Veiled empire : gender & power in Stalinist Central Asia / Douglas Northrop.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Northrop, Douglas Taylor, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Women and communism--Uzbekistan--History--20th century.

Women and communism.

Muslim women--Uzbekistan--Social conditions--20th century.

Muslim women.

Veils--Social aspects--Uzbekistan--History--20th century.

Veils.

Soviet Union--Relations--Uzbekistan.

Soviet Union.

Uzbekistan--Relations--Soviet Union.

Uzbekistan.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (411 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Ithaca, New York ; London, [England] : Cornell University Press, 2004.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Drawing on extensive research in the archives of Russia and Uzbekistan, Douglas Northrop here reconstructs the turbulent history of a Soviet campaign that sought to end the seclusion of Muslim women. In Uzbekistan it focused above all on a massive effort to eliminate the heavy horsehair-and-cotton veils worn by many women and girls. This campaign against the veil was, in Northrop's view, emblematic of the larger Soviet attempt to bring the proletarian revolution to Muslim Central Asia, a region Bolsheviks saw as primitive and backward. The Soviets focused on women and the family in an effort to forge a new, "liberated" social order. This unveiling campaign, however, took place in the context of a half-century of Russian colonization and the long-standing suspicion of rural Muslim peasants toward an urban, colonial state. Widespread resistance to the idea of unveiling quickly appeared and developed into a broader anti-Soviet animosity among Uzbeks of both sexes. Over the next quarter-century a bitter and often violent confrontation ensued, with battles being waged over indigenous practices of veiling and seclusion. New local and national identities coalesced around these very practices that had been placed under attack. Veils became powerful anticolonial symbols for the Uzbek nation as well as important markers of Muslim propriety. Bolshevik leaders, who had seen this campaign as an excellent way to enlist allies while proving their own European credentials as enlightened reformers, thus inadvertently strengthened the seclusion of Uzbek women-precisely the reverse of what they set out to do. Northrop's fascinating and evocative book shows both the fluidity of Central Asian cultural practices and the real limits that existed on Stalinist authority, even during the ostensibly totalitarian 1930s.

Contents:

Embodying Uzbekistan

Hujum, 1927

Bolshevik blinders

The Chust affair

Subaltern voices

With friends like these

Crimes of daily life

The limits of law

Stalin's Central Asia?

Conclusion.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780801488917

0801488915

9781501702969

1501702963

9781501702976

1501702971

OCLC:

994610284