ABSTRACT
This chapter examines a number of ways of addressing the memory of the colonial past in the Volga-Ural region, historically marked by a long history of colonization, based on the example of memories about Soviet “emancipation” of Muslim women. I explore several silent documentary films from the early 1930s as well as some long and short films produced by regional female filmmakers and screenwriters during the last ten years. The chapter uses the decolonial approach, opening to view the darker sides of Soviet modernity and discovering traumatic legacies of Russian and Soviet politics of domination in the Volga-Ural region.
