Emancipation of the unveiled: Turkmen women under Soviet rule, 1924-29

Russian Review

Volumn 62, Issue 1, 2003, Pages 132-149

  Edgar, Adrienne Lynn ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33744990266     PISSN: 00360341     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/1467-9434.00267     Document Type: Article

References (97)

1. On the hujum and the unveiling campaign in Central Asia see Gregory J. Massell, The Surrogate Proletariat: Moslem Women and Revolutionary Strategies in Soviet Central Asia, 1919-1929 (Prineton, 1974)
2. Douglas Northrop, "Uzbek Women and the Veil: Gender and Power in Stalinist Central Asia" (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1999)
3. and Marianne Kamp, "Unveiling Uzbek Women: Liberation, Representation and Discourse, 1906-1929" (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1998)
4. Kamp, "Unveiling Uzbek Women," 253-58
5. Throughout the Islamic world, veiling is generally less common in rural areas, especially among nomadic and tribal populations. See Nikki Keddie, "Introduction: Deciphering Middle Eastern Women's History," in Women in Middle Eastern History: Shifting Boundaries in Sex and Gender, ed. Nikki R. Keddie and Beth Baron (New Haven, 1991), 4
6. Massell called these two strategies "revolutionary legalism" and "administrative assault." In his account, the first strategy was pursued in Central Asia from 1924 to 1928, and the second from 1927 to 1929 (Surrogate Proletariat, 186-91)
7. Massell argued that the Soviet attempt to change women's status through "administrative assault" provoked fierce opposition, eventually forcing the Soviet rulers to rethink their strategy (Surrogate Proletariat, chaps. 7-9)
8. More recently, Northrop has argued that the Soviet assault on the veil not only failed to reshape gender norms but actually increased the Uzbek attachment to the veil as a symbol of national identity and cultural authenticity ("Uzbek Women and the Veil," 6)
9. Historians have noted a similar phenomenon in colonized parts of the Arab world, where the veil became a symbol of national identity and resistance to colonization. See, for example, Leila Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate (New Haven, 1992), 164
10. and Elizabeth Thompson, Colonial Citizens: Republican Rights, Paternal Privilege, and Gender in French Syria and Lebanon (New York, 2000), 138-39
11. Kamp has taken a different approach to unveiling, arguing that the campaign had roots in indigenous Central Asian debates ("Unveiling Uzbek Women," 3, 11-13)
12. Massell, Surrogate Proletariat, 128-82
13. Northrop reaffirmed Massell's point that gender replaced class as the central organizing principle in the socialist transformation of Central Asia ("Uzbek Women and the Veil," 78-79)
14. Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam, 151-52
15. In India, too, native "barbarism" in the treatment of women was used as justification for British colonial rule. See Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments : Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton, 1993), 118-19
16. Influenced by their exposure to Western ideas, some indigenous Muslim reformers likewise called for an abandonment of the veil. Such diverse figures as the Turkish leader Kemal Atatürk, the Syrian feminist Nazira Zayn-al-Din, and the Egyptian modernizer Qassim Amin criticized the veil as a hindrance to Muslims seeking to build modern societies. See Ahmed, Women and Gender in Islam, 144-45, 163-68
17. Thompson, Colonial Citizens, 127-40
18. and Nermin Abadan-Unat, "The Impact of Legal and Educational Reforms on Turkish Women," in Women in Middle Eastern History, 177-94
19. The Turkmen practiced a popular or "folk" Islam typical of tribal and rural populations, centered to a large extent on saintly shrines and lineages. They had few professional clerics, few mosques, and little familiarity with the great textual traditions of Islam. Russian orientalists tended to dismiss folk Islam as superstitious nonsense or as a holdover from pre-Islamic practices, while maintaining that "true Islam" resided in texts and doctrines. See, for example, Fedor Mikhailov, Tuzemtsy zakaspiiskoi oblasti i ikh zhizn': Etnograficheskii ocherk (Ashgabat, 1900), 49-50
20. idem., "Religioznye vozzreniia turkmen zakaspiiskoi oblasti," in Sbornik materialov po musul'manstvu, ed. V. P. Nalivkin, vol. 2 (Tashkent, 1900), 95-96
21. and Sev, "Zametki o turkmenskom dukhovenstve," Turkmenovedenie, 1928, no. 2:8-9
22. Mikhailov, Tuzemtsy, 51
23. A. Lomakin, Obychnoe pravo turkmen (Ashgabat, 1897), 32
24. P. S. Vasiliev, Akhaltekinski oazis: Ego proshloe i nastoiashchee (St. Petersburg, 1888), 17
25. Vasiliev, Akhal-tekinskiii oazis, 17
26. Keddie, "Deciphering Middle Eastern Women's History," 12
27. Turkmen groups regulated their communal life primarily by means of a complex unwritten code of law known as adat, while Islamic law was of secondary importance (Mikhailov, Tuzemtsy, 57-58
28. Lomakin, Obychnoe pravo Turkmen, 1)
29. Islamic inheritance law stipulates that daughters inherit a share of family property, although this share is smaller than that of their brothers. Among the Turkmen, as among many other tribal groups, women were generally excluded from inheriting. See Keddie, "Deciphering Middle Eastern Women's History," 5
30. and William Irons, The Yomut Turkmen: A Study of Social Organization among a Central Asian Turkic-Speaking Population (Ann Arbor, 1975), 93
31. Sharon Bastug and Nuran Hortacsu, "The Price of Value: Kinship, Marriage, and Meta-narratives of Gender in Turkmenistan," in Gender and Identity Construction: Women of Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Turkey, ed. Feride Acar and Ayse Günes-Ayata (Leiden, 2000), 118-21
32. Irons, Yomut Turkmen, 163-64
33. O. Tumanovich, Turkmenistan i Turkmeny (Ashgabat, 1926), 96
34. Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial'no-politicheskoi istorii (RGASPI), f. 62, op. 2, d. 440, ll. 106-7
35. and Northrop, "Uzbek Women and the Veil," 28-32
36. For depictions of Turkmen women as victims of gender oppression see D. G. Yomudskaia-Burunova, Zhenshchinav v staroi Turkmenii: Bytovoi ocherk (Moscow/Tashkent, 1931)
37. N. V. Briullova-Shaskol'skaia, "Na Amu Dare: Etnograficheskaia ekspeditsiia v Kerkinskii okrug TSSR," Novyi Vostok, no. 16-17 (1927): 298-99
38. B. Belova, "Zhenotdely v Turkmenii," Turkmenovedenie, 1928, no. 12:34
39. S. Morozova, "K etnograficheskim kharakteristikam raionov Turkmenii," Turkmenovedenie, 1929, no. 1:79
40. and RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 801, l. 125
41. Northrop, "Uzbek Women and the Veil," 91
42. Idem., "Languages of Loyalty: Gender, Politics, and Party Supervision in Uzbekistan, 1927-41," Russian Review 59 (April 2000): 179-200
43. RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 1218, ll. 42-43
44. Yomudskaia-Burunova, Zhenshchina v staroi Turkmenii, 30-33
45. Bastug and Hortacsu, "The Price of Value," 133-35
46. Similar avoidance practices have been documented among other Turkic peoples (Bastug and Hortacsu, "The Price of Value," 34)
47. RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 1218, l. 51
48. Abadan-Unat, "Impact of Legal and Educational Reforms," 179
49. Soviet authorities apparently felt pressure to be in the forefront of such reform so as not to be outdone by "bourgeois" Muslim countries (RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 1234, ll. 84-85)
50. On Bolshevik ideas about women and the family see Wendy Z. Goldman, Women, the State, and Revolution: Soviet Family Policy and Social Life, 1917-1936 (Cambridge, England, 1993), chap. 1
51. and Gail Warshovsky Lapidus, Women in Soviet Society: Equality, Development, and Social Change (Berkeley, 1978), chap. 2
52. On the 1918 Russian Federation code see Goldman, Women, the State, and Revolution, 50-52
53. Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (GARF), f. 3316, op. 21, d. 100, l. 90
54. Bastug and Hortacsu, "The Price of Value," 120-22
55. Tumanovich, Turkmenistan i Turkmeny, 95
56. GARF, f. 3316, op. 19, d. 855, l. 92
57. Dosov, "Bor'ba s bytovymi prestupleniami," Kommunistka, 1928, no. 5:30
58. RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 1234, l. 125
59. See also G. Karpov, "Kalym i ego sotsial'nye korni," Turkmenovedenie, 1930, no. 2-3:29-33
60. Briullova-Shaskol'skaia, "Na Amu Dare," 299
61. G. Karpov, "Raskreposhchenie zhenshchiny-turkmenki," Za Partiiu, 1929, no. 3-4:80-81
62. GARF, f. 3316, op. 21, d. 100, ll. 79, 90
63. and op. 19, d. 855, l. 102
64. Massell, Surrogate Proletariat, 199, 204
65. RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 440, l. 110
66. and d. 1237, l. 278
67. GARF, f. 3316, op. 21, d. 100, ll. 79-78
68. RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 1237, ll. 8-10, 263)
69. GARF, f. 3316, op. 21, d. 100, ll. 78-79
70. RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 1237, l. 68
71. and d. 1218, l. 43
72. GARF, f. 3316, op. 21, d. 100, ll. 82-83
73. The other Turkmen marital customs newly outlawed included dakïlma (the marrying of a widow to her husband's brother), and gaitarma (the return of a bride to her parents' house for an extended period after marriage). See RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 1237, l. 273
74. and GARF, f. 3316, op. 21, d. 100, ll. 82-83
75. See also N. Karaje-Iskrov, "Brachnoe pravo Turkmenskoi SSR," Turkmenovedenie, 1930, no. 2-3:25-30
76. For more detail on the Soviet campaign against Turkmen marital practices see Adrienne Edgar, "The Creation of Soviet Turkmenistan, 1924-1938" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1999), chap. 4
77. GARF, f. 3316, op. 21, d. 100, l. 159
78. RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 2438, ll. 65-66
79. In contemporary independent Turkmenistan, the custom reportedly enjoys widespread support among the population, including women (Bustag and Hortacsu, "The Price of Value," 128)
80. GARF, f. 3316, op. 21, d. 100, l. 86
81. Cited in Turkmensko-russkii slovar' (Moscow, 1968), 615
82. Assisting women with divorce proceedings was one of the main activities of the Zhenotdel in Turkmenistan between 1921 and 1924. RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 1234, l. 49
83. See Richard Stites, The Women's Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, Nihilism, and Bolshevism, 1860-1930 (Princeton, 1978), 370-71
84. RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 440, ll. 93-94, 109-10
85. and d. 1237, ll. 68-69
86. GARF, f. 3316, op. 19, d. 855, ll. 103-4
87. RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 440, ll. 92-94
88. There was concern about the high number of divorces in Russia as well, but officials there worried about the fate of abandoned and destitute women, not the effects of divorce on poor men (Goldman, Women, the State, and Revolution, 241-46)
89. GARF, f. 3316, op. 21, d. 100, l. 84
90. RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 1237, l. 270
91. Goldman, Women, the State, and Revolution, 212, 297-98
92. Stites, Women's Liberation Movement in Russia, 369
93. It is not clear that any of the other Central Asian republics followed Turkmenistan's lead (Surrogate Proletariat, 296-98)
94. GARF, f. 3316, op. 21, d. 100, l. 45
95. The Turkmen state archives, which may contain this information, are closed to foreign researchers
96. Only in 1936 did the Soviet regime reintroduce restrictions on divorce throughout the country, as part of a new campaign to promote stable families and increase the birth rate (Goldman, Women, the State and Revolution, 331-32)
97. RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 1234, l. 82