The Soviet Feminist Army

The Soviet women spreading ideas on women’s equality in Afghanistan

They were highly trained, focused on their mission and dedicated to their goal of promoting women’s equality in Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, they found women activists who had already taken up the struggle for female education and women’s rights.

In Dortmund in Germany, 7,000km from Kabul, Olga Smirnova meets Jamila Nohid, one of the Afghan women activists, who left Afghanistan when the mujahideen took over the country. She reunites her with Saodat Safarova from the former Soviet Union.

As they reminisce, Saodat tells Olga how she jumped at the chance of travelling from the USSR to Afghanistan to work with local women there. It was “a fairy-tale”, she says. Her colleagues were sent into towns and cities, but also into remote and harsh rural areas of the country.

The Soviet-Afghan war was a long, brutal campaign in which many women and children lost their homes and died. This was also a propaganda war. The claims to be promoting socialist ideology and women’s rights were part of it.

With the personal stories of Saodat, Jamila and other women involved in this struggle, Olga asks how far one can impose values from outside as part of an ideological struggle and alongside military brutality.

Presented and produced by Olga Smirnova.

(Photo: Jamila with bread. Credit: Olga Smirnova)