Islam, Modernity and the Politics of Gender 97been content to leave alone, the Soviets intervened aggressively in the realm of
‘custom’ by criminalising and prosecuting a category of misdemeanours based
on local traditions (bytovye prestupleniia or byt: literally ‘way-of-life’ crimes). By
the 1920s the sharia court system in force among sedentary populations and
the customary law (adat) practised in nomadic areas was superseded by secular
family law. Polygyny, under-age and forced marriage were outlawed, as was the
payment of qalin (brideprice).^10
Massell (1974) argued that women were enlisted as a ‘surrogate proletariat’
in a region that lacked an indigenous working class that could serve as a revo-
lutionary vanguard. The episode known as the hujum (or assault) – the attack on
veiling and the campaign of forced desegregation that started from 1927 – is the
one that has received the most sustained attention by social historians.
Differences in interpretation of this key episode are indicative of numerous
unresolved issues concerning the nature of Soviet modernisation. Working
within a post-colonial theory framework, Northrop (2004) asserts that the Soviet
Union, like its tsarist predecessor, was a colonial empire. He interprets the con-
fl icts over the veil primarily as a story of colonial power and subaltern resistance.
The Soviets set up an apparently insoluble dilemma for themselves by, on the
one hand, defi ning the new Uzbek nation through distinctive patterns of female
seclusion and domestic relations (by their distinctive byt) and, on the other hand,
denouncing these same practices as primitive and oppressive. The impossibility
of being both ‘Uzbek’ and ‘Soviet’ created a central contradiction that led to
the ‘utter, abject failure to transform gender relations, at least in the short run’
(Northrop 2001b: 213).
However, scholars like Edgar (2004) working on Turkmenistan and Kamp
(2006) working on Uzbekistan paint a more complicated picture. Edgar fi nds
little evidence to support Massell’s thesis that Central Asian women were treated
as a ‘surrogate proletariat’, arguing, instead, that Soviet offi cials were inclined to
tread cautiously from fear of alienating the patriarchal sensibilities of the regime’s
basis of support, namely poor and landless male peasants. Turkmen cadres were
adept at utilising the language of class to counter demands for women’s emanci-
pation, forcing a choice between support for women and winning the favour of
‘class-friendly’ male elements. This text highlights both the centrality of gender
relations to the reproduction of tribal society in Turkmenistan – hence the pas-
sions aroused by any tampering with the status quo – and the agency of local
elites in shaping the institutions and discourse of nationhood in the 1920s and
1930s.
Kamp argues that the ideas that most profoundly shaped both male and
female Uzbek activists expressed continuity with Jadid ideas about women’s
place in society, although these ideas were overtaken by the Bolshevik agenda.
The massive backlash occasioned by the hujum, consequently, receives divergent
interpretations. Unlike Northrop, who evaluates these tragic events through