Communist gender policies were often violent, placing many people, particularly women, in difficult and marginalized positions. Targeted individuals were rarely consulted, yet their clothing and bodily practices were consistently policed and politicized. Across Central Asia, veils, the fez, shalvari, circumcision, and even Muslim names were banned or stigmatized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sickle and Veil<\/em> offers a comprehensive transnational history of communist gender policies by looking at how ideas about gender were crafted, travelled across borders, adapted to fit local needs, and negotiated at both community and personal levels in the Soviet Union, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia. Drawing on extensive archival research across six languages and multiple countries, this book brings connectedness to the fore. By tracing internal developments, turning points, ruptures, and controversies, the book deconstructs established national historiographies. It demonstrates how Soviet policies in Central Asia significantly influenced the ways in which other communist regimes approached Muslim populations in their own contexts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With attention to both high politics and everyday life, Sickle and Veil<\/em> gives voice to those who resisted, complied with, or adapted to these interventions. It reveals how gender, religion, and power intersected in the communist imagination, and how policies directed towards religious minorities were driven not only by atheism but also by deeper anxieties about modernity, conformity, and control.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ivan Simic<\/strong> is a gender historian who has published widely on communist gender policies in Eastern Europe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Reviews<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSickle and Veil<\/em> is a rich and timely contribution to current debates on gender, multiculturalism, and Muslims in the West. Ivan Simic meticulously traces how communist-led countries imagined, discussed, interacted with, and affected Muslim women in the twentieth century.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bojan Aleksov, Professor of Balkan History, University College London<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis impressively clear and accessible account deftly moves between microhistorical and macropolitical dimensions of communist rule in Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and the interwar Soviet Union that inspired their ruling parties, illustrating how and why they targeted women\u2019s and men\u2019s traditional religious practices in the interests of socialist modernity. Its arguments offer searching lessons for paternalizing social interventions that disregard their targets\u2019 perspectives and desires.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Catherine Baker, Reader in 20th Century History, University of Hull<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIn this deeply researched and captivating book, Ivan Simic tells us the dramatic, untold story of communist gender policies towards Muslim communities in Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. Through a brilliant combination of macro and micro perspectives, transnational connections, and theoretical insights from gender history, this gifted historian has opened for us astonishing vistas of understanding about how the powerful seek to control and transform those whose cultural practices they see as roadblocks to modernity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Max Bergholz, Professor of History, Concordia University<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAn innovative and deeply researched study, Sickle and Veil<\/em> sheds important new light on the history of gender, law, and socialism in Eastern Europe\u2019s Muslim societies. Moving seamlessly from the Soviet Union to Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, Ivan Simic analyses how communist states adapted and reimagined Soviet gender policies to refashion Muslim men, women, and families in the name of socialist modernity. In the process, he reveals how socialist regimes positioned women\u2019s emancipation and Muslim identity as pivotal components of modern state-building.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Emily Greble, Nelson O. Tyrone, Jr. Chair in History, Vanderbilt University<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIn a transnational and comparative study, Ivan Simic takes us through a lively account of the ways that Soviet views of nation, women, and backwardness shaped communists in Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, where Muslim women became subjects of communist versions of emancipation. Comparisons between Muslim minorities in the two Balkan countries highlight recognition as a nationality that brought benefits, while the transnational analysis is thorough, depicting the routes through which individuals and publications transferred Soviet gender ideologies, policies, and even unveiling rituals to Bulgaria and Yugoslavia.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Marianne Kamp, Professor of Central Eurasian Studies, Indiana University<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Imprint: University of Toronto Press Izvori i dodatne obavijesti:<\/p>\n\n\n\n https:\/\/utppublishing.com\/doi\/book\/10.3138\/9781487546922<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Publication date: January 2026
Pages: 256<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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