these norms made possible a gendered socio-spatial division of labour based on a public sphere dominated by the Soviet state, and a private sphere which was the locus of Muslim religious practice. In this context, women became ‘guardians of the faith’, and local interpretations of Muslim femininity – relying on spatial control over women’s mobility, the protection of young girls from the male gaze, and women’s attachment to the home and domestic labour – were reinvested as markers of indigenous identity. Kandiyoti (2007) also provides an analysis of the production of tradition: Soviet ideology called for women to be both ‘shock workers’ (work heroines) by working outside of the home, and ‘heroine mothers’, producing the same traditional norms Sovietization was supposed to overcome.

10 Ghaffarova was an assistant professor in the women’s studies section of the Department of Marxist-Leninism at the Dushanbe Pedagogical Institute, then head of the Philosophy Department (1962–74) at the same institute, and finally, from 1975, dean of the institute (Bashiri, 2002, 85–86). Nabieva was an assistant professor of History at the Tajikistan State University (1959–1975) before becoming head of the Department of Tajik History there. Bobosodiqova dedicated her career to politics and published in university presses. She became secretary of the Komsomol community in Dushanbe in 1961, followed by multiple prestigious positions, including deputy chair of the Organizational Committee of the Communist Party of Tajikistan in 1972–75 (Bashiri, 2002, 59).

11 ‘Zanoni mehnatdust soviet’ (Hard-working Soviet women), Bonuvoni Tojikiston soveti (Women of Soviet Tajikistan) No. 2, February 1956.

12 ‘Sport va tandurustii zanon’ (‘Sport and women’s health), Zanoni Tojikiston soveti (Women of Soviet Tajikistan) No. 2, February 1956.

13 ‘Zanoni mehnatdust soviet’.

14 See Bahovadinova (2018) and Kalinovsky (2016b) for similar findings.

15 Interview with a woman of Russian origin who still lived in Sarvoda.

16 Also see note 9.

17 For a discussion of honour and shame in Tajikistan see Behzadi (2019).

Additional information

Funding

This research has been partially funded by the ESRC Scholarship and the Clarendon Scholarship Fund at the University of Oxford.