Industrialisation and the women’s question

Soviet power aimed to “liberate” Uzbek women, that is, to make them give up the paranji and chachvon and to draw them into education and production. The “Hujum” campaign was announced in September 1926 at the Central Asian Women’s Council and began on 8 March 1927 with mass rallies; many women cast off the paranji at the rallies. But part of traditional society opposed this policy, carried out fast and under pressure: in 1927–1928 women were subjected to violence, and the textbook says over 2,500 active women died in this period (figures differ among sources). On the other hand, women’s clubs, libraries, kindergartens and nurseries were opened and women’s artels were set up (in 1926, 814 women worked in 16 artels; in 1930, more than 5,000 women in over 50 artels), and women began to earn wages. Women also held leading posts (in 1927 20 percent of the members of district executive committees were women; Jahon Obidova became deputy chair of the CEC Presidium) but were later repressed. For this reason historians assess the policy as a process that both widened women’s rights and, through fast, compulsory methods, brought heavy losses.