Volume 9, Nº 4 (2024)

The article presents the editorial concept and content of the thematic issue of the Historical Ethnology journal dedicated to Russian Muslims, the Muslim population of Turkestan in the late 18th – early 20th centuries, and Islam. The papers included in the issue are united by the key subject “Islam in the changing contexts of eras: social and identification projections” and represent a wide field of research perspectives in Islamic studies. The interdisciplinary and diachronic approaches used in forming the content of the issue allowed tracing the dynamics of the state and the development of Islamic institutions, traditions, norms and practices, which undergo changes under the influence of the socio-political, ethnocultural and economic situation of different historical eras of the Russian history. The empirical perspective is aimed at studying the ethnocultural and social aspects of Islam in different regional contexts related to the specifics of the intellectual, theological, ritual, social, and everyday life of Muslim communities in Tatarstan, other regions of the Russian Federation, and Uzbekistan (Turkestan of the late 19th – early 20th centuries). A significant part of the articles is devoted to revealing the role of Islam in the Tatar community in different periods of its development: from imperial Russia, through the era of Soviet atheism, to the realities of modern times, which are characterised by unprecedented dynamics of the development of communication technologies. The transformation of the ritual sphere of Muslims, the format of religious practices, new online communities, and the activities of spiritual leaders in the Tatar-language media and in the blogosphere largely determine the attitude of the population, particularly young people, to Islam. A number of works in the issue trace the influence of migration processes on the development of Islam and Muslim communities in historically non-traditional social and geographical contexts. Comparison of historical research with a wide range of factual materials, documents and evidence of the past – with modern ethnological and sociological research allows us to form a multidimensional and dynamic vision of the situation in Islam and Muslim communities, taking into account their historical background in Russia and Central Asia.

The author of the article explores methodological approaches to the study of Nizhny Novgorod Muslim Tatars, which found application in the works of predecessors or those that are still awaiting testing. In this case, a microsection of the Nizhny Novgorod sociocultural space is used. Particular attention in the article is drawn to the conceptual apparatus of describing the history of the Mishars, identifying the specific features of the Mishar subethnic group of the Tatar nation and the role of the state in creating turning points in the history of this community.

The author shows that one of the research angles for studying the history of Muslims (including the Russian Tatar-Muslim world) may be believers’ place of residence, their localisation. The use of the regional dimension when writing the history of Russia’s Tatars is completely justified, if for no other reason than that specific features have historically developed in the process of development of individual subethnic groups of the Tatar people (Siberian Tatars, Crimean Tatars, etc.). Using the example of the history of the Nizhny Novgorod Region Tatars, the author proves the advantages of using such a principle as interdisciplinarity, considering it possible to apply individual elements of certain methodologies to understanding ethnicity in the optics of historical ethnology. The author draws attention to another important research problem – the significance of regional specifics, both in studying the structure and self-awareness of the autochthonous peoples of Russia in their subethnic context, and, related to this, the regional specifics of a multi-ethnic and multi-confessional state, that is the Russian Federation. The materials of the article allow us to speak about the relevance of the topic chosen by the author, since the overall ethnic picture of Russia consists of individual regional “strokes”.

The focus of the article is the apocalyptic narrative about the end of the world and the approach of the Judgment Day in the “holy letters”, which were spread among rural Volga-Ural Muslims in the 1920s – 1940s. The plot is studied on the basis of published and archival sources preserved at the Eastern Department of the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU).

The apocalyptic narrative and the phenomenon of the “Muslim holy letters” have been studied in two aspects: 1) from the perspective of understanding the protest potential of the “silent majority” – ordinary believers and Ishans, unofficial religious Sufi leaders; 2) in order to study the rural Muslim community: its fears, expectations, moods, patterns of religious thinking, and the ideological framework which explained social changes. To answer these questions, we have examined the content of the “holy letters”, their distribution channels, and target groups.

It is concluded that the apocalyptic narrative served more for spiritual mobilisation and adaptation rather than called for resistance, directly naming the perpetrators and sharply condemning their activities. With significant structural and substantive similarities with the “Orthodox holy letters” the magical texts of the Volga-Ural Muslims were more restrained in relation to the USSR authorities, which is probably due to Muslims’ specific attitude to power. Being typical manifestations of vernacular (“private”, “living”) religiosity, our sources demonstrate the deep rootedness of Islamic values, the religious language of describing reality in the minds of the rural population of the Soviet Union’s Muslim regions in the first half of the 20th century.

The article is devoted to the study of the social activity of the urban Tatar community of Moscow, the regional leaders of the ethno-confessional society of which took an active part in the petition movement of the first half of 1905. The objective is to identify the features of Moscow Muslim Tatars’ participation in the political life of Muslims in Russia during the years of social emancipation in the context of the socio-political situation in the country as a whole and the life of the Tatar community of Moscow.

The author of the article has established four reasons for the increased political activity of Moscow Tatars. A comprehensive analysis of the Memorandum on the Needs of Muslims, which was compiled in Moscow, regarding all the issues raised in the document, allows us to state that it is imbued with liberal ideology and is aimed at achieving equality of the Islamic denomination with the Orthodox denomination, which was dominant in the Empire at the time, on a number of fundamental issues, including equality in the exercise of religious rights for Muslims at the level of Orthodox subjects – the titular people of the empire, as well as in the civil and military spheres. Compared with the practices that were in force for the time being and the existing public relations in the country, those requests were of political nature. The petition of Moscow Tatars, thanks to its publication in the periodical press, turned into a “public memorandum” that played a significant role in the political education of co-religionists, the formation and development of social and political activity of Russia’s Muslim peoples. In addition, the events related to the drafting and filing of the petition contributed to the consolidation of the Tatar elites in Moscow, allowing them to publicly declare themselves as a mature social unit in matters of protecting the religious rights of co-religionists.

Religious institutions for conflict resolution are values, norms, rules and methods of resolving contradictions, which are enshrined in the religious tradition and implemented within the framework of religious associations. The main practices include negotiation, mediation, arbitration, and judging. Believers in Judaism turn to rabbinical courts for help; in Christianity, people turn to par-ish leaders and church institutions. The Islamic system knows reconciliation (sulh), arbitration (tahkim), and judging (qada). Distinctive features of religious methods are their flexibility, a less degree of formalisation and cost. Although in the conditions of modernisation and secularisation religion is deprived of a dominant position in the sphere of regulating social relations, with the revival of interest in religion, traditions gain newfound relevance, albeit partially, with new content. The decisions of religious mediators, arbitrators and judges have no legal force, forceful coercion is impossible, so the appeal to the faith, consciousness and universal values of the parties, theological argumentation, and the search for a mutually beneficial way out of the situation come to the fore. In Tatarstan, examples of such activities include the work of the Muslim Religious Board imams and qadis, informal intermediaries from the business community, and experts in Sharia. Not all Muslims turn to the mentioned intermediaries; the value-normative and institu-tional preferences of believers in the field of marriage and family relations, division of inheritance, and the choice of alternative methods of resolving disputes depend on personal preferences, gender differences and the circumstances of the situation. Nevertheless, the revival of traditions in this area can serve as a good help in preventing violations in society and establishing communication at the family, religious and other communities level.

In the modern world, significant changes in the interpretation, perception and practices of Islam occur not only under the influence of various socio-cultural factors, but are also affected by new technologies. One of the key aspects of this change is the virtualisation process of Islam, which is associated with the growing influence of digital technologies and the Internet on spreading religious information and communication of believers. This article examines the phenomenon of the virtualisation of Islam in the context of studying the problems of the interaction between religion and the Internet.

The virtualisation of Islam is a process in which digital technologies are used for disseminating religious information, as well as for education and communication among believers. Social networks, online platforms and mobile applications play an increasingly significant role in shaping the religious practices and perception of Islam. The phenomenon of online religion in the post-Soviet space still has not been fully uncovered. Russian scholars define cyber-religion as a “religious innovation”, and some include it in the list of “quasi-religions”, and still consider it not as reality, but rather as something amorphous, applied, while religious movements are successfully exploring the digital environment and using it for their purposes. In the meantime, control over these processes is being lost. Cyberspace transforms Islam in terms of both ideology and discourse. Along with anonymity and accessibility of information, that leads to an increase in the number of different branches of religion which originate and are discussed on the Internet. Researchers are trying to understand exactly what kind of transformations are happening to Islamic media, the religious identity of Muslims and their opinion leaders, as well as to online rituals and the Islamic discourse on social networks.

The article is devoted to the study of modern effects of the information field in the sphere of ritual Islamic practices in the context of the social crisis associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. It focuses on issues related to the performance of ritual practices in Islam. New regulations of state medical institutions introduced in connection with the 2020 pandemic have influenced the violation of centuries-old traditional norms and practices in the funeral culture of the Tatars. The emerging contradictions and inconsistencies stimulated the actualisation of expert knowledge on the part of Muslim spiritual leaders. In the article, the author analyses the interaction between Muslim Tatars and religious authorities on the issues of solving everyday life and religious problems that believers encountered due to extraordinary circumstances (COVID-19). The source of the study was the Tatar-language media and Internet resources. The obtained results indicate the flexibility and adaptability of the information environment – traditional print media and digital technologies to rapidly developing social turbulence. At the same time, the influence of non-standard social factors (the pandemic) in a rather conservative and strictly regulated sphere of Muslim funeral and ritual culture is shown. The second aspect of the study is related to the gradual transformation of the ideas of Muslim Tatars about the culture of grave decoration. Epigraphic expeditions conducted by the author indicate that the deepening and dissemination of religious norms among them leads to gradual rejection of the practice of using photographs of deceased relatives on monuments that developed in the Soviet times. The totality of the collected materials allows us to trace how changes in family structure and relationships affect religious practices and the perception of Islam. The processes recorded by the author reflect the dynamics of the formation of theological Islam among Muslim Tatars in modern Tatarstan.

The article presents the results of studying the process of constructing new religious spaces in Tomsk in the post-Soviet period, starting from the 1990s – the period of legitimation of religion in Russia. The author’s inclusion of the desecularisation concept in the analytical apparatus of the study allowed us to examine in detail the specifics of the transition of historical Muslim communities from a secular, atheistic social formation to a religious one. The purpose of the study is to examine the process of formation of religious practices among local Muslim Tatars in the context of their construction of urban religious space. The analytical framework of the desecularisation concept implied identification of a number of factors that influence their activism in the religious revivalist movement. They include the following: updating the historical ethno-confessional heritage, privatisation of religious institutions – mosque buildings built in the pre-revolutionary period; post-Soviet religious re-socialisation with the restoration of religious norms and practices at the everyday level; the formation of an accompanying institutional environment for these practices and demands; the complex and contradictory process of restoring the institution of the clergy; ethnocultural revival with formation of online communities.

Anthropological and ethnological methods used by the author of the study allowed identifying a set of objective and subjective factors that have a significant impact on the dynamics and quality of the formation of urban religious spaces by local Muslim Tatars and visiting Muslim migrants from the countries of Central Asia and the Caucasus republics. At the same time, it is shown how differentiation occurs in the religious institutional space according to the principle of “locals” – “newcomers”, which, one way or another, affects the sphere of religious worship and practices, the specifics of religious infrastructure, the situation of competitive relations between imams from the Tatar community and from number of arriving Muslim migrants.

The study shows that local religious Tatar activists create unique religious spaces and practices in the Muslim community, including the media space. Urban spaces, adapted to the needs of believers, become a part of religious relations within the Tatar community. Along with this, the increasing activity of imams, immigrants from Central Asia and the Caucasus republics, who accumulate administrative and territorial resources around themselves, has been noted. This leads to the replacement of traditional Islamic actors from among local Tatars with newcomers from among migrants.

The article analyses field materials, observations and in-depth interviews collected from informants in Tomsk and the Tomsk Region from late 2019 to 2024.