The Authoritarian Origins of Progress: Demand for Female Labor in Agriculture and Public Goods Provision in the Soviet Union

• In Event: Interdisciplinary History II: The Soviet Union

Abstract

Using original archival research, statistics, and a combination of primary and secondary surveys, this paper traces the origins of modern world progressive public policies that enable women's labor force participation to the Soviet Union's needs in mass agricultural labor in its imperial periphery under the constraints of weak state capacity and then evaluates their outcomes in post-Soviet Eurasia. The outcomes of this research contribute previously unexplored and understudied explanations to the provision of pro-women and progressive public goods in non-democratic regimes, investigates their short legacy effects, and sheds light to why repressive societal remaking does not work. Also, this work introduces two Soviet institutions to general readership: the General Cotton Committee and Committee on the Improvement of Working Women's Livelihoods (K.U.B.T.).

Author

• Khasan Redjaboev, U of Wisconsin-Madison