Central Asian Women and the Bolsheviks

The case of Muslim Central Asian Women revealed to be delicate to handle, both ideologically and practically. First, Central Asia did not belong to the core part of the tsarist empire and was administered as a colony until the October Revolution. Marxism being an anti-imperialist ideology, the Soviet leadership ended up being caught between their aspiration of a New Society where women would be free of the patriarchal yoke and their aversion for imperialism. That contradiction explains the more gradual legislation in Central Asia than in the western parts of the Union. In December 1917, the Soviet leadership proclaimed by decree that only civil marriage would be recognized. This decree did not only disregard the religious rule but also attacked local traditions. It forbade forced unions, set the minimum age at sixteen for women and eighteen for men (as in the rest of the country), explicitly banned polygamy and the practice of the bride price (qalin). However, marriages contracted before the promulgation of the law, including polygamous ones were still recognized by the Soviet State. Indeed, in the early 1920’s, the Soviet leadership was divided on the cadence to adopt in terms of societal reforms. They did not want to alienate local inhabitants and behave as the “Great chauvinistic power”. In 1920 the Tatar Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic’s commissions on family legislation recommended to conform to sharia and local customs for Muslims. Indeed, in Central Asia, the demand for more women’s rights was tightly linked to religion and preceded the October Revolution. The Jadids, Central Asian Muslim reformers advocated for more rights for women but not for the secularization of society. In 1907, Najie a Central Asian woman writes...

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