This article aims to explore the Soviet way of dealing with the socalled “woman of the East” and to find out how much it is possible to speak about Orientalism with respect to early Soviet cultural and educational production. I explore how the “woman of the East” was constructed in different materials in Russian language focusing on the emancipation of women in the Caucasus and, particularly, in Azerbaijan from the 1920s-1930s. I am also interested in how the information about the “docile Muslim women” and women’s emancipation in the Caucasus and particularly in Azerbaijan was spread abroad. In order to do it I analyze Soviet publications and films dedicated to women in Caucasus and Azerbaijan. The study shows that in spite of critique of the colonial politics of the tsarist regime, the Soviet cultural production preserves many orientalist clichés and tropes. The presentation of women in Azerbaijan as “dominated, “slaves” and “shadows” helped constructing the Russians as a whole and the Russian women in particular, as freer and more modern. According to Said, “identifying ‘us’ Europeans as against“those’ non-Europeans” (1996, 7) is an important mechanism for producing the “west”. The analyzed materials suggest that the narrative on the “backward woman” in the Caucasus was important not only for convincing the Soviet people in the important emancipatory mission ofthe Soviet state, but also for improving the state’s image in the “West”and the “East”. Indeed, the Soviet emancipators were described in the publications of the “Soviet friends” as those fighting against colonialismand, at the same time, carrying out the civilizing mission similar to that ofthe “Western” countries