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Medical Traditions, Kazak Women, and Soviet Medical Politics to 1941*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Paula A. Michaels
Paula A. Michaels*
Affiliation:
University of Iowa, U.S.A.
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Extract

In 1929 a young Communist activist named A. Nurkhat traversed Central Asia gathering information about grassroots-level party social work and propaganda among indigenous women. An Uzbek woman who converted to Bolshevism, Nurkhat accepted the social and political reasons for the regime's push to win the support of local women in its struggle against traditional ways of life. Seeking to document these efforts, she traveled to nomadic regions and followed a “red yurt” expedition. Over one hundred red yurts operated across Kazakstan, providing literacy programs, medical treatment, and legal counseling to remote nomadic areas. When Nurkhat visited one red yurt, a Kazak man from a nearby village rushed in seeking help for his wife, who had endured more than a day in labor. The local baqsy (shaman) had been unable to induce birth and the family desperately sought help from the red yurt's nurse, an ethnic Russian, who was able successfully to deliver a healthy baby. Afterward, Nurkhat asked the red yurt's nurse, “What is the Kazak women's attitude to [Western] medical treatment?” The nurse responded,

Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 26 , Issue 3 , September 1998 , pp. 493 - 509
Copyright
Copyright © 1998 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

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References

Notes

* Research for this article was supported in part by a grant from the International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX), with funds provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the United States Information Agency, and the U.S. Department of State. None of these organizations is responsible for the views expressed. I am grateful to Elizabeth Jones Hemenway, Marla Miller, Laura Moore, and Donald J. Raleigh for their comments.Google Scholar

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2. Engels, Friedrich, The Origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985). The only property of any significant value in Kazak society was livestock. One scholar has argued that Kazaks viewed herds as communal property, even when controlled by male heads of household. According to Alfred Hudson, who conducted anthropological field research in Kazakstan in the mid-1930s, “there is some indication … to suggest that [cattle] could be considered as belonging to the family as a whole but held in trust and utilized for their benefit by its head.” Hudson, Alfred, “Kazak Social Structure,” Yale University Publications in Anthropology, Vol. 20, 1938, p. 31.Google Scholar

3. “The Social Structure and Customs of the Kazakhs,” Central Asian Review, Vol. 1, 1957, pp. 8, 20.Google Scholar

4. Some ethnographers claimed that Kazak women were treated as nothing more than slaves by their master-husbands. See, for example, Gins, G. K., “V kirgizskikh aulakh: Ocherki iz poezdki po Semirech'iu,” Istoricheskii vestnik, Vol. 134, No. 10, 1913, p. 290. Bolshevik activists were quick to seize this characterization of women's lives as grounds for their struggle to destroy traditional Kazak society. See, for example, Arykova, I. Ch. and Aralbaev, A. S., “Iz obrashcheniia TsIK Kazakhskoi ASSR k zhenshchinam Kazakhstana v den’ otmeny kalyma,” Sovetskaia step', 1 January 1926, reprinted in Astapovich, Z. A., ed., Velikii Oktiabr’ i raskreposhchenie zhenshchin Srednei Azii i Kazakhstana (1917–1936 gg.): Sbornik dokumentov i materialov (Moscow: Mysl', 1971), p. 80. For ethnographic interpretations that cast the position of Kazak women in a more favorable light, see Zalesskii, Bronislav, Zhizn’ Kazakhskikh stepei (Alma-Ata: Oner, 1991), p. 64 (originally published in Paris, 1865); Lavrov, M., Kochevniki: Zhizn’ v kirgizskoi stepi (St Petersburg, 1914), p. 41.Google Scholar

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9. The Kazak language is rich is words to describe medical practitioners of various kinds. A tamyrshi has the ability to make diagnoses by reading one's pulse. A synyqshi is a sort of physical therapist, while balger, koripkel, qumalaqshi, and tauip are different kinds of seers who can communicate with the spirit world and attempt to heal by looking into the future through various methods. For example, the qumalaqshi can read special stones to tell the future. Dariger (pl. darigerler) is the most general term for a healer. While I translate that here as “doctor,” I do not mean to equate them with scientifically trained, Western-educated physicians. Pre-modern European medical practitioners would be a more appropriate counterpart to the dariger. For more about the dariger's practices, see Samarin, R. I., Ocherki istorii zdravookhraneniia Kazakhstana (Alma-Ata: Kaz. gos. izd-vo, 1958), p. 9; Kolosov, K. K., “O narodnom vrachevanii u sartov i kirgizov Turkestana,” Trudy antropologicheskogo obshchestva pri imperatorskoi Voenno-Meditsinskoi Akademii, Vol. 6 (for 1899–1900) (St Petersburg, 1903), pp. 61–76.Google Scholar

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12. RTsKhIDNI f. 17, op. 25, d. 258, 1. 60. In 1929, the Secretariat of the Central Committee, which oversaw central zhenotdel operations, underwent a reorganization that led to the abolition of the zhenotdel. In non-Russian areas women's departments functioned without central coordination until the 1950s. See Stites, Richard, The Women's Liberation Movement in Russia: Feminism, Nihilism, and Bolshevism, 1860–1930 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978), pp. 343–344.Google Scholar

13. RTsKhIDNI f. 17, op. 25, d. 259, 1. 178. Alcoholism ranked as the number one reason for dismissal from the party; f. 17, op. 25, d. 22, 1. 149.Google Scholar

14. Considerable debate surrounds the question of collectivization and the ensuing famine in Kazakstan in 1932–1933. As a percentage of the total population, more Kazaks perished than any other ethnic minority. As many as 1.5 million Kazak are estimated to have been victims of famine. Whatever the precise number, the famine without question had a profound cultural, social, and psychological impact on the Kazaks which continues to this day to play an important role in collective historical memory. For studies on collectivization and famine in Kazakstan, see Abylkhozhin, Zh. B. et al., “Kazakhstanskaia tragediia,” Voprosy istorii, Vol. 7, July 1989, pp. 53–71; Olcott, Martha Brill, “The Collectivization Drive in Kazakhstan,” Russian Review, Vol. 40, April 1981, pp. 122–142.Google Scholar

15. The overall decline in the population's health as a result of famine does not negate the fact that Kazak women did increasingly have access to Western-style biomedical health care facilities.Google Scholar

16. In November 1918, the First Conference of Women Workers and Peasants adopted a resolution to organize the OMM as a centralized state system to address the medical needs of women and children. Kazakhstanskaia pravda, 2 February 1938, p. 1.Google Scholar

17. Arkhiv Prezidenta Respublika Kazakstana [AP RK] f. 141, op. 1, d. 3619, 1. 4 ob.; f. 141, op. 1, d. 10137, 1. 142.Google Scholar

18. Tsentral'nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Respublika Kazakstana [TsGA RK] f. 248, op. 1, d. 17, 1. 9. Midwifery clinics were facilities where women went primarily for prenatal care, but also to deliver their babies, at some of the larger facilities.Google Scholar

19. AP RK f. 141, op. 1, d. 2375, 1. 19.Google Scholar

20. AP RK f. 141, op. 1, d. 2359, 11. 65–67.Google Scholar

21. AP RK f. 141, op. 1, d. 1973, 1. 100; Dzhetisuskaia iskra, 11 December 1929, p. 2; Novyi step', 12 March 1932, p. 2.Google Scholar

22. AP RK f. 141, op. 1, d. 10136, 1. 140; Chesnokov, S. A., Zdravookhranenie v Kazakhstane (Alma-Ata: KazOGIZ, 1946), p. 35.Google Scholar

23. Khorikov, A. and Nazar'ev, B., “Zdravookhranenie Kazakhstana,” Kazakhstanskaia pravda, 8 March 1940, p. 4.Google Scholar

24. TsGA RK f. 82, op. 1, d. 570, 1. 13. Though I could not locate figures for the growth of OMM medical cadres during the 1930s, the ranks of medical workers in general clearly swelled in this period. By 1939, there were 17,059 medical workers in the Kazak S.S.R., including 2,354 doctors, compared with 159 doctors in 1922. See TsGA RK f. 82, op. 1, d. 51, 1. 81; Itogi vsesoiuznoi perepisi naseleniia 1959 goda: Kazakhskaia SSR (Moscow, 1962), pp. 142, 147, cited in Baigazin, “Formirovanie meditsinskikh kadrov,” pp. 114–115.Google Scholar

25. AP RK f. 141, op. 1, d. 3619, 1. 3.Google Scholar

26. AP RK f. 141, op. 1, d. 10137, 1. 153.Google Scholar

27. In 1939, of 17,059 medical workers in Kazakstan, 70.7% were women. Women in particular dominated the ranks of low-level medical personnel, such as nurses and midwives. Among doctors, women accounted for 56.1% in Kazakstan. Baigazin, “Formirovanie meditsinskikh kadrov,” p. 115.Google Scholar

28. Chesnokov, , Zdravookhranenie v Kazakhstane, p. 36.Google Scholar

29. For example, Kazakhstanskaia pravda, 5 October 1935, p. 4; Kazakhstanskaia pravda, 23 September 1938, p. 4.Google Scholar

30. GAA-AO (Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Alma-Atinskoi oblasti) f. 385, op. 1, d. 83, 1. 2ob.Google Scholar

31. AP RK f. 141, op. 1, d. 10137, 1. 141.Google Scholar

32. Kazakhstanskaia pravda, 23 April 1935, p. 1; Pravda Iuzhnogo Kazakhstana, 16 May 1935, p. 4.Google Scholar

33. TsGA RK f. 248, op. 1, d. 17, 1. 4. Kazak women never wore the veil, but Uzbek women in southern Kazakstan did, making veiling an issue for health care workers in that region. Kalym was believed to encourage underage marriage because fathers may have been inclined to give their daughters away in marriage earlier for the sake of financial gain in the form of bride price.Google Scholar

34. AP RK f. 141, op. 1, d. 2013, l. 7; f. 141, op. 1, d. 10603, ll. 27–27ob.Google Scholar

35. AP RK f. 141, op. 1, d. 2365, l. 12.Google Scholar

36. Chesnokov, , Zdravookhranenie v Kazakhstane, p. 38.Google Scholar

37. AP RK f. 141. op. 1, d. 10137, ll. 146–47, 149.Google Scholar

38. AP RK f. 141. op. 1, d. 10137, l. 142; Novyi step', 13 August 1931, p. 4; Pravda Iuzhnogo Kazakhstana, 3 August 1934, p. 4.Google Scholar

39. TsGA RK f. 82, op. 2, d. 159, l. 380.Google Scholar

40. Ibid.Google Scholar

41. Kransnyi Ural, 22 March 1928, p. 3; Dzhetisuskaia iskra, 14 October 1928, p. 4; Puretskii, B. D., Kazachka (n.p.: Izd. “Okhrana Materinstva i Mladenchestva” NKZ, 1928), p. 38; Qyzyl Turkistan, 8 September 1937, p. 4.Google Scholar

42. AP RK f. 141. op. 1, d. 3619, l. 3.Google Scholar

43. AP RK f. 141, op. 1, d. 2013, l. 3; Bisenova, A. B., Materinstvo i detstvo (Alma-Ata: Kazakstan, 1965), p. 79. In 1932, Kazaks constituted 59%, Russians 19%, Ukrainians 13%, and Uzbeks 3% of Kazakstan's 6,265,000 inhabitants; V. Gorbunov, Putevoditel’ po Kazakstanu (Moscow and Alma-Ata: Kazakstanskoe Kraevoe izdatel'stvo, 1932), p. 17.Google Scholar

44. With the assistance of local research assistants, I conducted approximately fifty interviews during April 1995 in South Kazakstan oblast with elderly Kazaks. Respondents answered a questionnaire (available in both Kazak and Russian, according to their preference) about traditional Kazak medicine and European biomedical services in their villages prior to World War II.Google Scholar

45. Kazakhstanskaia pravda, 28 September 1935, p. 3.Google Scholar

46. Novyi step', 12 March 1932, p. 2.Google Scholar