Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T05:50:12.803Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Muslim uprising in Ajara and the Stalinist revolution in the periphery

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Timothy K. Blauvelt Open the ORCID record for Timothy K. Blauvelt [Opens in a new window]  and
Giorgi Khatiashvili
Timothy K. Blauvelt*
Affiliation:
College of Arts and Sciences, Ilia State University, 3/5 Cholokashvili Ave, Tbilisi 0162, Georgia
Giorgi Khatiashvili
Affiliation:
Pamplin College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, Augusta University, 1120 15 St. Augusta, GA 30912, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: timothy.blauvelt@iliauni.edu.ge
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In 1929, local officials in the mountainous region of upper Ajara in the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) pursued aggressive policies to force women to remove their veils and to close religious schools, provoking the Muslim peasant population to rebellion in one of the largest and most violent of such incidents in Soviet history. The central authorities in Moscow authorized the use of Red Army troops to suppress the uprising, but they also reversed the local initiatives and offered the peasants concessions. Based on Party and secret police files from the Georgian archives in Tbilisi and Batumi, this article will explore the ways in which local cadres interpreted regime policies in this Muslim region of Georgia, and the interaction of the center and periphery in dealing with national identity, Islam, gender, and everyday life in the early Soviet period.

Keywords

GeorgiaAdjaraIslamgenderde-veilingSoviet periphery
Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 44 , Issue 3 , May 2016 , pp. 359 - 379
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Edgar, Adrienne. 2003. “Empancipation of the Unveiled: Turkmen Women Under Soviet Rule, 1924-29.” The Russian Review 62: 132–149.Google Scholar
Gross, Jan. 2002. Revolution from Abroad: The Soviet Conquest of Poland's Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia (Expanded edition). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Guruli, Vakhtang, and Tushurashvili, Omar, eds. 2008. Correspondence Between Lavrenty Beria and Joseph Stalin (1937). Tbilisi: Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia.Google Scholar
Hoch, Tomas, and Kopeček, Vincenc. 2011. “Transforming Identity of Ajarian Population.” Annual of Language & Politics and Politics of Identity 5: 57–72.Google Scholar
Kamp, Marianne. 2002. “Pilgrimage and Performance: Uzbek Women and the Imagining of Uzbekistan in the 1920s.” International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 34: 263–278.Google Scholar
Kamp, Marianne. 2006. The New Woman in Uzbekistan: Islam, Modernity, and Unveiling Under Communism. Seattle: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Keller, Shoshana. 1998. “Trapped Between State and Society: Women's Liberation and Islam in Soviet Uzbekistan, 1926-1941.” Journal of Women's History 10 (1): 20–44.Google Scholar
Kuznetsova, K. S., ed. 1979. Velikii Oktiabr’ i raskreposhchenie zhenshchin Severnogo Kavaza i Zakavkaz'ya (1817-1933 gg.). Moscow: Mysl'.Google Scholar
Lomashvili, P. N. 1972. Velikii perevorot. Tbilisi: Metsniereba.Google Scholar
Martin, Terry. 2001. The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Northrop, Douglas. 2004. Veiled Empire: Gender & Power in Stalinist Central Asia. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Pelkmans, Mathijs. 2002. “Religion, Nation and State in Georgia: Christian Expansion in Muslim Ajaria.” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 22 (2): 249–273.Google Scholar
Pelkmans, Mathijs. 2006. Defending the Border: Identity, Religion, and Modernity in the Republic of Georgia. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Suny, Ronald Grigor. 1994. The Making of the Georgian Nation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Turmanidze, Otar. 2012. “1929 clis ajanqeba ačaraši (saark'ivo sammart'veloši dac'urli dokumentebis mixedvit').” In South-West Georgia (History, Archaeology, Ethnology) International Science Conference Materials, edited by Tengiz Tsintskiladze, Tamaz Putkaradze, Sandro Beridze, Nargiz Basiladze, Ramin Zoidze, Elguja Chaganava, Maia Rurua, Fridon Kardava, Karina Bazeyan, and L. T. Soloveva, 54-64. Tbilisi: Universali.Google Scholar
Viola, Lynne. 1986. “Bab'i Bunty and Peasant Women's Protest During Collectivization.” Russian Review 45 (1): 23–42.Google Scholar
Viola, Lynne. 1996. Peasant Rebels Under Stalin: Collectivization and the Culture of Peasant Resistance. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar