Soviet Ideology, Russian Tradition Shaped Jihadists in North Caucasus, Garayev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 7 – Jihadism emerged in the North Caucasus long before ISIS because their leaders drew on the Soviet ideology and the Russian tradition to promote an armed campaign against Moscow’s control of Muslims in general and the North Caucasus in particular, Denis Garayev says.

            In a presentation yesterday to a Moscow conference on “The Modernization of Muslim Communities in the 19^th and 20^th Centuries,” the North Caucasus scholar now teaching at the University of Amsterdam described what to many may seem this paradoxical development (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/328846/).

                (His presentation drew on an article he published last year on the same topic available at  academia.edu/34835331/Идеология_русскоязычного_джихадизма_до_ИГИЛ_рецепция_советского_как_рождение_постсоветского_радикализма_Государство_религия_церковь_в_России_и_за_рубежом._2017._3._С.170_201.)

            “In the post-Soviet period in the North Caucasus and in part in other regions appeared an entire generation of jihadist ideologues,” the scholar says. “There were varied people but they were united by the fact that they could speak about jihad in a language accessible to the Russian-language public.” In all cases, they understood it to be about armed struggle against Moscow.

            Their jihadist discourse, Garayev continues, “was born on the basis of the Soviet intellectual tradition” with “the Islamization of its content taking place later.” The agenda of the jihadists in many cases drew on the agenda of Soviet ideology, although the jihadists put it to a very different use than the Soviets intended.

            That is particularly the case with four areas, Garayev says. The Soviets criticized “bourgeois nationalism” and so too do the jihadists. The Soviets employed anti-colonial rhetoric which the jihadists accepted and turned against the Soviets. The Soviets spoke about the need for justice and the struggle for justice, ideas the jihadists employed as well.

            Even the Soviet criticism of the Muslim leaders and hierarchy, on the one hand, and of Sufism, on the other, he continues, “appeared in the works of the ideologues of jihadism.” 

            In short, “the post-Soviet jihadists in the North Caucasus applied the lexical and terminological methods which were well known in the Russian-language cultural space there” because of the work of Soviet ideologists. Indeed, one could say that they simply harvested the seeds the Soviets planted.

            And the jihadists took more from the Soviet tradition than just general ideological tropes. They drew on the works of Chingiz Aitmatov and especially his novel, A Day Longer than an Age.  Moreover, they drew on the works of Lev Gumilyev and particularly his ideas about passionarity.

            Garayev notes that “Yandarbiyev was a graduate of the Literature Institute. General Dudayev besides being a flier was trained as a political leader. He used the term ‘Rusism’ which before him was employed by the Russian liberal dissident of the 19^th century Aleksandr Herzen to denounce the foreign policy of the Russian Empire.”

            “Namely Dudayev was the one who again made use of this term and thanks to him it returned to the Russian lexicon. Probably he was acquainted with this term from Herzen’s works,” Garayev says. As for Yasin Rasulov, his most famous jihadist work was a reworking of his unsuccessful dissertation for a Soviet university.

            Another participant in this discussion, Islamicist Igor Alekseyev of the Russian State Humanities University, adds another dimension to Garayev’s argument. He said that “the Russian language of Russian Islam become more Russian,” with Russian Muslims being “strongly Russified regardless of their ethnic attachments.”

            “For practically all of them, Russian became their native language. A paradoxical situation obtained: Nineteenth century Orthodox missionary and scholar Nikolay Ilminsky wrote that if an alien accepted Orthodoxy, he already had been Russified in his heart.” But the Muslims turned this observation upside down.

            “Russian Muslims were Russified in their hearts without the acceptance of Orthodoxy.” That happened, Alekseyev continues, because for the generation that came of age at the end of Soviet times, “national languages in fact were foreign tongues.” They might be spoken at home but “the younger generation thinks and writes in Russian.”

            “They have no problems with translating very familiar Arab terms into Russian. Rather, they have an opposite problem, Alekseyev says.