Authors

Discussion

I will discuss the role of the Zhenotdel (Woman’s Bureau) of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1920s Soviet Central Asia. This is based on a close reading of the Zhenotdel’s Russian language activist journal, Kommunistka, between 1920 and 1930, and is focused on the Zhenotdel’s work among veiled Muslim women in Uzbekistan. I will raise questions about perceptions in some academic literature of the organisation as a loyal servant of the party leadership, something at variance with its troubled and contentious relationship in Russia. The Hujum (Attack) launched by the CPSU leadership in 1927 weaponised the aspirations of indigenous women for greater freedom in order to attack the social foundations of indigenous society. Its central focus was organising dramatic public mass unveilings. The Zhenotdel has often been described as a close ally of the party leadership in this campaign, Yet a close reading of Kommunistka shows that public unveiling had not been a central concern of the local Zhenotdel. The organisation had utilised a gradualist and culturally sensitive approach, with activists at its early conferences agreeing to forms of organisation which engaged with the specific social and cultural mores, in particular women only spaces. My paper will present the Zhenotdel’s approach and on its own terms and draw attention to the evidence of it being an independent and critically minded one.