The novel A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini takes place in Afghanistan. It covers a period of approximately 50 years, from the 1950s to the mid-2000s. Hosseini uses allusions to real-life Afghan events to describe the ever-changing freedoms enjoyed by Afghan women with the lack of stability of the Afghan government. From the 1950s until around 1985, the Soviet Union had Afghanistan under its control. This Soviet involvement in Afghanistan caused the ideologies of communism to spread into Afghan culture. One of the assimilated communist ideas was the idea that every person is equal. This idea made life much easier for Afghan women. One of the freedoms granted to them under Soviet control was to allow women to receive education: “The government had sponsored literacy classes for all women. Nearly two-thirds of Kabul University students were now women…women studying law, medicine, engineering” (135). Hosseini expresses this through the character of Laila. Laila's father, Babi, was a teacher and strongly emphasized the need for Laila to get an education. He was so dedicated that he helped Laila with her homework every night. Hosseini expressed this when Laila asserted that "Babi thought that the only thing the communists had done right - or at least intended to do - ironically, was in the area of ​​education...More particularly education of women. » (135). For Babi, there was nothing more impertinent than the education of women in Afghanistan. He knew that when half the population is illiterate, the country cannot truly aspire to new and better things. Along with the new right to apprenticeship, the requirement for women to cover their skin has been relaxed across Afghanistan. ...... middle of paper ...... during a visit with Aziza, Laila saw a middle-aged woman, with her burqa pushed aside... Laila recognized the pointed face... Laila remembered of this woman who once forbade female students from covering up, asserting that women and men were equal, that there was no reason for women to cover up if men did not do so” (322). Seeing a woman as close to a feminist as an Afghan woman could be, seeing her fall to the level the government wanted her to was a pivotal moment in the novel that allowed us to truly see the influence the government had on women to control every aspect of their lives. Afghan women have gone through every hardship imaginable. Khaled Hosseini uses his novel A Thousand Splendid Suns to show his readers how women's rights changed during the second half of the 20th century and how different governments affected women differently..