Professional Documents
Culture Documents
298330
# Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies 2002
DEVIN DEWEESE
Indiana University
Despite the collapse of the Soviet state, the study of religious life
among the traditionally Muslim peoples of the former USSR has
continued to be dominated by an academic tradition that may be
termed Sovietological Islamology. Rooted in attempts to understand
the impact of the Soviet era on Islam in Central Asia, the VolgaUral
region, and western Siberia, Azerbaijan, and the North Caucasus,
this tradition has rarely been well grounded in the broader world
of Islamic studies, or in modes of analysing religious life beyond
the framework of the political issues that dominated Sovietology.
It is exemplified by the writings of Alexandre Bennigsen and his
collaborators and students,1 which shaped an approach to Islam in
the Soviet context informed more by scholarly expertise in the
1
The literature produced by the Sovietological school is extensive and cannot
be reviewed here. Its key early product was Alexandre Bennigsen and Chantal
Lemercier Quelquejay, Islam in the Soviet Union (New York: Praeger, 1967), and the
Sovietological approach dominated publications on Soviet Islam during the 1970s
and 1980s; cf. Bennigsens Islam in the Soviet Union: The Religious Factor and the
Nationality Problem in the Soviet Union, in Religion and Atheism in the U.S.S.R. and
Eastern Europe, ed. Bohdan R. Bociurkiw and John W. Strong (London: Macmillan,
1975), 91100; his Modernization and Conservatism in Soviet Islam, in Religion
and Modernization in the Soviet Union, ed. Dennis J. Dunn (Boulder, Col.: Westview
Press, 1977), 23979; his Religion and Atheism among Soviet Muslims, in Islam
and the Contemporary World, ed. Cyriac K. Pullapilly (Notre Dame, Ind.: Cross
Roads Books, 1980), 22237; his Official Islam and Sufi Brotherhoods in the Soviet
Union Today, in Islam and Power, ed. Alexander S. Cudsi and Ali E. Hillal Dessouki
(Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), 95106; and Alexandre
Bennigsen and S. Enders Wimbush, Muslims of the Soviet Empire: A Guide (London:
C. Hurst, 1985). See also Helene Carrere dEncausse, Islam in the Soviet Union:
Attempts at Modernization, Religion in Communist Lands, 2/45 (1974), 1219;
Michael Rywkin, Moscows Muslim Challenge: Soviet Central Asia (Armonk,
NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1982); Chantal Lemercier-Quelquejay, Sufi Brotherhoods in the
USSR: A Historical Survey, Central Asian Survey, 2/4 (1983), 135; Azade-Ayse
Rorlich, Islam under Communist Rule: VolgaUral Muslims, Central Asian Survey,
i s l a m a n d t h e l e g a c y o f s o vi e t o l o g y 299
Soviet system, and in the twentieth-century development of the
Soviet-defined nations into which the Muslim communities of
the USSR were grouped, than by training in the history or religious
culture of the regions of Soviet Islam, let alone of the broader
Islamic world.
Plagued by inadequate data and problematical sources, and thus
rife with methodological problems that have never been seriously
explored either by Bennigsens disciples or by his schools critics, the
Bennigsen approach was in some respects pioneering in raising
the profile of peoples, and issues, that were largely ignored by the
wider community of Russocentric Sovietologists; yet, although its
scholarly limitations should have been apparent, it has exerted a
stultifying and even pernicious influence on the study of Islam in
the Soviet environment, as its conclusions and approaches prompted
repetition and imitation rather than serious critical discussion
and challenge. Despite its weaknesses, the body of scholarship
produced by Sovietological Islamology has often been taken as
the definitive word on Soviet Islam both by specialists in other
parts of the Soviet world, eager to have an accessible and under-
standable control over an aspect of Soviet life they could no longer
ignore, and by specialists in other parts of the Islamic world, seeking
to make sense out of the recent historical experience of long-
isolated Muslim peoples as they rejoined the broader dialogue of the
Muslim community.
The upshot is that discussion of Islam in the USSR has remained
largely in the hands of specialists who, by training and disciplinary
orientation, have been ill-equipped to deal with all but the most
superficial aspects of religion and its place in Soviet life; regrettably
(one might well say ominously) the same holds true for the current
1/1 (1982), 21 42; id., Sufism in Tatarstan: Deep Roots and New Concerns, Central
Asian Survey, 2/4 (1983), 37 44; Marie Broxup, Islam in Central Asia since
Gorbachev, Asian Affairs, 18/3 (1987), 28393; and Martha Brill Olcott, Islam and
Fundamentalism in Independent Central Asia, in Muslim Eurasia: Conflicting
Legacies, ed. Yaacov Roi (London: Frank Cass, 1995), 2139. As reflected already in
Bennigsens work, the Sovietological schools production included not only attempts,
chiefly by political scientists, to describe then-contemporary trends among Soviet
Muslims (typically on the basis of published materials, obviously problematical in the
context of Soviet censorship, or on the basis of contacts with political, academic, or
literary elites alone), but also historical surveys of Soviet policy towards Islam and
towards the USSRs Muslim peoples; more broadly, this school can be said to have
encompassed the entire field of nationality studies, whose practitionerswhether
historians or political scientists or economists or students of language and
literaturewere often quite competent and insightful in many respects, but tended
to fare quite poorly when drawn into discussions, as they inevitably were, of religious
issues, both contemporary and historical.
300 d ev in d ew e e se
discussionwhether in policy analysis or in the popular media
about Islam in Central Asia, where the Soviet legacy now com-
mands world attention on both sides of the old Soviet border. It is
ironic, of course, in view of the essentially religious terms in which the
subject is typically framed, that those who have generated the small
explosion of books and articles purporting to explore the historical
background or present status, or to predict the future, of Islam
in the Soviet or post-Soviet environment have rarely seen fit to inform
their comments and evaluations with any grounding in the field
of religious studies. Students of contemporary Uzbek politics or
literature or economics, for instance, freely venture to comment or
write about the religious question or the problem of Islam, without
any serious training in ways of analysing or interpreting religious life,
and without any serious historical understanding of Islam in Central
Asia that might illuminate both continuities and discontinuities
during the Soviet and post-Soviet eras.
As a result, the profound conceptual and terminological
problems that infest the literature on Islam in the USSR not only
go unaddressed and unproblematized, but steadily increase, as mis-
conception builds upon misconception and as constant repetition
yields greater acceptance; by now a serious housecleaning is long
overdue. The present article will not undertake that task; it will
address, rather, a few of the most fundamental problems as they
appear, seemingly with new support, in a recent product of the
Sovietological approach to Islam in the USSR. The article began as
a simple book reviewan origin reflected still in its structurebut
quickly grew well beyond the limits of that genre; its growth was
curtailed by realization that a study twice the size of the monograph
that prompted it would be necessary for a thorough and effective
discussion of the many issues that need to be addressed (issues
that arise on nearly every page of that monograph). It is hoped that
the result will, at least, alert the constituency of the Sovietological
envisioning of Islam in the USSR to some of the problems peculiar to
that vision, and, at best, generate an expanded discussion and critique
that may eventually reclaim the study of Islam in the Soviet world
for religious studies, and for Islamic studies.
2
Yaacov Roi, Islam in the Soviet Union: From the Second World War to
Gorbachev (London: C. Hurst, 2000), 791 pp).
i s l a m a n d t h e l e g a c y o f s o vi e t o l o g y 301
Islamology of which it may be regarded as the culminationby
conceptual, methodological, analytical, and interpretative short-
comings. The work is based on unparalleled archival research con-
ducted since the breakup of the Soviet Union, chiefly in the State
Archive of the Russian Federation, housing the archives of the
Committee for Religious Affairs and its predecessor, as well as other
collections in Moscow and Tashkent. It thus presents the data that,
for obvious reasons, eluded the Bennigsen school, but fails to move
significantly beyond the conceptual and analytical constraints that
left the Bennigsen approach so unsatisfying, and unilluminating, for
a readership versed in Islamic studies. What it presents is certain
aspects of Islam in the USSR as viewed through the (often quite
murky) lens of government documents prepared by those Soviet
officials charged with finding the best means to curtail religious
practice and hasten the disappearance of religious belief. When
discussing the distinctively Soviet aspects of Muslim life the author is
at home, and his presentation is solid and informative. His work is
much less satisfying, however, when he ventures into interpreting
religious life, and especially into the many issues that are more often
obscured than illuminated by the categorizations and analytical
frameworks employed by the Soviets for understanding religious life
(with an aim to crush it). At best he misses much of the substance
of Muslim religious life; at worst he parrots the stale questions and
answers of the Bennigsen school and even of the stunted Soviet
academic study of religion.
Overall, Roi is to be applauded for attempting to take stock
of several important issues on the basis of data never before brought
to light; the problem is that when there are such fundamental
problems in the interpretation of the data, and especially in the
terminological and analytical framework in which the authors of
the Soviet archival reports and documents approached their subject,
it is essential to handle those terms and that framework critically,
and with a grounding in the basic vocabulary of Islamic studies, so
as to allow a scholarly evaluation of the evidence rather than its
simple repetition. Again and again, throughout Islam in the Soviet
Union, we miss the authors input in explaining Soviet misunder-
standings of Islam, wrong-headed thinking about religious life, the
specific inapplicability of Soviet categories to Islam, and so on. It is
fundamentally misleading to pretend that simply adopting the Soviet
categories and terms can truly illuminate the situation on the ground
in terms of Islamic religious life and practice, or lead to any deep
understanding of the survival and adaptation of Muslim religious life
in the Soviet environment.
302 d ev in d ew e e se
It may be worth noting that in the essentially fruitless debate
that has swirled in the past decade over the effects of the Soviet era
on Islambetween specialists more familiar with the Soviet and
Russian world, who seem surprised at the persistence of any Muslim
or national traditions and insist that Soviet policy failed in its efforts
to modernize or Russify, and those more familiar with the Islamic
world, who note the striking differences between Central Asia, for
example, and other parts of the Muslim world, and who insist that
the Soviet transformation succeeded all too wellRoi is squarely on
the side of the Sovietological camp. The quest for the reasons Soviet
policy did not succeed more thoroughly in eliminating Islam (reasons
presumed to lie more in the failures of Soviet institutions and ideology
than in the attachment of Soviet Muslims to their traditions) is one of
the undercurrents evident throughout the study.
On the whole Rois book is generally well written, and the
data well presented; there is considerable repetition, but the text is
admirably cross-referenced. Outside the main body of the book there
is some important material worth noting. In particular, the preface
outlines the authors chief archival sources and approach, while his
Note on Methodology (pp. 18) is a fine discussion of the problems
and pitfalls inherent in using and interpreting the Soviet archival
documents that are the overwhelming foundation of most of the book.
These few pages must be kept in mind throughout the rest of the
study, even when the author himself does not explicitly call attention
to the array of possible implications attendant upon the documentary
presentation of specific issues. Indeed, at points in the later body of
the work, one senses that the author himself has succumbed to a
kind of documentary naivete, assuming that measures described or
debates discussed in the sources were actual realities rather than the
products of bureaucratic obfuscation and evasion.
The introductory matter offers a list of acronyms and abbrevia-
tions, and four maps; it includes also a generally helpful, though
occasionally misleading, glossary (pp. xvxxi), covering terminology
both Islamic (of various languages) and Soviet Russian. The index
is admirably thorough, and will assist readers in locating information,
for example, on specific regions and towns. The bibliography, how-
ever, is extremely disappointing, and is revealing about the thrust
and orientation of the book as a whole. For some reason only works
in English and Russian are included (and even for such literature the
list is far from exhaustive, arguably not even representative, and
occasionally not properly classified). The extensive and important
literature in German and French is thus not included (nor is it cited
in the footnotes), and there is no representation whatsoever of
i s l a m a n d t h e l e g a c y o f s o vi e t o l o g y 303
published or unpublished materials in the native languages of the
Muslim peoples of the former USSR. This is particularly lamentable
in connection with the large corpus of anti-religious literature in
the national languages: much of this is dull and less than illu-
minating, to be sure, but some offers essential material that not only
reveals important aspects of the substance of religious lifealbeit in
the context of ridicule and mockerybut also directly illustrates the
particular thrusts of the regimes tactical repertoire in the struggle
against religion during particular periods. The bibliography also
makes it clear that the vast body of ethnographic literature exploring
aspects of religious life among the Muslim peoples of the USSR
has not been utilized. That literature, while itself marred by the
stunted development, in the Soviet academic world, of analytical
strategies for understanding religion, is nevertheless an essential
resource for examining what religious life looked like on the ground,
beyond the governmental evaluations presented in the archival
documents.
It should go without saying that there are many other types of
sources that one day will have to be taken into account in presenting
a more balanced picture of Islam in the USSR. These include Soviet
anti-religious literature, Soviet ethnographic descriptions (more
scholarly in orientation but still fraught with analytical pitfalls),
accounts of emigres, andnowthe recollections of Soviet Muslims
themselves. Important insights will also be gleaned from the increased
religious publishing from the late Soviet period, occasional examples
of religious samizdat, evocations of Islam in national literature and
art, and study of the Islamic evocations in such cherished aspects
of national culture as the heroic epic traditions of the Kazaks,
Kyrgyz, Uzbeks, Turkmens, and others. More broadly, it will be
important to ground such a presentation not only in Soviet legal and
institutional structures, but in a substratum of understanding of and
familiarity with Islamic religious practice elsewhere in the Muslim
world, in order to provide a basis for comparison and to distinguish
specifically Soviet aspects of the impact of modernity upon
Muslim religious life from other aspects, which are more broadly
attested and not attributable to the Soviet environment. Finally, a
much deeper knowledge of the history of Islam in each of the regions
that together comprised the Soviet Muslim world will be essential
to such a project.
Regrettably, Rois work may be said, at best, to provide abundant
(almost-) raw material for such a future re-evaluation of Islam in
the USSR. If the study of that phenomenon is to move forward, it is
essential to shift fundamentally the approach adopted, the sources
304 d ev in d ew e e se
consulted, and the questions asked, but Rois work, despite
the wealth of data it presentswhich makes the work indispensable
for any student of Islam in the USSRhas not yet addressed
those most basic needs.
The six broad questions framed by Roi in the Afterword (pp. 71330)
as the backdrop to his study show clearly that an exploration of
religious life is not what was envisaged here, and that religion was
only regarded as significant if and when it could be linked with the
history of political structures, bureaucracy, and policy. Here we see
most clearly the legacy of the Sovietological approach, and the way it
has consistently served to muddle, rather than clarify, the essentially
religious phenomenon of Islam in the Soviet Union.
One of those six issuescan one legitimately talk of Soviet Islam,
or were the differences between the areas of Muslim concentration
in that vast country so great that they lacked any common features?
(p. 714)is resolved to Rois satisfaction as revealing a single
Islam which existed throughout the Soviet Union, within a single
body politic that ensured a shared political framework with which
Islam had constantly to contend (p. 723). Roi phrases the question
in such a way as to tilt the response towards acknowledging
a coherent phenomenon of Union-wide Soviet Islam; who would
deny that the different regions lacked any common features, after
all? But it is noteworthy, first, that the common features he stresses
are rooted not in Islam, but in the Soviet polity; and second, one
may rightly observe that such a conclusion is indeed predetermined
by the body of sources Roi has used, namely Soviet government
documents, to the exclusion of other perspectives that might have
conveyed more of the regional particularism and local flavour of
Soviet Islam. The regions were indeed different, despite the common
experience of Soviet rule, certainly with regard to patterns of religious
life, and even with regard to the issues that Rois book addresses.
One should beware, then, of generalizing from one region to the
others, or to a whole, without clear evidence.
328 d ev in d ew e e se
A NOTE ON TERMINOLOGY
In sum, one wishes that the authors deep and pioneering explora-
tion into the archival material on many of the day-to-day issues
affecting Islam in the Soviet Union could have been accom-
panied by, and indeed could have itself inspired, a more profound
re-examination of the basic approaches, questions, and conceptual
frameworks that have stood for so long at the foundation of this
field of study, with some positive but many negative effects. We have
clearly not yet reached that point, and while we may lament that
this book does not take us there, it will nevertheless provide essential
information, and archival guidance, for the next stage. Rois
study is, in some respects, very much like the corpus of Soviet-era
ethnographic and anti-religious literature: no one interested in the
phenomenon can legitimately ignore the tremendous body of data
assembled and presented in such works, but we must find ways of
utilizing and digesting and interpreting the data while suspending
not just the overtly ideological rhetoric and prescriptive evaluations,
but the entire analytical and interpretative framework employed by
the authors in approaching their subject. In the case of Rois
book, the ideological factor is absent, but the more insidious inter-
pretative problems abound, and we face a similar task: looking
beyond the analytical frameworkso heavily shaped by the Sovieto-
logical enterprisethat pervades the work, while utilizing and
reinterpreting the enormous body of data the work makes available,
and adding to it both specific data and a basic understanding drawn
from many other sources.
At one point in his discussion of Soviet religious policy and its
implementation, Roi attributes the lack of effective and specific
measures affecting Muslim communities in part to an institutional
holdover, in effect, from the Tsarist period. He refers to the Tsarist
330 d ev in d ew e e se
administrations generally lackadaisical perception of its Muslim
borderlands, particularly Turkistan, and affirms that it somehow
affected the bureaucracy of the Soviet period, which made use
first of the experts of the former regime and then, when they
disappeared, of their books and reports, inheriting and internalising
many, if not all, of their axioms and conclusions (p. 563, italics
mine). Much the same can be said, regrettably, about Rois reliance
upon the Sovietological enterprise, and even former Soviet academics,
for the interpretative setting in which he places the impressive data
he has assembled. While we must not lose sight of the fact that the
data itself is thoroughly imbued with the Soviet mindset, it could
have been employed to more illuminating, and satisfying, effect had
the author not inherited or internalized the stultifying intellectual
legacy of Sovietological Islamology.