Russia’s Muslims after the Collapse of Communism

Abstract

Despite the predictions of some Western experts, Islam and nationalism were not among the major factors behind the collapse of Communism and the break-up of the USSR.1 So, when in December 1991 the Soviet Union ceased to exist, the bulk of Soviet Muslims, with the exception of a small faction among the Chechens, Tatars, Uzbeks and Kazakhs, were bewildered and frustrated by the new political realities. As a result of the disintegration of the Soviet state, over seventy million Muslims, constituting about a quarter of the total population of the USSR, found themselves in different political entities represented by newly independent states of Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, as well as other former Soviet republics which had Muslim minorities. Russia’s Muslims, who made up between twelve and twenty million, were overnight cut off from their more numerous co-religionists in Central Asia and Transcaucasus and transformed into Russia’s religious minority. Since this book focuses on the Muslims of Russia, analysis of the situation in the former Soviet Muslim republics which acquired political independence from Moscow is left aside.KeywordsIslamic EducationTurkic PeopleIslamic SchoolIslamic MovementAutonomous RepublicThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.