The “Women’s Issue” in the 1920–1930 in Soviet national politics: some studying problems

Автор анализирует существо советской национальной политики в отношении женщин в 1920‒1930-е гг. в контексте современной историографии неоколониализма. Последняя получила распространение в рамках т.н. «деколониального поворота» и «постколониальной» критики советского прошлого. Рассматриваются основные направления, содержание, особенности и противоречия в решении «женского вопроса» на «советском Востоке» и в других национальных регионах СССР. Выделены фактические и концептуальные ошибки, тенденциозные интерпретации и логические нестыковки в неоколониальных подходах к освещению национальной политики и «женского вопроса» в СССР. The neocolonial discourse on the Soviet national policy in solving the “women’s issue”, which has become widespread in modern publications, mainly by cultural scientists and anthropologists, is analyzed. The task is solved to give a critique of the named discourse based on facts and documents. Using problem-chronological, comparative, systemic and interdisciplinary approaches, a comprehensive analysis of a set of verified published and newly identified sources, the inconsistency of the “decolonization and postcolonial” assessment of the policy and practice of solving the “women’s issue” is revealed, and the ambivalent nature of national policy towards women in the USSR shown by Russian historians is confirmed. The research methods include synchronistic, statistical, classification, etc. The problems of modernization, which are global in nature, and the ways to overcome them, regardless of ideology that was solved in the USSR, are hardly worth evaluating through the prism of colonialism. The recognition by the Soviet government of the obvious and objective backwardness of pre-modern societies served as the basis for the organization of a purposeful, accelerated state program of urgently needed transformations, unique in scale and results. The main results and problems of the Soviet national policy in this direction are determined. The characteristic features of the neocolonial literature on the problems of the status of women of the “Soviet East” are highlighted.