Muslimischer Nationalismus im Russischen Reich. Nationsbildung und Nationalbewegung bei Tataren und Baschkiren 1861-1917 by Christian s> Noack (review)

Abstract

156 SEER, 8o, I, 2002 become an author, and not have escaped reservist'scall-up for the RussoJapanese War.He lived long enough to survivethe Russianrevolutions,trying to reconcile revolutionaryaspirationswith Christianpacifism. Centrefor Russian andEastEuropean Studies J. N. WESTWOOD University ofBirmingham Noack, Christian. Muslimischer JNationalismus imRussischen Reich.Nationsbildung undNationalbewegung bei Tataren undBaschkiren i86I-I9I-7. Quellen und StudienzurGeschichtedesostlichenEuropa,56. FranzSteiner,Stuttgart, 2000, 6I4 pp. Glossary.Tables. Notes. Bibliography.DM I96.00. THE Volga-Ural region, running eastwards from Moscow to encompass Kazan, Perm and Ufa, and southwards to Orenburg and the Caspian, has constituted a distinct social and ethnic region within modern Russia. In contrast to the Muslim areas of Central Asia and the Caucasus, which were incorporatedinto the Tsaristempire in the nineteenth century, the Tatarand Bashkirpeoples of this region fell under Russian rule in I552 with the fall of the Khanate of Kazan. By the end of the nineteenth centurythe population of this region was predominantlyRussian, the three million Muslimsaccounting forjustunder I4 percent of thetotal.The populationencompassedmerchants, clergy,teachersandprofessionalsin themajorcities,but above alla substantial peasantry. This book analyses both the process of nation formation and the development of a nationalistmovement amongstthe Tatarsand Bashkirsin theperiod from I86I to I9I7. The history of nationalist and reform movements in this region goes backbefore I86I, with the emergence of a Muslimpressand book publishing, and with the firstdebates on the reformof Muslim education. But itwas after i 86 , in responsein partto changes in thebroaderRussiancontext and to the growing interestof the statein modernizingeducation and society, that a reformistmovementjadidism ( fromArabicj'adid, new) began to develop: initially concerned with education, literature, and the press, it developed in time into a movement for Muslim political representationwithin Russia, and, in the I905-I907 period, to the formation of Muslim committees in this region and to Muslim representation in the Duma. Noack is keen to show, however, how diverse thinkingwas: thejadidistmovement was opposed by a subsequent kadimist reaction (fromArabic qadim, old). The latter expressed a social conservatismwidespreadamongst the Muslimpopulation, while within the reformistwing there were diverseviews on the role of women, the reform of language, and participationin Russianpoliticallife. Noack'sbook can be readnot only as a contributionto the historyof Tsarist Russia in the nineteenth and earlytwentieth centuriesbut also as engagement with theories of nationalism. His stressis on the emergence of a nationalism that was specificallyMuslimand located in this particularregion. In making this argument he aims to counter other, predominant, explanations of this nationalism.First,he wishes to takehis distance from the predominant Soviet approach, one that projected back into the pre-Soviet period the nationality categories of the USSR: thus the 'scientific'approach to Tatar nationalism, REVIEWS I57 tatarovedenie, focused on the development of a national consciousness, at the expense of religion. As the author reminds us, the term 'Tatar', like 'Turk', has had many a meaning in modern times. Noack is also concerned to distinguishhis analysisfrom that which has come to predominate in the postSoviet period, with its focus on the cultural,linguisticand social, dimension of nationalism:he insistson the centralityof Islam in this regional nationalism. He is also at pains to show how this Muslim consciousness in the Volga-Ural region was, while aware of what was happening elsewhere, in the newly conquered Central Asia and in the Ottoman empire, a distinctivelyregional one. To complete the argument, he also questions how far the Muslim nationalism that emerged in this period could be seen as drawing on a prenationalist 'substratum',based on the Tatar state or on myths denoting the area as a sacred one, and invoking the conversion of these lands to Islam on the orders of the Prophet Mohammad and accounts of saints and heroes buriedthere. Noack's historyis, therefore,one that combines an account of the internal, discursivedevelopment of thisMuslimnationalismwith analysisof the context in which idea and movement of nation developed: he gives a detailed picture of the changing character of Tatar society, and the social background of political activists,but also of something too easily omitted from endogenous accounts of the emergence of nationalism, the role of the broader political context and, very crucially, of the Tsarist state in both stimulating and inhibiting this consciousness. Parallels suggest themselves both with other reform and national movements within...