Enlightenment of Women in Colonial and Soviet Central Asia

This article will focus on Muslim women, Imperial and Soviet schools in Central Asia. The chronological framework of the study covers the regional history from 1865 to 1930. The lower temporal boundary is due to the beginning of the Russian colonial order establishment in the region, the upper one to the year of the women's departments liquidation. Using comparative analysis, the author reconstructs the history of the women's education development in Central Asia. The problem of the research is to find out whether there has been a gap in the approaches of the administration of the Turkestan General-Governor and TASSR and the Uzbek SSR authorities in educating Muslims women and European migrants. The relevance of the paper lies in the study of the new imperial history, along with the revision of the stereotype view on the women emancipation in Soviet Central Asia, alike a successful project of the Bolsheviks, which changed the indigenous people cultural values. In addition to introducing little-known sources of the Soviet period into scientific circulation, the novelty of the article lies in the study of the institutional history of Central Asia through the prism of a gender. In the course of the study, it was found that the relative successes were achieved among the European population, especially during the Soviet period, because was formulated a meaningful gender policy. Despite the difference in management concepts, there were more Muslim women schools under the Soviet regime, especially after Hujum.