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BASHKORTOSTAN.
ETHNICITY AND RELIGIOUS REVIVAL:
POSSIBILITIES AND RISKS
FOR SOCIAL INTEGRATION: ISLAMIC WAY
Prior to the emergence of Islam on the territory inhabited by Bashkirs (10th century) in the Southern Urals, their spiritual life was quite varied. Among the cults widespread there were ancient Iranian traditional Mazdaism and Ancient Turkic faiths. Interaction of various cultural traditions inevitably gave birth to syncretism characteristic of the entire pre-Islamic cultural layer.
At the beginning of the 14th century, at the time of Khan Uzbek's rule (1312-1342), Islam became state religion of the Golden Horde. Islam entrenched itself among the Bashkir tribes which became part of the population of the Mongol state. It was also dominating ideology.
After the Bashkirs joined the Russian Orthodox Christian state (the latter half of the 16th century) the dogmatic side of the Muslim cult became actualized, which could be explained by their reaction to the policy of the Russian authorities who were striving to control spiritual processes in Bashkir society. By that time the Bashkirs regarded themselves Sunni Muslims.
The role of Islam as a factor of ethnic consolidation among Bashkirs grew especially rapidly in the 17th - 18th century. As a result of many uprisings during two centuries the Bashkirs were able not only to protect their socio-economic privileges and legal status, but also to retain their ethnic and religious identity. They remained practically untouched by the policy of forcible Christianization. Simultaneously, socio-political oppression contributed to the popularity of Sufi version of Islam among Bashkirs, emphasizing its most attractive features, such as asceticism, indifference to wealth and high social status in society, and fatalism.
The Sufi form of Islam was close to mentality of the Bashkir people, with their love of freedom and independent character.
One of the main achievements of the rebel movement of the Bashkir people was liberalization of the "Muslim" policy of the Russian government aimed at lowering the level of ideological confrontation between Orthodox Christianity and Islam. Thanks to Empress Catherine the Great (1732-1796) Russian religious policy was distinguished by tolerance. Muslims received an opportunity to embrace religion openly, build new stone mosques in cities, etc. By a decree of Catherine the Great of September 22, 1788, a state-religious department for Muslims was set up under the name "Ufa Spiritual Muslim Assembly."
A long-term result of the religious reforms of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great was a certain reduction of the role of religion in the state and society. Alternative ideologies emerged and began to spread: liberalism, socialism, nationalism. The conservative czarist government made its choice in favor of nationalism with the preservation of the elements of Orthodox Christianity. By the end of the 19th century the upsurge of Russian nationalism evoked among Russian Muslims (first and foremost, the Ural-Volga Tatars) reformist and traditionalist reactions.
Simultaneously, Russian modernization stepped up the marginalization processes in Bashkir society and the impoverishment of a considerable part of the Bashkir population.
Russian modernization was aimed primarily at the creation of a uniform system of education and the state mass media and communication system. However, one of the specific features of Russian reality at the turn of the 20th century was that in "deep provinces" of the country "high" cultures of non-Russian peoples existed, among them, Turkic-Islamic "high" culture on the basis of the
traditional national-religious system of education and upbringing and the literary language "Tyurki."
After the February revolution of 1917 the differentiation process among the Russian Turkic Muslims was steadily on the upgrade. In July -December 1917 three all-Bashkir congresses took place in Orenburg, which discussed the problem of Bashkir autonomy. Interethnic contradictions were the main reason for the refusal of the leaders of the Bashkir national movement (1917-1920) to take part in the work of the National Assembly of Turkic Tatar Muslims of Inner Russia and Siberia in Ufa on November 22, 1917.
The first decade of the existence of Soviet Russia, and then the Soviet Union, was not accompanied by serious persecutions of religious Muslims. During that period three all-Russia congresses of the Muslim clergy took place (1920, 1923, 1926). But beginning from 1927 the Soviet secular authorities began their struggle against Muslim religion: madrasahs were closed, school curricula were changed (they were now based on the principle of atheist upbringing and education), and mosques were destroyed. However, atheism did not completely ousted Islam. It was due to the formal, but constitutional principle of "freedom of conscience," as well as significance of the ethnic factor in the formation of the unified Soviet state on the ethnic-national basis. This was why it was possible to preserve Islam as an element of ethnic identification.
Re-Islamization became possible due to the preservation of the extensive development model of Russian society during the Soviet period of the country's history. Islam as one of conservative ideologies of the extensively-oriented type of societies was necessary for the "extensive type of the individual," who lost orientations in the period of ideological chaos of the late 1980s-1990s. Return to the faith of the ancestors enabled a considerable part of the Bashkirs and Tatars living
in the Republic of Bashkortostan to retain their value orientations and their own model of the world.
Re-Islamization was also expressed in the revival of the outward aspect of Muslim religiousness: it included the restoration and construction of mosques and other premises for religious purpose, legal administration, opportunity to receive a religious education in Russia and abroad, creation of the religious mass media, etc.
By 2006, the Spiritual Board of Muslims of Bashkortostan registered 259 mosques, two Islamic institutes of higher education and six madrasahs.
At the present development stage of Russian society there is such constant as religious, including Muslim, identity. Muslims in the Republic of Bashkortostan preserve their Islamic identity which can be judged by the level of their religious culture.
It is difficult to give the exact number of religious Muslims in present-day Bashkortostan due to the absence of the data about religiousness of the population contained in the latest all-Russia population censuses (2002, 2010). However, the material of these censuses fully reflects the ethnic composition of the country's population. Proceeding from the fact that Islam is the predominant religion in the republic, it can be said that 92.4 percent of the Bashkirs and 86.7 percent of the Tatars polled during our surveillance in the republic in 2011 are adherents of Islam. Thirty-two percent of Bashkirs and 29.5 percent of Tatars who declared their religiousness observe Muslim customs and rites.
It should be noted that rural young people from among ethnic Muslims who have moved to towns for receiving an education are subject to a psychological stress in the atomized urban medium. Their psychological discomfort is due to their lower status, inasmuch as their language, mores and morals, and dress look small-time. And people
from rural districts try to find their own niche in town relying on their ethnic and religious identity. From this marginalized section most young imams with a lower educational level are recruited. A definite part of these marginalized young men, in order to satisfy unrealized ambitions, switch over to the positions of "radical Islam." The situation becomes worse due to the relatively low living standards of ethnic Muslims, above all, Bashkirs, judging by results of investigations and surveillance
The main source of the increasing Bashkir urban population is migration from rural districts. The low living standards become the main reason for young Bashkirs to join non-traditional religious Islamic movements (Wahhabi, Salaphite, "Islamic Jamaat," "Khizb ut-Tahrir," and others).
After the disintegration of the U.S.S.R. emissaries of numerous Islamic charity foundations have appeared on the territory of Russia whose aim was to revive Muslim umma in this country. These foundations paid special attention to educational programs which should have helped bring up and train a new generation of spiritual leaders and priests. Young Muslims from the republics of the North Caucasus and the Ural-Volga area went by hundreds to study at foreign madrasahs within the framework of the Arab and Turkish programs to contribute to re-Islamization of Russian Muslims. By the mid-1990s hundreds of well-educated and ambitious young radical Muslims began to return to Russia where they formed the backbone of the Salaphite movement. At the same time the number of Bashkir Muslims who have received an education abroad is considerably lower than that among Muslims of Tatarstan and North Caucasian republics. For example, in 2006 there were only thirty men from Bashkortostan studying at religious educational establishments in Saudi Arabia and Turkey, whereas there were one hundred men from Tatarstan.
The religious practice of modern Muslims of Bashkortostan has a strong influence of the Sufi form of Islam. According to the data of the Central Spiritual Board of Muslims of Russia, from thirty to sixty inhabitants of Bashkortostan make hajj annually. This is a modest figure compared to that of the Republic of Tatarstan, not to speak of the North Caucasian republics from where up to 10 thousand people go on hajj to Mecca every year.
Re-Islamization process in Bashkortostan, judging by the results of surveillance in 2011, not only widens, but also deepens. For instance, a considerable part of respondents (48.7 percent of Bashkirs and 41.4 percent of Tatars) regularly pray. Apart from that, 4.8 percent of Bashkirs and 2.4 percent of Tatars attend lessons on the foundations of Islam, 18.7 percent of Bashkirs and 15.9 percent of Tatars regularly read religious literature, and 35.3 percent of Bashkirs and 31.4 percent of Tatars regularly read the Koran.
Results of sociological polls in the Republic of Bashkortostan show not only a high level of tolerance of its Muslims toward people of other religious cultures, but also reflect the process of secularization which has an impact not only on the way of life of an individual, but also on his world outlook.
Summing up the results of numerous sociological polls and surveillances, it is possible to reveal certain trends. First, the basic mass of Muslims in Bashkortostan can be referred to the world of Islamic culture and retains elements of its mentality. At the present stage of the socio-political life of Bashkortostan's Muslims Islam has mostly a symbolic character: for the ethnic self-consciousness of Bashkirs. Islam is important for them not as a system of world outlook but rather as part of the people's historical memory. Secondly, although modern Russian Islam has been institutionalized through spiritual boards and enjoys support of the state, it cannot embrace all spheres of the country's life,
something which the Salaphites are striving for. Modern ethnic Muslims, most of all Tatars and Bashkirs, are integrated in Russian society and its civilizating structures: behavioral, socio-cultural, socio-linguistic, communicative, and industrial-technical. A great role in it is played by traditions of interethnic and inter-confessional tolerance developed in the Ural-Volga area. Taking into account these circumstances, and also the still existing differences between Tatars and Bashkirs, unification of local Muslims in one political force is hardly possible.
"Grazhdanskaya, etnicheskaya i religioznaya identichnost: vchera, segodnya, zavtra," Moscow, 2013, pp. 173-193.
M. Gadzhiyev,
Ph. D. (Political sciences), Daghestan State University, Makhachkala
POLITICAL ELITE OF DAGHESTAN
During the past decades two opposite trends of political activity have become quite pronounced in Russia. On the one hand, we observe the active role of political elites in the country's life and their influence on the development of political phenomena and processes, and on the other, considerable curtailment of the political activity and participation of the main social strata and groups in socio-political life. In examining the social nature of the main groups of the modern foreign or Russian political elite we come across tabooing this subject, which bears not so much a methodological as psychological character.
The founders of Marxism laid an emphasis on the pressing need for the participation of the broad popular masses in society's political life and warned against the situation in which a narrow circle of people could monopolize power. Marxists proclaimed as one of their task the
