Moscow’s Use of Islam to Block Creation of Idel-Ural State Recalled

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 16 – There are few more curious episodes in Russian and Soviet history in the 20^th century than the alliance the Bolsheviks formed with the Vaisi, a Muslim group that was committed to socialism and allied itself with the Soviets during the Civil War before being suppressed by the communists in the late 1920s and 1930s.

            But because this movement was so short-lived and because its alliance with the Bolsheviks raises so many questions about both communism and Islam, it seldom attracts much attention. (For an introduction to the movement, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/09/the-vaisovtsy-bulgar-activists-who.html.)

            What that almost always means is that any attention it does get has less to do with restoring historical accuracy than using it as a way to talk about current issues of concern by those who do. And that almost certainly applies to the latest article devoting attention to the Vaisi.

            In 2019, Tatar historian Almaz Fayzullin published a study of the relations between the Vaisi and the Bolsheviks in the first months of Soviet power (“Interrelations of the Leaders of the Vaisi Movement and the Kazan Bolsheviks in the First Year of Soviet Power,” in Russian, in Minbar, Islamic Studies, available at minbar.su/jour/article/view/564).

            It has now been republished by the Milliard.Tatar portal which promotes the interests of Tatarstan and Kazan’s role as a unifier of the peoples of the Middle Volga, including support for the possibility of the emergence of an Idel-Ural state (milliard.tatar/news/ot-socialistov-islama-do-sekty-kak-sovetskaya-vlast-ispolzovala-vaisovskoe-dvizenie-1828).

            What Fayzullin shows and Milliard.Tatar underlines by reposting this article is that activists in Kazan were well on their way to establishing an Idel-Ural state until the Bolsheviks made an alliance with the Islamic Vaisi and took away much of their popular support. After that happened, the possibility of such a state declined rapidly.

            While the portal does not specify why it published the article now, it seems clear that its motivation was to show that when Islam works with groups based in Moscow that can only have the most negative impact on Tatarstan and the Tatars and indeed on all the peoples of the Middle Volga.

            That Milliard.Tatar should feel the need to make a point many have made earlier suggests both the Islam is gaining ground in the Middle Volga and the Russian state in addition to its repressive measures is seeking allies within it against what Moscow has always felt was the more serious challenge, a Tatar-led union of the Middle Volga against the central authorities.