ABSTRACT
This chapter refers to the period before 1989, when diversity was hardly apparent in the Soviet system. The official ideology postulated a vision of the ideal Soviet citizen, man or woman, uniform throughout the Soviet Union: healthy, courageous, hard-working, respectful to communist justice. In the Soviet Union, although Russification was almost synonymous with Sovietisation, the non-Russian peoples clung to their national identity tenaciously, creating and recreating it in the process. They therefore tended to resent laws that were applied throughout the Soviet Union, regardless of ethnic diversity. Western studies of women in the Soviet Union have been mainly of Russian women, mostly in their workplace, and often studies have concentrated on women's inequality of status and their unprestigious location in social ranking, despite official commitment to sexual equality. When Gorbachev brought in anti-alcohol laws in 1987 and 1988 that restricted production of alcoholic beverages, the republics, including those with a Muslim population, were resentful.
