The politics of gender and the Soviet paradox: neither colonized, nor modern?

Abstract This article examines scholarly debates that cast Soviet policies for the emancipation of women in Central Asia as instances of colonial domination, as the modernizing endeavours of a revolutionary state or as combinations of both and takes them to task for overlooking the gendered consequences of the ‘Soviet paradox’. This paradox is evident in the combined and contradictory operations of a socialist paternalism that supported and legitimized women's presence in the public sphere (through education, work and political representation), with a command economy and nationalities policy that effectively stalled processes of social transformation commonly associated with modernity. Post-Soviet gender ideologies do not represent a simple return to national traditions, interrupted by Soviet policies, but constitute a strategic redeployment of notions of cultural authenticity in the service of new ideological goals. The politics of gender, thus, plays a crucial role in signalling both a break from the Soviet past and in creating new imaginaries of the nation that enhance social solidarity in increasingly fractured post-Soviet societies. The official endorsement of Islam, as a central tenet of national identity and the simultaneous rejection and policing of its more radical expressions contributes further to the politicization of gender, while the promotion of gender equality by the international donor community carries limited credibility in a context where the core of women's former claims to citizenship—through welfare entitlements and social protection by the state—has been thoroughly eroded.