The Soviet Feminist Army

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 1 September 2020

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

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.

Transcript

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0:00.0	When the doors of the military plane opened, the first thing I saw were mountains.
0:20.0	I was frightened and I was shaking. I was used to seeing mountains in Dajigistan.
0:26.0	Those mountains were navy blue, but these were black. They were alien to me.
0:31.0	I did not want to get out of the plane. I said, I want to go back to
0:36.7	the USSR. They took all my documents away and told me I could only go back with special
0:42.4	permission.
0:43.0	Mujru Habibber was 25 when she landed in Kabul.
0:51.0	She was one of many thousands of Soviet women
0:54.8	who volunteered to go to Afghanistan
0:57.6	after the Soviet invasion of the country
1:00.1	over 40 years ago.
1:02.2	Mochru was part of a propaganda machine
1:04.8	which worked with Afghan women
1:07.0	to spread messages of women's equality.
1:10.0	I'm August Smyrdnova and for the documentary on the BBC World Service I've been meeting the women on both sides of this propaganda wall. We had this really developed sense of internationalism that we should help other
1:37.0	developing nations in the world.
1:39.1	We all wanted to get to Afghanistan.
1:42.0	We thought it was some kind of fairy tale land. And this is
1:45.4	Saudad Safarava. She also went to Afghanistan in 1981. To be honest, most women who went to Afghanistan was single like me. I wasn't married.
1:56.4	If I had been married I wouldn't have gone. Many girls who work with me were 24, 25 from
2:02.2	all over the Soviet Union, from Ukraine, Belarus, and Central Asian
2:06.6	republics.
	...

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