The Soviet campaign officially launched in Uzbekistan on International Women’s Day in 1927 was called Hujum.
Hujum was a Communist Party campaign aimed at transforming gender relations in Soviet Central Asia. Its targets included female seclusion, veiling practices such as the Uzbek paranji, child marriage, polygamy, and other forms of patriarchal control. Soviet authorities presented the campaign as women’s liberation and a step toward socialist modernization.
In Uzbekistan, the public launch took place on March 8, 1927, with Tashkent as a major center. Demonstrations, speeches, literacy programs, and campaigns encouraging women to remove their veils were intended to bring women into education, employment, public life, and Communist Party organizations.
The campaign was far from a simple liberation movement. Many women faced pressure from both the Soviet state and their local communities. Some who unveiled were ostracized, attacked, or killed, while resistance and re-veiling continued. “Zhenotdel” was the Communist women’s department involved in organizing such work, not the name of the campaign itself.