soviet union – Manchester Historian

At the dawn of Stalin’s rule, the Soviet state envisaged a new, unwaveringly socialist Central Asia. The Uzbekistan Communist Party declared a hujum (assault) in Central Asia that attacked Muslim women’s practice of veiling their faces in late 1926. The party alleged this proposal was launched to free women and create a more equal society when in reality, it was part of the Soviet Union’s ideology of scientific atheism, an anti-religious policy.

The early years of the USSR were exciting and turbulent. Rapid industrialisation, education, and the rise of gender equality led to a feeling of great hope for the country’s future. Whilst women who lived in rural areas continued to wear traditional hand-sewn Russian dress, women living in urban areas of Russia began to style themselves based on the Western ‘New Woman’ who was independent, childless, smoked, and drank alcohol.

Babi Yar, a name synonymous with the Holocaust. On the 29th and 30th of September 1941 alone 33,171 Jews were killed by SS Einsatzgruppen death squads, assisted by the Wehrmacht and Ukrainian collaborators. The mass shootings continued until November 1943. The final death toll, which also includes non-Jewish victims, Romani, Soviet Prisoners of War and Ukrainian nationalists, is estimated somewhere between 100,000 and 150,000.

Isabella Leyh summarises 1963 in ten photos from around the globe.