Tojikhon Shodieva

Tojikhon Toshmatovna Shodieva (, ; 26 October 1905 January 1981) was an Uzbek communist activist in the . A victim of child marriage and one of the first as well as youngest women of Fergana to publicly remove her paranja, she rose to local prominence as a leader of women's liberation, becoming an active member of the Uzbek Communist Party and an editor of the women's magazine.

However, because of her arrest in March 1938 during the Great Purge and subsequent imprisonment at Magadan labor camp, she fell into relative obscurity. Eventually, she was released and rehabilitated after the death of Stalin, resulting in her awards returned to her and her membership in the party reinstated. Later, she supervised the development of a collective farm that she became chairwoman of, and after her death it was named after her in her honor.

Early life Shodieva was born on 26 October 1905 in a family of a miner in Yangichek village, located in what in now Margilon. When she was only eleven her father Tashmat Mirzabaev, a miner, sold her for 200 rubles to a wealthy shaman from Kokand who had nine other wives. During the marriage she was heavily abused by him and his many other wives. After enduring the abuse for several years she was rescued in 1920 by the head of the women's department of the Fergana Regional Party Committee, who helped her leave the marriage and attend school.

Downfall In 1937 at the height of the political repressions of the 1930s she and many of her colleagues were arrested. On 28 March 1938 she was initially sentenced to ten years in prison camps, but her sentence was prolonged and as result she endured nearly two decades in Kolyma prtison camps before she was released and rehabilitated in 1956.

Later life After her release and rehabilitation her awards were returned to her and she was reinstated into the party. Eventually she returned to the Uzbek SSR and founded a winery sovkoz named after Usman Yusupov in the Ferghana valley, which she became director of in 1958. In addition, she gave speeches to groups of komsomol members about the life before and after the hujum. Some time after she died in January 1981 the sovkoz she founded and directed was renamed in her honor, and several streets in the Uzbek SSR were named after her.

Awards Order of Lenin Order of the October Revolution Two Order of the Red Banner of Labor Order of the Badge of Honor