Islam in Soviet and (Post-)Imperial Russian Space: Documents, People, Interpretations

 

Amir R. Navruzov (Institute of History, Archaeology and Ethnography, Dagestan, Russia) Historical Collecti on of a Dagestani Jadid (Lett ers and Manuscripts Dating from the 15th-20th Centuries in the Private Library of ‘Ali Kayaev)

 Alexander D. Vasiliev (Institute of Oriental Studies, Moscow) Turkestanis on the Territory of the Ottoman Empire After the Ottoman Archival Sources from the Cabinet of the Prime Minister in the Republic of Turkey

Bakhtiyar Babadjanov (Institute of Oriental Studies, Tashkent, Uzbekistan) Long Way from Dar al-Harb to Dar al-Islam: Russian-Turkestan Relations in the Early Discourses of Islamic Theologians

Dmitry Yu. Arapov (Moscow State Lomonosov University, Moscow, Russia) Russia’s Muslim Under Peter the Great

Ilyas A. Kayaev (Makhachkala, Dagestan, Russia)

Jakub Tadeuszowich Koralewski(Higher School of Humanities and Journalism) Views of Ideal Muslim Community in the Novel «French letters» by Ismail Gasprinsky

Naima A. Nefl iasheva (Institute of African Studies, Moscow, Russia) Shaping Islamic Discourse of the Russian Empire in the Case of Caucasus Vice-Roy Prince A.I. Baryatinski

Pavel S. Shabley (Cheliabinsk State University, Kostanay Branch, Kazakhstan) Social Make-Up of Muslim Offi cials in the Kazakh Steppe (late 18th - mid-19th centuries)

Rinat Shihabdinov (Institute of History, Tashkent, Uzbekistan) End of the “Disregarding Islam” Policy in Russian Turkestan in Response to the “Awakening of Asia” in the Beginning of the 20th Century

Svetlana I. Kovalskaya (Eurasian Gumilev National University, Astana, Kazakhstan)Religious Practices of the Kazakhs in the 20th century: New Sources and Interpretations

Sanobar Shadmanova (Institute of History, Tashkent, Uzbekistan) Some Views on Life Among the Turkestan Muslim Women in the late 19th-early20th centuries

Tatiana V. Kotyukova (Center of Military History, Moscow, Russia) The “Muslim Question” in Documents of the Turkestan Regional Police Department (1907–1917)

Victor Yu. Gankevich (Simferopol, Ukraine) The «Crimean Charitable Society» in the Context of Centripetal Tendencies among the Turkic-Speaking Muslims in the Russian Empire

Vladimir O. Bobrovnikov (Mardjani Foundation, Institute of Oriental Studies, Moscow, Russia)

Zorina I. Kanapatskaya (Belarus State University) Religious Factor in Preservation and Consolidation of Tatar Community in the Conditions of Language Assimilation in Belarus (14th-20th centuries)

 

 

Description of the panel

The session’s focus is made on the history of relations between (post-)imperial power, Muslim elite and society under the tsarist, Soviet and post-Soviet rules. As such it continues the discussion in this field begun at the session under the same name in the first conference on the “World of Islam” held in Moscow in the Winter of 2007.

In light of new scholarship and critical methodologies, in 2010 the work of the session will concentrate on problems of primary sources gathered in Russian and Islamic studies, recent archival findings, new interpretations of the modern history of Islam in imperial and (post-)socialist space.

To what extent do Russian translations of documents originally written in the languages of Russia’s Muslim communities distort the content of the originals? If the Russian Empire was “a Muslim power,” as the American historian Robert Crews argues, is it possible to consider Russian a Muslim language? What can be said of continuity and ruptures in the development of Islam-to-state relations in imperial and (post-)Soviet Russia? To what extent Islamic traditions established under the tsarist rule, such as a network of regional muftiates and hierarchy of so-called Muslim clergy, re-emerged in the Soviet Union following the World War II? In what ways has the much-discussed “archival revolution” of the 1990s influenced the study of Russia’s Muslim communities in the past?

The relationship between Islam and Russia is no more perceived as an only eternal confrontation but a sort of a more or less fruitful collaboration resulted in the creation of hybrid institutions and practices including such particular Russian forms of Muslim power and knowledge. The human factor is also of much importance for the topics that will be discussed in this session. People are not only passive object of Islamic studies, but also subject of Islamic history of Russia. These people including Muslim elite and Russia’s subjects as well as historians contributed in making narratives about Islam in Russia.

To what extent is it possible to use archival materials to study the historical interactions of the Russian state and the Islamic world, of Christians and Muslims and peoples of other faiths on the territory of the Russian Empire? Can the voices of Muslims be heard in documents addressed to non-Muslim state officials and preserved in the archives of the former Soviet Union?

These and other research questions will be discussed in the session.

Moderators of the section: D.Yu Arapov (Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow) and V.O. Bobrovnikov (Institute of Oriental Studies, RAS, Moscow; Mardjani Foundation, Moscow)