Chiara De Santi

Strategies of Sovietization in Central Asia: the Red Cross and the Red Crescent, the Hujum, and the Purges, 1924-1930 Chiara De Santi

The book examines three cases of sovietization as realized in Central Asia in the second half of the 1920s. Showing how Moscow intended to transform the region along the lines of Soviet ideology, the cases ? which draw extensively from previously unpublished archival sources ? represent the delicate intersection of soft- and hard-line policies and bureaucratic control. Women, as a surrogate of the proletariat and as communicators between the population and the establishment, are the central subjects that tie the three cases together. The discussion of the Red Cross and Red Crescent breaks new ground in highlighting the interconnections between a supposedly neutral organization and party-state and Red Army institutions. The treatment of gender policy, with particular emphasis on the hujum, illustrates the reactions among the indigenous population and the counter-reactions of the establishment through the first stage of purges, leading both chronologically and conceptually to an analysis of the under-studied general purges of 1929-1930. The book contributes mainly to Soviet, nationalities, colonial, subaltern, gender, and public health studies, as well as the history of medicine.