Справка сектора ЦК ВКП секретарю ЦК ВКП Г.М.Маленкову о положении женщин в Узбекской ССР Memorandum to the CC Secretary Malenkov concerning work with women and the state of anti-religious propaganda in Fergana Oblast, Uzberk SSR

Translation

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5 January 1940

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5. Concerning work with women and the state of anti-religious propaganda in Fergana Oblast's Namangan, Andizhan, and Izbaskent districts.

The bureau of the Uzbek CP(b)'s obkom is aware that the 10 May decision of the Uzbek CP(b) and the 24 June 1939 decision of the Uzbek CP(b) obkom concerning work with women and the deployment of anti-religious propaganda by the party's Namangan, Andizhan, and Izbaskent district committees

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have not been implemented.

As to the feudal enslavement of women, certain leaders maintain a “hands-off” position; furthermore some “communists” and “Komsomol members” make their own women wear a niqab (Atabaev, a candidate member of the Stalin party organization in Izbaskent District and Igamberdnev, party organizer for Namangan District’s Stalin Collective Farm, among others). Ruzikhon Rakhmanova, the Komsomol Committee second secretary, abandoned her studies, married, and began wearing a niqab. The wife of the district Komsomol committee’s 3rd secretary, Tilliabaev, also wears a niqab.

The new party organizations have ignored the 7 October 1939 article published in Pravda, “Defenders of the Niqab,” which uncovered instances of the feudal enslavement of women and the weak struggle against these instances in Izbaskent District; the Uzbek CP(b)’s Izbaskent District Committee merely conducted a formal discussion of the article.

Anti-religious propaganda is exceptionally poor in Namangan, Andizhan, and Izbaskent districts. Taking advantage of this situation, the clergy has activated its hostile activities. In recent times, 13 mosques intended for worship have been renovated while women's and Jewish clubs have been shut down.

Most collective farm workers in these districts observe the religious holiday. In Namangan District's Yusupov Collective Farm, as many as 300 took part in worship in the field. At that district's Voroshilov Collective Farm, party candidate members Kendzhiev and Ishmatov

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celebrate religious holidays and attend mosque. The primary party organization has not discussed this.

The party's district committees do not provide leadership to or assist League of Militant Atheist organizations in their work. The Izbaskent, Ayim, and Yangi-Kurgan district committees have not sent any students to the monthly courses on anti-religious propaganda organized by the party's obkom.

The party's Namangan, Andizhan, and Izbaskent district committees have not drawn serious conclusions from the repeated instructions of the Uzbek KP(b) CC and obkom to begin working with women and conducting anti-religious propaganda—they neither drew serious conclusions nor understood the tactics of remaining hostile elements using religious and feudal vestiges for their counterrevolutionary purposes.

The bureau of the Uzbek CP(b)'s Fergana Oblast Committee has resolved:

To reprimand Khamidov, the secretary of the party’s Namangan District Committee, and Usov, the secretary of the Izbaskent District Committee, for failing to appreciate the political importance of working with women and anti-religious propaganda and for failing to implement Uzbek CP(b) CC and Uzbek CP(b) obkom resolutions on this question.

To point out to Mamadzhanov, secretary of the Andizhan District Committee, that he has not implemented the decision of the Uzbek CP(b) CC and Uzbek CP(b) obkom mandating anti-religious work and work with women.

To ask the Namangan, Izbaskent, and Andizhan district committees to discuss the state of anti-religious propaganda and work with women in the district at the next district committee bureau meeting and identify measures to achieve fundamental improvements in the way anti-religious work and work with women is organized.

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To assign the party's Namangan and Izbaskent District Committees the task of discussing in primary party organizations the matter of communists who enslave their women and perform religious rituals.

The Uzbek CP(b) obkom finds it absolutely intolerable that the clergy is taxed at low rates in a number of districts and that arrears are not collected, and the bureau charges Sukhotsky, the head of the oblast information department, with the task of verifying, within five days that the clergy is being properly taxed and of identifying those guilty of allowing a lax tax policy in regard to the clergy, imposing penalties on the guilty and taking immediate measures to collect taxes from the clergy while simultaneously conducting a meticulous audit of mosques and mazars.

To require the oblast procurator Teshmukhamedov and the chairman of the oblast court Rashidov to conclude their investigation within ten days and review all cases associated with vestiges of feudalism and serfdom.

To require the Orgcommittee to nominate at least 200 women first and formost for soviet work, drawing on graduates of the women’s activism courses.

(From a resolution by the Uzbek CP(b) Fergana obkom dated 19 December 1939.)

VKP(b) CC information sector.