Tatarstan: At the crossroads of Islam and orthodoxy

Abstract

Arguments for Russia's special place in the world take a variety of lines. Of these, one of the most fundamental and widespread is that Russia is a specially 'Eurasian' civilisation, the result of a combination of sources: European Christian and Asian Muslim (sometimes people say 'Muslim' openly, sometimes it is understood implicitly, as historically Russia has had, to say the least, little interaction with Buddhism and Hinduism). Not only the ideologues of Russian nationalism but also western political scientists venture from time to time into the risky intellectual waters of Eurasianism. Notwithstanding the tenacity of Eurasian theories for about a century, all the argument has been constructed entirely on poetical images and foggy, albeit enticing, metaphysical speculations. If 'Eurasianism' does indeed exist, then it should have fully concrete and visible social, cultural and political manifestations. In order to discover these we should naturally examine in the first instance the religious, social and political situation in the Republic of Tatarstan. Tataria was annexed to Russia in the sixteenth century, earlier than the other Muslim countries. Immediately after the annexation of the Kazan' Khanate in 1552 the Moscow government started to implement a singleminded policy of settling Russians in the conquered territories, and thus continual everyday and social contacts between Russians and Tatars here have had a history of 450 years. Theoretically then it is in Tataria that 'Eurasianism' should have arisen in the first place. Here, as nowhere else in Russia, the results of the interaction between 'Europe' and 'Asia' should be most clearly manifest. The very formulation of the question about Eurasianism presupposes both sides moving together: Europe towards Asia, Asia towards Europe. In our concrete example this means the reciprocal influence of Russians and Tatars. However, it is hard to talk of any reciprocal influence, from the days of the SUbjugation of Kazan' by the forces of Ivan the Terrible right up to 1991. It was more the imposition on the Tatars of the Russian way of life, Russian culture and Russian religion Russian Orthodoxy. The Kazan' Khanate was annexed in 1552, and by 1555 the solemn installation of the appointed archbishop of Kazan', Saint Guri, the first in history, was taking place in Moscow, with a religious procession and all the church bells ringing. This should not surprise us: not only had Kazan' until recently been the capital of Muscovy's greatest centuries-long enemy, but after the annexation it became the second most important town in the state. In the course of the next 200 years 'spiritual interaction' occurred in one direction only through a policy of total christianisation and russification of the peoples who had inhabited the defeated Kazan' Khanate. The Russians