Muslims under Soviet Rule: 1917–91

Abstract

Unlike the February bourgeois-democratic revolution, the Bolshevik revolution of October 1917 shattered the foundations of Russia’s state and society. The Bolsheviks’ promise of land, peace and social justice appealed to the bulk of Russia’s poor and desperate peoples, including its eighteen million Muslims. At the same time, Muslims were frightened by the Bolsheviks’ atheism, as well as their rejection of private property and their social and gender egalitarianism. Because the reaction of the Muslim public at large was determined by the position of its leaders, the Bolsheviks needed the support, or at least the neutrality of the latter. This was not an easy task since the majority of the Muslim educated class viewed the revolution with suspicion, or even overt hostility. Thus, most Islamic traditionalists, or qadimists refused to recognize the legitimacy of Bolshevik power and turned to open or secret opposition to it. They advocated the restoration of the monarchy which they regarded as the only viable guarantor of stability and inter-ethnic and inter-confessional peace in Russia. It is worth mentioning that within this generally anti-Bolshevik conservative camp there was a small group of ultra-traditionalists, like the Vaisites in the Volga-Urals, who paradoxically welcomed the October revolution. They preferred the Bolsheviks’ atheism to ‘the corrupted Islam of the majority of the Islamic population’. In March 1918 the Vaisites forged a tactical alliance with the Bolsheviks against the Islamo-nationalist separatist movement.¹