Veiled Empire

by Northrop, Douglas

• ISBN13: 9780801488917
• ISBN10: 0801488915
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-01-01
• Publisher: Cornell Univ Pr

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 Soviets saw as primitive and backward. This unveiling campaign, however, took place in the context of a half-century of Russian colonization and the suspicion of rural Muslim peasants toward an urban, colonial state. 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 the very symbols that

Table of Contents

List of Maps	xi
Source Abbreviations	xiii
Acknowledgments	xv
Note on Transliteration	xvii
Introduction	3	(30)
Embodying Uzbekistan	33	(36)
Hujum, 1927	69	(33)
Bolshevik Blinders	102	(37)
The Chust Affair	139	(25)
Subaltern Voices	164	(45)
With Friends Like These	209	(33)
Crimes of Daily Life	242	(42)
The Limits of Law	284	(30)
Stalin's Central Asia?	314	(30)
Conclusion	344	(15)
Appendix	359	(6)
Glossary	365	(2)
Note on Sources	367	(4)
Selected Bibliography	371	(14)
Index	385