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The Muslim uprising in Ajara and the Stalinist revolution in the periphery

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Timothy K. Blauvelt Open the ORCID record for Timothy K. Blauvelt [Opens in a new window]  and
Giorgi Khatiashvili
Timothy K. Blauvelt*
Affiliation:
College of Arts and Sciences, Ilia State University, 3/5 Cholokashvili Ave, Tbilisi 0162, Georgia
Giorgi Khatiashvili
Affiliation:
Pamplin College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, Augusta University, 1120 15 St. Augusta, GA 30912, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

In 1929, local officials in the mountainous region of upper Ajara in the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR) pursued aggressive policies to force women to remove their veils and to close religious schools, provoking the Muslim peasant population to rebellion in one of the largest and most violent of such incidents in Soviet history. The central authorities in Moscow authorized the use of Red Army troops to suppress the uprising, but they also reversed the local initiatives and offered the peasants concessions. Based on Party and secret police files from the Georgian archives in Tbilisi and Batumi, this article will explore the ways in which local cadres interpreted regime policies in this Muslim region of Georgia, and the interaction of the center and periphery in dealing with national identity, Islam, gender, and everyday life in the early Soviet period.

Keywords

GeorgiaAdjaraIslamgenderde-veilingSoviet periphery
Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 44 , Issue 3 , May 2016 , pp. 359 - 379
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 Association for the Study of Nationalities 

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