The project was based at Charles University in Prague and funded by a Primus grant. It brought together international scholars, organised workshops and a major conference, and supported early-career researchers in publishing their work.
Its main result is now published as a book, which brings together the findings in a comparative, transnational history of communist policies toward Muslim women in Eastern Europe.
This project explored how communist governments in Eastern Europe targeted Muslim women as part of wider efforts to reshape and control minority communities. It focused on Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and the Soviet Union, tracing policies that banned the veil, enforced girls’ education, restricted early marriage, and replaced religious family law with state law, etc.
The research shows that these policies were never just national initiatives but part of a broader circulation of ideas across the socialist world. It reveals how gender, religion and state power intersected, and how attempts to force cultural change left lasting scars that can still be felt today. The project also uncovered the strategies Muslim women used to resist, and the consequences of living under constant surveillance and pressure.
This project brought together a diverse team of scholars at different career stages, each contributing unique expertise. Postdoctoral fellow Andreja Mesarič drew on her long-standing research into Muslim women in Bosnia. Jelena Gajić, a doctoral researcher at Charles University, examined the education of Muslim girls in interwar and socialist Yugoslavia. Valerija Korablyova, Senior Researcher at Charles University, contributed her expertise on post-Communist transformations and ideological change in Eastern Europe. Radomir Mokryk, a PhD student in Slavonic literature, focused on twentieth-century cultural history. Dajana Vasiljevičová, also a PhD student at Charles University, explored gender representations in Yugoslav and Eastern Bloc literatures. Slavka Karakusheva, a postdoctoral researcher at Sofia University, examined migration and population policies in Bulgaria, while Elizaveta Boyko, supported the project with archival research and digitisation in Moscow.