Islam in the Soviet Era

On November 24, 1917, less than a month after the "Great October Revolution," the Bolsheviks issued the following appeal:

Muslims of Russia, Tatars of the Volga and the Crimea, Kirgiz and Sarts of Siberia and Turkestan, Turks and Tatars of Transcaucasia, Chechens and Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus, and all you whose mosques and prayer houses have been destroyed, whose beliefs and customs have been trampled upon by the tsars and oppressors of Russia:  Your beliefs and usages, your national and cultural institutions are forever free and inviolate.  Know that your rights, like those of all the peoples of Russia, are under the mighty protection of the Revolution and its organs, the Soviet of Workers, Soldiers, and Peasants.

Soviet Actions Against Islam
In the 1920s Moscow sought to undermine Islam by disrupting Muslim unity and separating peoples into smaller groups which could more easily be controlled.  The Tatars already had been scattered since the fall of Kazan, but now those remaining in Tatarstan were split into two groups through the formation of the Tatar and Bashkir Autonomous Republics.  East of the Caspian Sea, Soviet authorities divided the large Turkic-language Muslim population through the establishment of Uzbekistan, Kirghizia, Turkmenistan, and Kazakhstan.  Furthermore, Moscow drew the border between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan so as to divide Tajiks (speaking a Persian-based language) into two groups.

A further means of controlling the Muslim population was the establishment of four Islamic Spiritual Directorates.  The first comprised Central Asia and Kazakhstan with its seat in Tashkent.  The second, based in Ufa, controlled European Russia and Siberia.  The third covered the Caucasus region and Daghestan (on the coast of the Caspian Sea north of the Caucasus), with its seat in Makhach-Qala.  Finally, Muslims in the Transcaucasus region were governed from Baku.  A mufti (spiritual leader) appointed by the Soviet government led each of these directorates.

In addition to the manipulation of republic borders and Spiritual Directorates, the Soviet regime sought to control Islam by co-opting local mullahs--who were given the right to exist as long as they registered with the authorities, submitted to restrictions, and cooperated with the government.  (This tactic was similar to the agreement made with leaders of "registered" evangelical churches.)  Soviet leaders also were convinced that improved education would lead many Muslims to recognize the superiority of Marxism over Islam.  Thus, the authorities made major improvements in the educational system in Muslim parts of the country.  How successful this strategy has been in breaking down Muslim loyalty is debatable, but it has meant that Central Asians are the most literate of all the world's Muslims.

After several years of attempting to control  and discredit Islam indirectly, the government began a direct assault which lasted from 1928 until the Soviet Union's entry into World War II in 1941.  Authorities forbade zakat (giving of alms) and hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca) and began closing mosques.  Stalin even ordered the execution of Muslims who possessed a copy of the Koran, an action which represented a rather dramatic shift from the position toward Islam which he had claimed to espouse earlier.

Not surprisingly, this direct attack had a profound impact on the practice of official Islam.  Since the Muslim faith seeks to bring an entire civilization's life under the rule of Allah and the shariah, it obviously fares poorly when it is forced to submit to an external regime.  Writing in 1966, Bennigsen and Lemercier-Quelquejay (Islam in the Soviet Union, 152) summarized the results of Soviet efforts to that point:

Islam emerged from the conflict grievously crippled.  The religion of the Prophet had lost the sovereign hold it once exercised over believers in every department of their lives.  Deprived of its material resources and juridical competence, at best it was now, along with Christianity, a "private affair" and no more.

During the Soviet era, the primary change in popular Islam was that leaders of Sufism, an unofficial Muslim mystical movement, came to be regarded, in effect, as unofficial mullahs.  In the absence of actual mullahs, especially in rural areas, people naturally turned elsewhere for spiritual counsel and guidance.  The Sufis, considered to be the holiest people, were the obvious choice to fill the vacuum.

As a result, popular Islam in the Soviet Union moved even further away from the faith of Muhammad than it had been before:

Among less educated people animistic practices survive under the guise of Islam.  Amulets are used to ward off spirits, exorcise demons and heal injuries.  The cult of ancestors, sometimes inherited from pre-Islamic sanctuaries, and shamanism continue to be practiced.  Alongside of the Sufis there are numerous healers, wandering shamans, and other holy men.  In family affairs there are strong survivals of pre-Islamic rituals marking the birth of a child, and magical ceremonies on the occasion of marriages and funerals (Ira M. Lapidus,  A History of Islamic Societies, Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1988, 812).

Polarities in Islam Under the Kremlin
The Soviet government's actions toward Islam and the two responses which they spawned resulted in a strong polarization of Soviet Islamic society.  The reform movement in official Islam brought many Muslims closer to the Marxist ideal by weakening their adherence to their faith and leading them to restate Muslim beliefs in less religious terms.  However, the reaction of parallel Islam led a substantial portion of Muslim society to become even less modernized?and certainly less Marxist than before.

Of these two effects, the more long-lasting has certainly been the increase in popular Islamic practices.  Beginning in the early 1980s, there was a strong reaction to the liberalization of Islam in the previous half-century.  In fact, even before Gorbachev's rise to power and the emergence of glasnost, Eurasian Islamic leaders had completely rejected the earlier reform movement and had rendered Soviet Islam more conservative and traditional than the Islam practiced in many parts of Africa and Asia.  This movement back to traditional Islam accelerated during the late 1980s and early 1990s.

In addition, the government's actions have stirred up enormous animosity among Eurasian Muslims.  The attempts to eradicate Islam during the first half-century of Soviet rule, coupled with more recent events such as the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, have provoked understandably bitter reactions.

The resulting hatred has been all the more extreme because of the deceitfulness with which the government acted.  The Bolsheviks promised protection of Muslim rights, a protection which would have been exactly the opposite of the anti-Islamic campaigns and forced conversions which marked the tsarist regime.  Despite these promises, communists actually dealt with Muslims in substantially the same way that the tsars had.  But Russian Orthodox tsars had at least been honest about their intentions; the Bolsheviks were not.

Growing Distrust of the West
As we have already seen, this Muslim hatred of Moscow was certainly not a twentieth-century development; it had begun centuries earlier with the fall of Kazan.  However, the events since the Bolshevik Revolution have added a new dimension to Muslim sentiment, a dimension which may well be significant for Christians seeking to minister among Eurasian Muslims.  This dimension is a potential unwillingness to trust Westerners or their ideologies.

For Westerners it is difficult to imagine any philosophical systems further removed from each other than atheistic Marxism and Christianity.  Nevertheless, the subjection of Islamic societies to both "Christian" and Marxist rulers in the last four centuries may lead many Eurasian Muslims to identify the two.  From their perspective, their foundational differences may be lost beneath the similarity in the way purported Christians and Marxists have approached them.  Both Orthodox and Marxist rulers have conquered their lands, depriving them of representation in government, displacing parts of their population, and exploiting their labor and resources.  Both have used extensive propaganda and even force to convert Muslims to a foreign, western ideology.  Thus, many Muslims may see little difference between the two and may be reluctant to place their trust in a foreign belief system such as Christianity.  Because of this potential barrier, evangelicals working in Eurasia need to be especially careful not to offer secularized or nominal Muslims a Christianity which bears too many marks of the West. 
 
Editor's note:  See "Islam in Pre-Soviet Eurasia," E-WC&M Report 2 (Summer 1994), 2-3, for recommended reading on Islam in Eurasia.  Also of note:  New Geopolitics of Central Asia ed. by Ali Banuazizi and Myron Weiner (Bloomington:  Indiana University Press, 1994), $39.95, paper $15.95.  Orders:  800-842-6796.

Don Fairbairn is academic dean at Donetsk Bible College, Donetsk, Ukraine.  His 1993 unabridged 93-page paper, "The Straight Path or the Way of the Cross?" is available from the Institute for East-West Christian Studies, Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL 60187-5593 U.S.A. for $10.00 (IL residents add 6.75% sales tax) plus postage/handling $2.40 (U.S. and Canada, 1st class) or $4.75 (Europe, printed-matter airmail).  Contact the East-West Institute for mailing rates outside North America and Europe.

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© 1994 Institute for East-West Christian Studies
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