Abstract
Abstract This book review evaluates Zamira Abman’s Coerced Liberation: Muslim Women in Soviet Tajikistan, which offers a critical analysis of Soviet-era gender reforms in Tajikistan, a region largely overlooked in existing literature of Central Asia. Drawing on local archives and oral histories, Abman examines how Soviet policies aimed at emancipating Muslim women produced uneven outcomes lasting for a generation further reinforcing urban-rural divides. While the book provides valuable insights into the contradictions of Soviet state feminist agendas, this review critiques its analytical framework for reproducing teleological views of modernity and insufficiently engaging with postcolonial and decolonial feminist theory. The review calls for deeper conceptual attention to indigenous forms of agency and critiques the assumption that liberation must align with Soviet-defined modernity.