Paul
Goble
Staunton, February 24 – Following
the Bolshevik revolution, Stalin promoted the formation of non-Russian
republics in Muslim regions of his country less because he wanted the nations
they represented to flourish than because he was convinced that such individual
nations could become a bulwark against the rise of Islam and thus a combined
Muslim threat to Moscow.
Now, Vladimir Putin is unwittingly
reversing this process, attacking non-Russian nations and their languages. And
not surprisingly, this is contributing to exactly what Stalin was clever enough
to avoid and at a time when the spread of Islam and even more of Islamist ideas
may constitute a larger threat to the central government than they did in the
1920s.
Putin’s readiness to support
Chechnya in its land grab against Ingushetia not only sparked continuing
protests in that republic but also opened the way for an increasingly
independent Muslim leadership to play a far larger role in opposition to the
civil authoriteisthan it had played in decades (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2018/12/shariat-court-challenge-to-ingush.html).
Now, something potentially far more
fateful is taking place in Tatarstan where Moscow is seeking to weaken not only
that Middle Volga republic but to undermine the unity of the Tatar nation (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/02/putin-using-salami-tactics-to-destroy.html
and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/02/tishkovs-continuing-attack-on-unity-of.html).
In the short term, this attack on
Turkic peoples within the current borders of the Russian Federation may open
the way for pan-Turkism, another threat Stalin successfully opposed by creating
the non-Russian republics and a danger that the Kremlin at least appears to
recognize it has to respond to (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2019/02/fsb-reportedly-setting-turkish.html).
But a new announcement by the Muslim
Spiritual Directorate (MSD) of the Republic of Tatarstan shows that something
else is happening, at least in part because of Moscow’s attacks on the Tatars
and Tatarstan: a new drive to promote Islamic values as central to the identity
of the Tatars and of Tatarstan.
The leadership of The atarstan MSD
says that the draft Strategy for the Development of the Tatar People “devotes
insufficient attention to Islam, which is one of the main factors for the
preservation of Tatar national identity (dumrt.ru/ru/news/news_21688.html
and delreal.org/a/29784572.html).
“Our main goal,” Rafik Mukhametshin,
the deputy mufti of the republic, says, “is to involve religious organizations
in the task of preserving national self-consciousness. At present, in the
regions of the country, Tatar schools are being closed, but mosques remain
open,” at least in part because of Putin’s “optimization” programs.
Dzhalil Fadyyev, the chief kady of
Tatarstan, adds that there are currently about 5,000 Tatar schools in the
villages; but there number is declining. And in many places without a Tatar
school, there is still a mosque making that institution more central to the survival
not only of the Tatar language but the Tatar nation.
“We say that the village preserves
the nation, and therefore, particular attention must be devoted to the status of
the Tatar mosque and also to the problems for the creation of favorable
conditions for the work of rural imam,” the kady continues.
And Fadyyev joined with other
members of the MSD leadership in insisting that “it is impossible to unite the
Tatar nation only around its native language,” especially given that “its
knowledge and use is severely limited.”
Thus, it appears that if Putin gets
his way and closes still more Tatar schools, the mosque and Islam will become
more important in a region where many have always assumed the mosque and Islam
will be less so – and so the Kremlin leader will recreate or even exacerbate a
problem Stalin worked hard to solve.
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