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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
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,
* 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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30. GAA-AO (Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Alma-Atinskoi oblasti) f. 385, op. 1, d. 83, 1. 2ob.Google Scholar
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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
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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
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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
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