Nurkhon

Who was Nurkhon?

Nurkhon, Nurkhon Yulacheva, was a young Uzbek dancer born in Margilan, a city in Fergana Province in eastern Uzbekistan. She was one of the first Uzbek female dancers to perform without the traditional Islamic veil.

Nurkhon was murdered by her own brother in 1929 for allegedly having dishonored her family by dancing in front of the public.

After her death she was honored by the authorities of the USSR as a courageous Soviet role model. A statue of Nurkhon was built and placed in Margilan, but it was taken down shortly after the disestablishment of the Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic in 1991. A monument to a young woman representing the feminine emancipation struggle was considered not convenient for post-Soviet times in Uzbekistan. In the city of Ferghana there is a cinema that still bears her name though, the “Nurkhon” cinema.

Nurkhon became the heroine of a Soviet musical play by Kamil Yashin in the Joseph Stalin era.