This lecture presents Sickle and Veil: Communist Gender Policies towards Muslim Minorities in Eastern Europe by Dr Ivan Simić, a historian specializing in the history of gender. Based on extensive archival research conducted across several countries and drawing on sources in six languages, the book offers a transnational history of communist gender policies towards Muslim minorities in the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia.
Communist authorities sought to transform the everyday lives of Muslim communities, particularly women’s position and public visibility. Clothing, bodily practices, religious customs, and personal names became objects of political control and ideological transformation. The veil, the fez, shalvari, Muslim names, and the practice of circumcision were banned or stigmatized as obstacles to modernization and social progress.
By tracing how ideas about gender were formulated, transferred across state borders, and adapted to local circumstances, the book demonstrates the powerful influence of Soviet policies in Central Asia on approaches to Muslim populations in other communist states. In doing so, it challenges historiographical perspectives confined within national boundaries and foregrounds the interconnectedness of communist regimes and the circulation of their models of social transformation.
Particular attention is devoted to the relationship between high politics and everyday life, as well as to the experiences of individuals and communities that resisted, accepted, or pragmatically adapted to the measures imposed upon them. The lecture will open up broader questions about the intersections of gender, religion, and political power, showing that policies towards Muslim minorities arose not only from communist atheism but also from broader efforts to promote modernization, social homogenization, and political control.
The discussion following the lecture will be moderated by Ivan Ejub Kostić, Research Fellow at the Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade.