The Soviet campaign against veiling in Central Asia, initiated on International Women’s Day in 1927, was called Hujum.
The campaign officially began in Uzbekistan on 8 March 1927, with Tashkent as a major center. Soviet authorities targeted the paranji, a full-body veil, along with female seclusion, child marriage, polygamy, and other practices they described as gender inequality. Party organizers promoted unveiling through demonstrations, speeches, literacy programs, employment, and political participation.
Hujum was not a simple or uniformly voluntary liberation movement. Many women faced pressure from Soviet officials to unveil, while others faced ostracism, violence, or even murder from relatives and community members who opposed the campaign. The policy thus placed women between state coercion and powerful local social expectations.
The word is sometimes confused with broader Soviet terms such as korenizatsiya, the policy of cultivating non-Russian national cadres and institutions. Hujum specifically refers to the anti-veiling and women’s emancipation campaign. By the 1950s, the paranji had become much less common in Uzbekistan, although resistance and cultural tensions continued.