State feminism in Soviet central asia: Anti-religious campaigns and muslim women in Tajikistan, 1953-1982

Abstract

The Khrushchev regime viewed the patriarchal practices that still existed in rural Tajikistan as the primary reason for rural women’s lower educational rates and high unemployment in the republic. As a result, the state came to view the eradication of these practices as a prerequisite for women’s entrance into workforce and their subsequent liberation. The Khrushchev regime renewed its attack on religion and put the women’s councils (zhensovety) in charge of this campaign in rural Tajikistan. Analyses of the zhensovety’s propaganda messages as communicated from the regime in Moscow reveal the state’s unsophisticated understanding of rural culture and traditions in the Tajik periphery. Despite the regime’s overwhelming propaganda against Islam, the rural female populace of Tajikistan continued traditional religious practices.