We are pleased to share with you the programme of the two-day event on May 28–29, 2026, exploring reproductive policies and women’s labor in Soviet Central Asian societies. The event will feature a roundtable, a workshop, and a film screening.

Argument

Although the USSR supported anti-imperialist movements internationally, its own imperial structure remained shaped by ethno-racial hierarchies throughout Soviet rule (Tlostanova 2010, Annus 2018, Gradskova 2019), which took the form of settler colonialism in Central Asia (Kassymbekova and Chokobaeva 2023). Researchers have shown how despite a discourse that celebrated the ‘Friendship of the Nations’, Central Asian lives were continuously considered as less valuable than Slavic lives. This hierarchy manifested in various key moments of Soviet history such as the Kazakh famine (1930-1933) (Sartbayeva Peleo 2018), the participation of Central Asians to the Second World War (Zharkynbayeva 2018), the atomic tests in Kazakhstan from 1949 to the 1980s (Kassenova 2022), or the racism experienced by Central Asians in Russia in the 1970s and 1980s (Sahadeo 2019). While this historical scholarship has made great advances in making these hierarchies visible, little is known about how reproductive politics in particular were tied to their production. Yet, understanding the history of reproductive politics in Central Asia is crucial, especially if we want to deepen our understanding of the relationship between women’s history and biopolitics in the Soviet empire. A focus on Central Asia, in particular, allows to expand broader research on reproductive politics, imperialism, and colonialism (Briggs 2002; Stoler 2013; Spensky 2015; Paris 2020) by examining an imperial formation that actively promoted women’s liberation and shaped global debates on gender, race and the condemnation of eugenics (Adams 1990; Krementsov 2011). This workshop aims to fill this gap on research on Soviet Central Asia, women’s history and reproductive policies by raising the following questions:

• Who is allowed and supported to give birth in Soviet Central Asia, and under what conditions? Who is not, and why?
• Which families are deemed worthy of existence, and which ones are not?

This workshop examines reproductive politics in Central Asia through three core themes, considering it both as a site for the production of social hierarchies and as a space for women’s agency.

Program

All times are in Bishkek time (UTC+6)

28 May

9.30-12.30

Roundtable: "Reproductive Policy and Women’s Labour in the Industrial Cultures of the Kyrgyz SSR"

Language: Russian

Organization: Lucia Direnberger (IFEAC, CNRS) and Irène Mestre (IFEAC, MEAE)

Participants:

• Amantur Japarov (Academy of Sciences of the Kyrgyz Republic),
• Dzhamilya Madzhun (Academy of Sciences of the Kyrgyz Republic),
• Rakhmanbek Toichuyev (Osh State University)
• Altyn Kapalova (University of Central Asia)

Workshop: How to give birth to a Soviet Society? Reproductive Politics in Central Asian Societies

Organisation : Lucia Direnberger (IFEAC, CNRS)

The workshop will be conducted in English.

• 14.30-15.00 Introduction. Lucia Direnberger

15.00-17.30 Panel 1 Knowledge Production on Reproductive Politics in Soviet Central Asia

Discussant: Mohira Suyarkulova (American University of Central Asia)

• Gulzat Egemberdieva (Humboldt Universität), “The Sigh of Memory: Practices, Experiences, and Kowledge of Soviet and post-Soviet. Reproductive Politics in a Kyrgyz Village.”
• Lisa Füchte (University of Leipzig), “Giving birth to the New Soviet Man. Mother- and Infant Protection as Biopolitics after the Russian Revolutions 1917”
• Yulia Gradskova (Södertörn University), ”The State Socialist Brand of “Care for Mothers” and Women from Central Asia”

18.00-19.00 Film screening of Тамекичи аялдар (Tobacco farmer women), in the presence of Baktygul Midinova (film director) and of Kalima Esenbai Kyzy (project manager)

Language: Kyrgyz (with English subtitles)

29 May

09.30-12.00 Panel 2: Mothers facing industrial and agricultural Soviet Modernization

Discussant: Irène Mestre (IFEAC, MEAE)

• Rukhshona Qurbonova (IFEAC), “Industrialization and the Shaping of Maternal and Reproductive Behavior among Working Women in the Soviet Tajikistan”
• Fariza Tolesh (Nazarbayev University), “Cotton, Clinics and Control: Modernization and Women’s Reproductive Health in Soviet Kazakhstan”
• Lucia Direnberger (IFEAC, CNRS) “Documenting Maternal Risk in the Tajik SSR. Perspectives on Female Labor from Central Asian Gynecologists in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s”

14.30-17.00 Panel 3: Rethinking Mothers’ Agency in Soviet Settler colonialism

Discussant: Nodira Kholmatova (University of Amsterdam)

• Zhanna Karimova (University Lumière Lyon 2), “ Undesirable Mothers and the Stalinist State: Gender Regime, Reproductive Control, and the Agency of the Wives of “Enemies of the People” in the Akmola Camp”
• Roiala Mamedova (University of Pardubice), “Making Socialist Families Reproduction and Family Law in Soviet Azerbaijan (1918-137) in Dialogue with Central Asia”
• Almira Tabaeva (Nazarbayev University), “ Educated Mothers and Reproductive Governance in Soviet Uzbekistan: Postcolonial Perspectives on Gender and Family”

Registration

For online registration, please contact: ifeac.bichkek@gmail.com

This event is supported by the French Institute for Central Asian Studies and the ANR project EUGENE – Governing Humans, Controlling Reproduction: (Post) Colonial Trajectories of Eugenics.

Registration

Please contact ifeac.bichkek@gmail.com