Nomadic Hearths of Soviet Culture: ‘Women’s Red Yurt’ Campaigns in Kazakhstan, 1925–1935

Abstract

This article discusses the ‘red yurt’ campaigns in early Soviet Kazakhstan, in which party and state institutions sponsored mobile centres of Soviet culture in nomadic pastoralist communities. In conversation with other literature on nomadic encounters with the Soviet state, this article considers how red yurts sought to exemplify Soviet ‘culturedness’ (kul’turnost’) within nomadic ‘everyday life’ (byt)—two concepts that have, so far, been discussed primarily in the Russian context. It argues that the campaigns were less antagonistic towards nomadic lifestyles and more embedded in regional discourse than has often been assumed, although realities on the ground complicated idealistic plans.