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Subaltern Dialogues: Subversion and Resistance in Soviet Uzbek Family Law

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Douglas Northrop
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We must address this question very seriously. We can no longer be patient with violations of women's rights. Our country is growing [and] moving ahead; the collective farms are growing; culture is expanding; we are moving forward on all sides with regards to women. We must take care to help them. Among us Uzbeks it is said that only a crazy person gets mixed up in family matters between a husband and wife. This is not so: what about the cases in which signals arose of [bad] relations between husband and wife, [but] based on this sentiment no attention was paid and bad results [followed]. This [advice to leave family affairs alone] is the invention ofbois [wealthy people] and the religious clergy and only serves their hostile ends.

-Abdurakhmanov to a conference of Uzbek Stakhanovite kolkhoz women, 1940

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Slavic Review , Volume 60 , Issue 1 , Spring 2001 , pp. 115 - 139
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Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2001

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References

Drafts of this paper were presented at the University of Toronto, the University of Georgia, and the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies in Denver, Colorado, November 2000. For comments and suggestions I am particularly grateful to my colleagues in Athens as well as to Lynne Viola, Daniel Segal, Francine Hirsch, and the editor and anonymous referees for Slavic Review. Epigraph: Özbekiston respublikasi markaziy davlat arkhivi (hereafter ÖzRMDA),f. 837, op. 32, d. 2066,1. 102 (transcript of conference proceedings).

1. ÖzRMDA, f. 2454, op. 1, d. 412, 1. 137 (draft article by Uzbek TsIK chair Yoldosh Akhunbobaev).

2. Massell, Gregory J., “Law as an Instrument of Revolutionary Change in a Traditional Milieu,” Law and Society Revieiv 2, no. 2 (1968): 195–200 and 219-28Google Scholar; and Massell, The Surrogate Proletariat: Moslem Women and Revolutionary Strategies in Soviet Central Asia, 1919-1929 (Princeton, 1974), 192–212.

3. Solomon, Peter H. Jr., Soviet Criminal Justice under Stalin (Cambridge, Eng., 1996), esp. 447–69Google Scholar. The phrase is adapted from the title of chapter 3 in Goldman, Wendy, Women, the State, and Revolution: Soviet Family Policy and Social Life, 1917–1936 (Cambridge, Eng., 1993), 101 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Recent scholarship has considered wider Soviet campaigns to transform everyday culture and byt, but usually only in Russia proper. See Michelle Fuqua, The Politics of the Domestic Sphere: The Zhenotdely, Women's Liberation, and the Search for a Novyi Byt in Early Soviet Russia, Treadgold Papers, no. 10 (Seattle, 1995).

4. Among the most recent work on this theme is Fitzpatrick, Sheila, ed., Stalinism: New Directions (London, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and the Annals of Communism series at Yale University Press.

5. Dirks, Nicholas B., “From Little King to Landlord: Colonial Discourse and Colonial Rule,” in Dirks, Nicholas B., ed., Colonialism and Culture (Ann Arbor, 1992), 175–208.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6. See Douglas Taylor Northrop, “Uzbek Women and the Veil: Gender and Power in Stalinist Central Asia” (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1999).

7. These notions have been most thoroughly discussed and theorized by linguistic anthropologists. See, for example, Irvine, Judith T., “Shadow Conversations: The Indeterminacy of Participant Roles,” in Silverstein, Michael and Urban, Greg, eds., Natural Histories of Discourse (Chicago, 1996), 131–59, esp. 135.Google Scholar

8. The phrase is from Harker, Richard et al., eds., An Introduction to the Work of Pierre Bourdieu: The Practice of Theory (New York, 1990), 13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On “symbolic capital,” see Bourdieu, Pierre, Language and Symbolic Poxver (Cambridge, Mass., 1991), 166–67.Google Scholar

9. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in Nelson, Gary and Grossberg, Lawrence, eds., Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (Urbana, 1988), 298 Google Scholar. Emphasis in the original.

10. It should be noted that each nationality received its own distinctive set of “crimes“—specific to Kazakhs, Turkmens, Uzbeks, and so on. See OzRMDA, f. 86, op. 1, d. 4434, 1. 206 (report on Özbek Narkomiust, 1928), and also Northrop, “Uzbek Women and the Veil,” chap. 1.

11. See Partiinyi arkhiv tsentral'nogo soveta narodnoi demokraticheskoi partii Uzbekistana (hereafter, PATsS-NDPUz), f. 60, op. 1, d. 4868,11. 25–26 (Zhenotdel report on women's work in Turkestan, 1924), and ÖzRMDA, f. 86, op. 1, d. 2772, 1. 148 (resolution on qalin, 1926). PATsS-NDPUz unfortunately remains closed to scholars. 1 am grateful to several colleagues for providing typescripts and notes from PATsS-NDPUz holdings. Some wish to remain anonymous; of those I may acknowledge, I thank Shoshana Keller of Hamilton College for kindly sharing her archival notes. References from Keller's notes are recorded as PATsS-NDPUz(K).

12. Divorce became easier to obtain, and child support and alimony became obligatory on the part of the spouse with the greater degree of financial independence, usually the husband. See Rossiisskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial'no-politicheskoi istorii (the former RTsKhlDNI, hereafter RGASPI), f. 62, op. 2, d. 1224,1. 55 (Zhenotdel investigation of Central Asian judicial system, 1926); ÖzRMDA, f. 86, op. 1, d. 2217, 11. 22–23 (suggested discussion themes, 1926); d. 4434,11. 208–9.

13. “O predostavlenii osobykh l'got zhenshchinam po okhrane ikh cherez sudebnye uchrezhdeniia ot nasilii i oskorblenii po povodu sniatiia parandzhi,” Sobranie uzakonenii i rasporiazhenii raboche-dekhkanskogopravitel'stva UzSSR, 1927, pt. l,no. 11:234–35.

14. See ÖzRMDA, f. 6, op. 2, d. 462, 11. 28–29 (Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate [RKI] report on women's work, 1931); f. 9, op. 1, d. 3417, 1. 135 (report of Committee to Improve Women's Labor and Life [KUBT], 1930); f. 86, op. 1, d. 5602, 11. 1–3 (Uzbek Supreme Court reports, 1929); f. 86, op. 1, d. 5885,11. 382–83 (report on the implementation of byt crime legislation, 1929); f. 86, op. 1, d. 6574,1. 42 (KUBT report, 1930).

15. See the report from 1929 in RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 2081, 1. 16 (socialist competition to eradicate byt crime).

16. Pederasty was called a common sex crime (along with qalin) in a 1928 report in ÖzRMDA, f. 86, op. 1, d. 5602,11. 22–22ob.

17. RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 1199,1. 21 (Fifth Provincial Conference on Work among Women, 1927). For the text of existing byt laws before the standardization of 1926–27, see I. A., “Bytovye prestupleniia,” Vestnik iustitsii Uzbekistana, 1925, nos. 4–5:27–30. For an exhaustive list of changes considered in the late 1920s, sec ÖzRMDA, f. 86, op. 1, d. 5885, II. 321–62 (Uzbek TsIK resolution, 1929).

18. Its success in making such arguments enabled the Zhenotdel to survive in Central Asia after its official disbanding in Moscow in 1930. Under the name “Zhensektor“ (women's section), these activists retained an organizational presence in Uzbekistan for several more years, at least through the mid-1930s, due to the special circumstances of women in Central Asia. A Zhensektor report from late 1936 or early 1937, for example, can be found in PATsS-NDPUz, f. 58, op. 13, d. 1169, 11. 7–14. See Alimova, Dilorom Agzamovna, Zhenskii vopros v Srednei Azii: Istoriia hucheniia i sovremennye problemy (Tashkent, 1991), 62–64 Google Scholar; and Chirkov, Petr Matveevich, Reshenie zhenskogo voprosa v SSSR (1917-1937 gg.) (Moscow, 1978), 71.Google Scholar

19. For more on these issues, see Northrop, “Uzbek Women and the Veil,” chaps. 2, 7, and 8.

20. ÖzRMDA, f. 245, op. 1, d. 222, 1. 118 (Peasant union [Koshchi] protocols, 1927). On this debate, see also RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 1240,1. 18ob. (Uzbek party Central Committee plenary report on hujum, 1927).

21. ÖzRMDA, f. 86, op. 1, d. 4434,1. 208.

22. Due to space limitations, I discuss here only the first of these areas—polygyny— as an illustration of the problems in Soviet law-making. Other topics, such as underage marriage and qalin, are discussed in later sections on social responses to the new laws. For more on the complexities of devising legal definitions for this byt canon, see Northrop, “Uzbek Women and the Veil,” 344–63.

23. ÖzRMDA, f. 86, op. l,d. 2772,1. 148; f. 86, op. 1, d. 3618,11. 4–11 (family law code, 1926).

24. See the sharp debate at OzRMDA, f. 904, op. 1, d. 200, 11. 8–12 (Narkomiust materials on family law code, 1928). See also “Novyi zakon o brake, sem'e i opeke,” Pravda Vostoka (PV), no. 219/1415 (25 September 1927): 3.

25. ÖzRMDA, f. 904, op. 1, d. 200,11. 8ob.–9ob.

26. Ibid., 1.9.

27. ÖzRMDA, f. 245, op. 1, d. 222,1. 118.

28. Wagner, William G., Marriage, Property and Law in Late Imperial Russia (Oxford, 1994), 383.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29. RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 1685, 1. 85 (theses on Zhenotdel's tenth anniversary, 1928).

30. The first phrase is drawn from Scott, James C., Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (New Haven, 1985)Google Scholar. On “hidden transcripts,” see his Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, 1990).

31. ÖzRMDA, f. 904, op. 1, d. 203,11. 109–12 (Narkomiust materials on new marriage code, 1928).

32. On the 1927 marches, see ÖzRMDA, f. 1714, op. 5, d. 663, 11. 42Ö43 (criminal proceedings against Mukhamedjon et al. for agitating against women's liberation, 1927Ö31); ringleaders’ arrests in 1928 are described in RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 1688, 1. 187 (report on International Women's Day in Tashkent province). “Systematic, organized” resistance in the form of anti-Soviet speeches across Uzbekistan in 1929 is described in ÖzRMDA, f. 86, op. 1, d. 5885,11. 381Ö82. For an example from later years, see Shakirkhoja Tagirkhojaev's protests in 1937 about the legality of marriages to unveiled women. ÖzRMDA, f. 837, op. 32, d. 346, 1. 2 (investigative brigade materials on “Red Partisan“ rtiahalla [urban neighborhood], Tashkent).

33. “Eshche odna zhertva,” PV, no. 1406 (14 September 1927): 5.

34. For some of the copious documentation on such crimes during the 1927-29 period, see RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 1214,11. 12, 26, 43, 47, 54, 59, 74, 79-81, 83, 89–91, 93–94, 96, 132, 140, 154, 156 (OGPU reports on Central Asian women's liberation, 1927); f. 62, op. 2, d. 1520,11. 224–25 (criminal proceedings against communists accused of raping an unveiled woman, 1928); f. 62, op. 2, d. 1692,11.22,113–23, 198–99 (Central Asian Party Bureau [Sredazbiuro] correspondence about murdered women's activists, 1928); and PATsS-NDPUz, f. 58, op. 5, d. 815, 11. 175–78 (internal party investigation of members' implementation of hujum, 1929). Numerous published sources include Nukhrat, A., “Na bor'bu s perezhitkami rodovogo byta,” Sudebnaia praklika RSFSR, 1929, no. 3:58 Google Scholar; and Akopov, S., “Bor'ba s bytovymi prestupleniiami,” Revoliutsiia i natsional'nostei, 1930, nos. 4–5:66 Google Scholar. The figure of 2,500 murders is from Ibragimova, N. and Salimova, F., “Opyt raskreposhcheniia zhenshchin respublik Srednei Azii i Kazakhstana i ego burzhuaznykh falsifikatory,“ Kommunist Uzbekistana, 1985, no. 8:83–89.Google Scholar

35. Malerialy k otchetu Tsentral'nogo Komiteta KP (bol.) Uzbekistan/! V-mu Partiinomu kurultaiu (Samarqand, 1930), 58.

36. The number of qalin and underage marriage prosecutions in the Uzbek SSR grew from 152 in the first half of 1938 to 213 during the first four months of 1939. PATsSNDPUz, f. 58, op. 15, d. 1383,11. 39–43 (Uzbek party Central Committee report on work with Uzbek girls, 1939).

37. ÖzRMDA, f. 904, op. 10, d. 91,11. 42–46 (Uzbek Narkomiust materials on judicial efforts to eradicate crimes against women). Consider the litany of violations in Farghona in OzRMDA, f. 2454, op. 1, d. 412,11. 135–36, or the crime statistics in 11. 144-45.

38. The report from Khorazm is at RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 1690, 1. 2 (Zhenotdel report, 1928). One partial audit in 1936, for example, found hundreds of cases during the previous year: see PATsS-NDPUz(K), f. 58, op. 12, d. 638, 11. 96, 105 (Uzbek party and OGPU reports). For the persistence of the practice, as well as the magnitude of the prices involved, see PATsS-NDPUz, f. 58, op. 4, d. 1235, 11. 12–13 (OGPU report on women's movement, 1928), and f. 58, op. 9, d. 968, 11. 196–97 (report on conference of kolkhoz women in Qoradare, 1933).

39. On the shift to cash, see ÖzRMDA, f. 9, op. 1, d. 3397, 1. 88 (Uzbek party reports on byt crime, 1929); on “gifts,” see (among many others) ÖzRMDA, f. 86, op. 1, d. 4902, 1. 20 (KUBT resolutions, 1928).

40. RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 1224,1. 48.

41. ÖzRMDA, f. 1714, op. 5, d. 322, 11. 83, 98 (criminal case against Iarashev et al., 1929–30).

42. ÖzRMDA, f. 86, op, 1, d. 5885,11. 387–88.

43. The case from 1927 is in RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 1250,1. 54 (local party reports on hujum); from 1936 in PATsS-NDPUz(K), f. 58, op. 12, d. 638,11. 96, 105; and from 1940 in ÖzRMDA, f. 2454, op. 1, d. 413,1. 72 (articles and speeches of Khursan Mahmudova).

44. ÖzRMDA, f. 86, op. 10, d. 632,1. 209 (transcript of First All-Uzbek Congress of Laboring Female Youth, 1935). Hundreds of cases of polygynous unions were also reported during 1934 in PATsS-NDPUz, f. 58, op. 10, d. 141, 1. 32 (Uzbek Central Committee Bureau resolution).

45. See Mukhitdinova, Emine, Revoliutsionnaia zakonnost’ i bytovye prestupleniia na Vostoke (Moscow-Leningrad, 1929), 29–34 Google Scholar. For a case from 1937, see ÖzRMDA, f. 837, op. 32, d. 346,11. 29, 32.

46. Mostovaia, E., “Pervoe vsesoiuznoe soveshchanie Komissii po uluchsheniiu truda i byta zhenshchin-vostochnits,” Vlast’ Sovetov, no. 9 (4 March 1928): 8.Google Scholar

47. ÖzRMDA, f. 9, op. 1, d. 3397, 1. 114. The argument about the contradictions between destroying polygyny and the impossibility of independent economic lives for women was used by “enemies” according to V. Kasparova, “Zadachi 3-go soveshchaniia rabotnikov sredi trudiashchikhsia zhenshchin Vostoka,” Izvestiia TsKRKP(b), 1925, no. 9/84:6.

48. For a detailed discussion of how these rules were created, see Northrop, “Uzbek Women and the Veil,” 356–63.

49. This case is described in PATsS-NDPUz, f. 58, op. 14, d. 1092, 11. 1–2 (report on women's work in October and Kirov districts of Tashkent, 1939).

50. For a party investigation of Bukhoro in 1928, see ÖzRMDA, f. 86, op. 1, d. 5718, 1. 208. The audit of 1935–36 is reported at PATsS-NDPUz(K), f. 58, op. 12, d. 638,11. 95, 105. The 1940 report is at ÖzRMDA, f. 2454, op. 1, d. 412,11. 130, 139.

51. The case from 1939 is in PATsS-NDPUz, f. 58, op. 14, d. 1092,11. 1–2. Other cases of girls as young as twelve being given spravki attesting to their legal age for marriage— often with the connivance or support of local officials—are in ÖzRMDA, f. 86, op. 1, d. 3031, 1. 11 (transcript of First Uzbek Congress of Female Soviet Members, 1927); f. 86, op. 1, d. 3626,1. 103 (Qashqadare KUBT materials, 1927).

52. ÖzRMDA, f. 904, op. 10, d. 91, 11. 5–6. For the criminal sanctions since the early 1930s, see ÖzRMDA, f. 86, op. 1, d. 6556,1. 162 (party resolutions and reports on cultural work among Uzbek women, 1930).

53. ÖzRMDA, f. 86, op. 1, d. 5594, 11. 234ob.–235 (transcript of Second Congress of Andijon Soviets, 1929).

54. RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 2080, 1. 1 (Zhenotdel discussions of attacks on activist women, 1929). For a similar case in 1935, see ÖzRMDA, f. 86, d. 10,1.634,1.225 (First All-Uzbek Congress of Laboring Female Youth proceedings).

55. ÖzRMDA, f. 86, op. 1, d. 5594,1. 236.

56. Ibid., 1.232.

57. See the discussions of Turkmen staff members and delays in the early 1930s, for instance, in ÖzRMDA, f. 6, op. 2, d. 462,11. 10–11, 94–134; f. 9, op. 1, d. 3397,11. 96–107. A similar report on the Uzbek campaign isatf. 736, op. 3, d. 77,11. 5-1 lob. (Zhenotdel reports on local women's work, 1928). Sometimes the ethnically Russian staff proved unable to address indigenous populations at all: see, for example, the case of a speech to Tajik women in 1927 that was delivered in Uzbek. RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 1694,1. 20 (OGPU reports on hujum, 1928).

58. The Pravda Vostoka complaint is in M. Grek., “Shariat v sovetskom sude,” PV, no. 287/1781 (13 December 1928): 5. For the customs officer in 1929, see lu. Larin, , Evrei i antisemitizm v SSSR (Moscow-Leningrad, 1929), 13.Google Scholar

59. RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 2691,11. 30–31 (transcript of First Central Asian Congress of Zhensektor Workers, 1931).

60. Strong, Anna Louise, Red Star in Samarkand (New York, 1929), 257.Google Scholar

61. PATsS-NDPUz, f. 58, op. 3, d. 1598,1. 35 (OGPU report on hujum, 1927).

62. Rezoliutsii Uzbekskogo soveshchaniia rabotnikov sredi rabotnits i dekhkanok (Tashkent, 1929), 16.Google Scholar

63. See ÖzRMDA, f. 904, op. 10, d. 91,11. 7–10, and Iuldash Saidov, “V Surkhan-Dar'e oslablena rabota sredi zhenshchin,” PV, no. 204/5068 (5 September 1939): 2.

64. ÖzRMDA, f. 86, op. 1, d. 5885,1. 386.

65. Ibid., 11. 381–83. See also ÖzRMDA, f. 86, op. 10, d. 1091, 1. 6 (party reports on women's work, 1936–37).

66. ÖzRMDA, f. 6, op. 2, d. 462,1. 29.

67. This report is in ÖzRMDA, f. 904, op. 10, d. 91, 11. 47–55. Similar reports from 1941 describing the provinces of Samarqand and Bukhoro are at 11. 58–69 and 72–97, respectively. All such regional courts came under severe scrutiny in a resolution of the Uzbek Commissariat of Justice Collegium (11. 70–7lob.).

68. PATsS-NDPUz, f. 58, op. 15, d. 81, 11. 10–11 (resolution of the Uzbek Central Committee Bureau, 1939).

69. See, for example, the letter to Soviet officials threatening such retribution in RGASP1, f. 62, op. 2, d. 1694,1. 50.

70. Strong, Red Star in Samarkand, 256.

71. Inoiatov, T. T., “Sudy sovetskogo Uzbekistana v bor'be s feodal'no-baiskimi perezhitkami,“ Trudy SAGU (Novaia seriia, iuridicheskie nauki), bk. 4 (1958), no. 124:26–27.Google Scholar

72. N., “Druz'ia chachvana i ichkari,” PV, no. 1595 (7 May 1928): 4.

73. ÖzRMDA, f. 904, op. 1, d. 203,1. 106. See also 1. 128.

74. This argument, of course, parallels that of Lynne Viola, who has shown how Russian and Ukrainian women used preconceptions about female weakness and customary roles in order to lead protests against collectivization. Soviet authorities likewise tended to perceive them as manipulated, not free, actors insofar as they opposed Soviet efforts. See Viola, Lynne, “ Bab'i Bunty and Peasant Women's Protest during Collectivization,” Russian Review 45, no. 1 (January 1986): 23–2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

75. ÖzRMDA, f. 86, op. 1, d. 2772,1. 148; f. 86, op. 1, d. 3933, 11. 88–89.

76. Such women were usually described as the wives of bois or Muslim clerics, and generally only a few “ringleaders” would be arrested for a short time. See ÖzRMDA, f. 86, op. 2, d. 27,1. 41 (report by Zhukova and Shadievaon women's work, 1928); RGASPI, f. 62, op. 2, d. 1419, 1. 4ob. (Sredazbiuro information on International Women's Day, 1928); f. 62, op. 2, d. 1689, 1. 55 (Sredazbiuro discussions of Central Asian holidays, 1928); f. 62, op. 2, d. 2064, 1. 48ob. (OGPU reports on hujum, 1929).

77. Some women, for instance, became otins, a uniquely Central Asian institution in which women served as religious teachers with full oversight responsibility for other female believers. Otins enjoyed positions of very high status and honor, equivalent in many ways to that of (male) mullas and with a similar charge to uphold and spread the faith. See Fathi, Habiba, “Otines: The Unknown Women Clerics of Central Asian Islam,” Central Asian Survey 16, no. 1 (1997): 27–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

78. ÖzRMDA, f. 9, op. 1, d. 3385, 1. 54 (report on byt crimes in Turkmenistan, 1929-30).

79. For more on this amnesty, see ÖzRMDA, f. 86, op. 1, d. 5885, 11. 476 and 489–92.

80. This group of indigenous female activists is the focus of many Soviet (and some western) publications. Apart from a small number of female relatives of top party leaders and those inspired by pre-Soviet jadid reformers, the foot soldiers of this cohort were drawn disproportionately from socially marginal groups like widows and orphans. As such they occupied positions largely outside local kin networks, which meant they were not subject to the same control by male relatives and also that they benefited from new Soviet social, educational, and welfare institutions. See, for instance, Pervyi s“ezd trudiashcheisia zhenskoi molodezhi Uzbekistana (Tashkent, 1936), 63–66 Google Scholar, Probuzhdennye velikim Oktiabrem: Sbornik ocherkov i vospominanii (Tashkent, 1961)Google Scholar, and Pal'vanova, V. P., Emansipatsiia musul'manki: Opyt raskreposhcheniia zhenshchiny sovetskogo Vostoka (Moscow, 1982), 163–201 Google Scholar. A good recent study of this group is Marianne Ruth Kamp, “Unveiling Uzbek Women: Liberation, Representation and Discourse, 1906–1929” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1998).