Muslim Women, Precarity, and Potentiality in Russia

Laboring on the Margins: Muslim Women, Precarity, and Potentiality in Russia

Item Type text; Electronic Dissertation

Authors Rabinovich, Tatiana

Publisher The University of Arizona.

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LABORING ON THE MARGINS: MUSLIM WOMEN, PRECARITY, AND POTENTIALITY IN RUSSIA

Tatiana Rabinovich

______

A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the

SCHOOL OF MIDDLE EASTERN AND NORTH AFRICAN STUDIES

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

For the Degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

In the Graduate College

THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA

2018

2 STATEMENT BY AUTHOR

This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library.

Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without special permission, provided that an accurate acknowledgement of the source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the copyright holder.

SIGNED: Tatiana Rabinovich

3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I want to thank my interlocutors for their support, care, time, and sincerity. This project would not be possible without your generosity, trust, and guidance. I hope I can ever pay back for your kindness to me.

I am deeply indebted to my family, who has helped me through this process. My partner Feras has been a reliable interlocutor, who has challenged me to think deeper and offered his ideas, encouragement, and support. My daughter Vera has also given me the inspiration and faith in this project - I look forward to your thoughts once you are able to read this work. Although not completely sure what I was doing and why, my mother Marina and grandmother Tamara have invested much of their care work in me and this project. I dedicate this ethnography to my family.

I am grateful to my academic adviser Dr. Leila Hudson, who gave me the space and time to think and write, shared her fresh ideas with me, and has been there for me through all the troubles. Thank you for being a wonderful mentor and friend!

Special thanks goes to my inspiring committee members and interlocutors Dr. Gokce Gunel and Dr. Zeynep Korkman – your helpful feedback, support, and generosity always motivated me to be a better thinker and writer. I am very lucky to have both of you as an example for me.

I also want to thank Dr. Anne Betteridge and Dr. Can Aciksoz for the theoretical and methodological insights that are reflected in my work. Our conversations shaped my writing in many ways.

Finally, I want to thank my friends: Natasha, who has read every chapter and offered generous commentary, and Atacan, Hayal, Abbass, Brittany, Saffo, Pouye, Mojtaba, and Emrah, among others, who have been my comrades, writing and thinking buddies, and interlocutors through the thick and thin.

4 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract 7

Introduction: 8 Embracing the Crisis

I Telling Stories against Austerity 17

II On Method: 22 More (Feminist) Ethnography is always a Good Idea

III On Theoretical Framework: 27 a Patchwork

Chapter I: (Un)Stitching Precarious Worlds: 32 Muslim Women’s Atelier in Saint Petersburg

I Ambivalent Self-Enterprising 34

II Giving away in Hard Times 40

III Dreaming against Austerity 44

IV Patchwork: 52 Gendered Labor of Stitching and Unstitching

Chapter II: 54 Creating Human-Animal Solidarities: Muslim Women’s Labor with the Unworthy

I Witnessing Pain 57

II Disposable Lives 66

III Ambivalences and Potentialities of 74 Gendered Care Labor

Chapter III: 85

5 “Muhtasibat Needs You:” Rebuilding Islamic Institutions in Saint Petersburg

I Islam in the City 86

II Putting Women to Work 98

III Zhensovet and the Ambiguities of 105 Women’s Volunteer Labor

Chapter IV: 115 Feeling Depressed, Becoming Old: Public Life of Emotions in Saint Petersburg

I “I Don’t Want to Work like a Dog” 122

II “Nobody Cleaned Staircases Better than 129 I Did”

III Religious Affect, Gendered Labor, and 136 Health

Chapter V: 139 Building Intimate Solidarities in Precarious Times

I Strained Sisterhood 143

II Mothering in the Times of Crisis 150

III Unruly Women 158

Epilogue 165

Appendices 174

References 183

6 ABSTRACT

Titled Laboring on the Margins: Muslim Women, Precarity, and Potentiality in Russia , this dissertation explores how working-class pious Muslim women in Saint Petersburg cope with the ongoing economic crisis and political authoritarianism in today’s Russia. In order to understand the women’s responses to precarity, I examine the different forms of gendered labor they undertake to sustain themselves and their community. Based on 18 months of field research in Saint Petersburg, I demonstrate how the women run small businesses and volunteer, practice self-care and mother, struggle with health issues and invest their energies in cultivating bonds of solidarity under a regime of austerity. Drawing from feminist literature on affect and embodiment, I advance a concept of “embracing” precarity, which allows the women not only to survive on the margins of Russian society, but also to imagine and act upon more just and inclusive worlds. This dissertation offers a unique window into the lives of disempowered population groups in Russia, as well as into the exigencies of late capitalism, precarity, and gendered labor.

7 Introduction: Embracing the Crisis

In August 2015 I arrived in Saint Petersburg to begin my fieldwork among a community of pious Muslim women. It coincided with an unfolding economic crisis and growing political tensions in Russia: the collapse of oil prices, US and EU-imposed sanctions, 1 and the shrinking state budget led to increasing prices on basic commodities, decreasing wages, and creeping unemployment. According to the Levada Center polls,

55% of the population considered the year of 2015 to be “more difficult” than the previous one. As polls indicated, more respondents noted that in 2015 the quality of life worsened and opportunities to make a decent living diminished, while the personal safety of ordinary 2 people and their ability to influence politics decreased. 3 Politically, Russia was deeply embroiled in the Ukrainian conflict and militarily intervened in the Syrian civil war in fall 2015. State TV channels hosted programs about Islamic radicalism, corrosive US policy in the Middle East, and the malicious intentions of “Western states” to isolate Russia. I gathered from small talks that people were afraid of possible terrorist attacks on subway trains and in public spaces. These fears grew after the Islamic State of

Iraq and Syria (ISIS) sympathizers planted a bomb in a Russian plane flying from Sharm al-Shaykh to Saint Petersburg on October 31, 2015. 224 passengers and crewmembers perished. These fears were not completely unfounded, as in April 2017 a member of

Katibat al-Tawheed wal Jihad 4 from Kyrgyzstan carried out an attack in a train

1 These sanctions were imposed to punish Russia for its participation in the Ukrainian civil war. 2 By “ordinary” I mean people who do not belong to economic or political elites. 3 https://www.levada.ru/2015/12/28/itogi-uhodyashhego-goda-i-samye-vazhnye-sobytiya-2015- go/ Accessed on July 10, 2018. 4 It is a radical Islamist organization formerly headed by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

8 compartment in Saint Petersburg metro. 5 I lived on and used that metro line during my fieldwork. As a result, Russian Muslims, including several of my interlocutors, were worried about the possibility of Islamophobic attacks and increased surveillance. While the majority of Muslims seemed to generally support Russia’s foreign policy, most of my interlocutors strongly opposed the country’s military intervention in the Middle East. 6

The economic crisis hit hard the most disadvantaged and the marginalized: old women and disabled men were quietly begging in busy subway passages, while young women’s names appeared on hundreds of colorful flyers and graffiti that advertised sex services and were scattered on the outskirts of the city (see Appendix I). Opposition radio stations and TV channels (e.g., Ekho Moskvy and RBK ) criticized the government’s corruption and ignited anti-government sentiments, which I heard from random conversations on buses and the metro. Simultaneously, I witnessed small demonstrations in downtown Saint Petersburg in support of Vladimir Putin and his political decisions to annex the Crimea, intervene in Syria, and impose counter-sanctions on American and

European goods (see Appendix II). The nation, statehood ( gosudarstvennost ), and traditional values figured prominently in the imaginary of the demonstrators, political commentators, and some of my friends and family members. This conservative order

5 I heard a rumor that the attack was allegedly carried out by the Russian security services to shift attention away from tanking economy. 6 Thus, my interlocutor Masha was attacked on social media for expressing condolences to the families of the deceased. In our conversation she pointed out that those who aggressively commented on her post refused her the right to grieve and assumed her immediate solidarity with the perpetrators. As opinion polls show, most Russians support Russia’s participation in the civil war in Syria on the side of president Bashar al-Asad. However, they know little about politics in Syria and the broader Middle East. See https://www.rbc.ru/politics/15/02/2016/56c073989a7947700d64cad6 Accessed on July 20, 2018.

9 centered around “Russianness,” 7 where minorities, women, and the working class had to sustain a unique civilization called the Russian world. Many, however, did not understand how to reconcile nationalistic rhetoric with the deteriorating quality of life and advancing austerity. A fiscal policy that “reduces public spending on social benefits and services and deepens inequality in the process,” 8 austerity has become the way to

deal with the economic and political hardships in different parts of the world, including

Russia. Although the Russian government undertook temporary measures to alleviate the

worsening economic situation, 9 other measures were discussed (and eventually

implemented) that entrenched neoliberal policies deeper into the social fabric. 10 Low

voter turnout in the parliamentary elections in September 2016 11 indicated disaffection and cynicism that “encapsulates both state fetishism and everyday public critiques of the state” 12 (see Appendix III). How does one compose and orient a life around pervasive

instability and precarity?

7 On the cultural and geopolitical concept of the Russian World see https://russkiymir.ru/fund/ 8 Vaughan Higgins and Wendy Larner (eds.), Assembling Neoliberalism: Expertise, Practices, Subjects. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, p. 40. 9 For example, subsidies on basic commodities were introduced. 10 Dissolving labor unions and drafting the so-called pension reform, which will increase the retirement age, https://therussianreader.com/2018/01/13/how-to-shut-down-an-independent-trade- union-in-russia/ Accessed on August 2, 2018. 11 47,81% all over the country and only 32,47% in Saint Petersburg. See http://www.interfax.ru/russia/528903 Accessed on August 2, 2018. 12 Drawing on Slavoj Zizek’s reading of Lacan, Yael Navaro demonstrates how the ideology of cynicism (“doing in spite of knowing” or “doing as if one doesn’t know”) has permeated the public life in Turkey in the 1990s and today. She argues that “cynicism is the condition on which the Turkish state still maintains an existence despite having repeatedly reached the verge of a breakdown.” This analysis can be applied to Russia where many have accepted the situation as is and are indifferent to or bitter about it. This acquiescence to power does not, however, indicate the lack of agency. See Yael Navaro-Yashin, Faces of the State: Secularism and Public Life in Turkey. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002.

10 While some laid off workers and opposition figures went out to the streets in

2015, 2016, and 2017 to protest, 13 others, including my interlocutors, did not. As I was nervous about my future, my interlocutors invited me to embrace 14 the volatility of the present and unpredictability of the future. It was their responses to the economic crisis and uncertainty that inspired my research and politicized me in a new way. What does it mean to embrace the precarity of life? The Oxford English Dictionary provides several definitions of the verb to embrace: 1) to put a shield on the arm 2) to clasp in the arms, usually as a sign of fondness or friendship 3) of sexual embrace 4) to accept and submit

5) to adopt a course of action, calling, and mode of life 6) to take a road or course in travelling 7) to entwine, encircle, surround, enclose 8) to fasten and fit close. 15 These definitions illuminate the subtle meanings of embracing as a response to precarity and neoliberal neglect. To embrace implies to throw oneself into a situation, thus relinquishing control and yielding to the unknown (Chapter I and III). It also suggests vulnerability, openness, and relationality, as it involves the other (Chapter II). With its gendered and sexualized connotations, an embrace may lead to unpredictable hybridization and reproduction (Chapter V). It can also provide an opportunity to pause, regroup, and act decisively to break out of the embrace or tighten it (Chapter IV). An embrace can be delightful, yet it can open one up to violation and exploitation. As

13 See, for example, reports about hunger strikes among coal minors, https://iz.ru/news/645572 Accessed August 6, 2018. 14 The women did not use the word to “embrace” in Russian, which can be roughly translated as obnyat, ponyat, prinyat, ispolzovat or vospolzovatsya . None of these words fully capture the forms of embracing I try to analyze here. Observing their everyday responses to precarity, I chose to name them “embracing” in English. 15 John Simpson (ed.), The Oxford English Dictionary . Wotton-under-Edge: Clarendon Press, 1989.

11 #MeToo movement 16 has indicated, embrace does not necessarily imply consent or submission. By embracing precarity, my interlocutors did not accept everything it brought about, although at times their inshallah , Allahu a‘lam , and alhamdullilah for everything may have sounded fatalistic. They criticized, complained, and became embittered when prices climbed up, the government was unresponsive, and their projects collapsed. Embracing also does not mean succumbing to “false consciousness,” where happy dispositions, piety, and the ethics of hard work promised success and flourishing.

Although the women may have occasionally drawn on neoliberal discourses of happiness and self-advancement, they resented and worked against precarity that these discourses enabled. If embracing does not necessarily imply articulating a defiant identity or leaning into traditional gender roles, religious piety, or fatalism, 17 then what does it entail?

Through daydreaming, gift giving, volunteering with stray animals, sweeping streets, teaching, and self care, the women cultivated the margins that remain the site of violence, neglect, and opportunistic short-term investment. These gendered forms of embracing are entwined with their minority status and Islamic piety, as marginalized population groups have to search for ways to pull through, persevere, survive, and even thrive in volatile environments.

In Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? Judith Butler notes that precarity

“designates that politically induced condition in which certain populations suffer from failing social and economic networks of support and become differentially exposed to

16 Earlier in 2016 a similar flash mob titled #ICan’tRemainSilent (# YaNeMoguMolchat) took place on Russian and Ukrainian social media, where women shared their experiences of gendered violence and harassment. 17 It is not to say that the women never told me about resisting – on the contrary I heard many stories of them physically and verbally fighting back against Islamophobia and gender-based violence. Simultaneously, religious injunctions occasionally served as justifications in the situations, which were obviously unfair to them.

12 injury, violence, and death. Such populations are at heightened risk of disease, poverty, starvation, displacement, and of exposure to violence without protection.” 18 Despite being present in Russia for centuries, 19 most Muslims (especially visibly pious ones) live precarious lives. They are socially marginalized, economically deprived, and politically

“suspicious” due to racism and Islamophobia that have picked up in Russia with the collapse of the Soviet Union and bloody wars in the Caucasus. As a minority population,

Muslims are also more affected by economic crises, the scrutiny of law enforcement agencies, and xenophobic attacks. The lives of the pious Muslim women 20 I studied elicit this volatility: all of them lived through the dissolution of the USSR, the hardships of

Perestroika , wars in Chechnya and Dagestan, and the economic depressions of the 90s.

Their becoming practicing Muslim relegated them even farther to the margins of society, as some of them lost their jobs or could not gain employment after they donned hijabs , were racially profiled on a regular basis, and experienced chronic financial need. 21

Constraining and oppressive, marginality, however, offered the women a unique perspective on a life worth living. A site and a feeling, marginality allowed them to articulate a vision of life that “creatively enliven(s) and rearrange(s) the very social

18 Judith Butler, Frames of War: When Is Life Grievable? London: Verso Press, 2009, pp. 25-26. 19 At different times, regions populated by Muslims (e.g., Tatarstan, Bashkiriya, Mordovia, the Caucasus, the Crimea, etc.) were incorporated into Russia mainly through conquest, and they responded differently to the state’s assimilative policies. While some communities were successfully incorporated and grew wealthy over time (e.g., Tatars of Kazan and the Siberian/Ural regions), others did not (e.g., Chechens). 20 The women often self-identified as pious ( poklonyaushayasya ). For them to be a devout Muslim meant to follow the teachings and practices of Islam. Most of them were Sunni Muslim, both converts and “born into” the faith. 21 I remember how Dina (Chapter III) instructed me: “Allah is generous and will grant in abundance. Just ask Him for more and bigger things. The biggest thing I was asking for was an apartment with windowsills, so I could grow plants there. Allah heard my prayers, and we finally got a tiny apartment, but with windowsills!”

13 categories that peripheralize [their] existence.” 22 The women did not actively resist or learn to navigate their always already precarious condition, but embraced it by building ethical solidarities, persisting in spite of , and living on more instead of less. As sections of Chapters I, IV and V will illustrate, some of them used available resources to “pull themselves by the bootstraps” and often undermined the nascent solidarities with Muslim

(and non-Muslim) women in similarly precarious conditions. Others, on the contrary, harnessed the vitality of their marginal position to imagine, hope for, and build a better present and future for themselves and others. Thus, the women were arduously knitting and stitching (Chapter I), saving (Chapter II), bargaining (Chapter III), feeling (Chapter

IV) and nursing (Chapter V) in the shifting contexts of precarity. Their unnoticed and easily dismissed labor that revolved around dreaming, soothing, touching, and persisting sustained and furthered social bonds, institutions, and the wellbeing of others. It produced spaces, socialities, and ways of relating to the world that affirmed life and served as sites of refuge in hard times. Their quotidian acts of hospitality, caring for the self and others, and commitment to shared resources did not disguise a “feel good” neoliberal agency or

“subterranean” resistance. Rather, these acts made life livable for oneself and others, helped pull through the economic and political conditions that degraded and marginalized, and allowed them to practice religion as they understood it. Embracing precarity involves precisely that – caring, sharing, sustaining, and supporting in spite of and even if the fragility of the worlds we inhabit is unbearable.

Precarity and fragility are indeed a universally shared condition, although both are experienced and distributed differently. Along with my interlocutors, I was also living through its various manifestations. My initial project on female religious authority in

22 Anna Lowernhaupt Tsing, “From the Margins,” Cultural Anthropology 9/3, 1994, p. 279.

14 Damascus fell through due to the vicious civil war in Syria and the continuous unrest in the Middle East. With little funding and a vague idea where I was heading, I had to rethink my research in a different geographic location. Upon my arrival from fieldwork, my colleagues and I were affected by the unfolding neoliberalization of higher education. 23 In our responses to austerity and the shifting political environment in the

United States, I recognize the lessons I have learned from my interlocutors. My colleagues and I also embraced (i.e., not succumbed to or reconciled with) the fragility of things. Instead of “working smarter and harder,” we came together to read and discuss

Marx, helped each other pay bills, engaged in “conspicuous” consumption of artisan cheeses, and “excessively” purchased Verso press books. Like that of my interlocutors, the volatility we experienced brought about new modes of knowing, ethical orientations, and attending 24 to things.

The ways in which the women embraced vulnerability also taught me much about value. Often measured in terms of productivity (i.e., efficiency, marketable creativity, and production), in late capitalist economies value is tied to particular work regimes and types of employment that translate into financial compensation, networks, and respectability.

Value is also attached to a particular bodily discipline and class-inferring experiences

(e.g., travel destinations, cuisines, and services one can afford). In the case of the women, value was fluid and did not necessarily reside in material wellbeing or objects that

23 On its gendered manifestations see, for example, Yvette Taylor and Kinneret Lahad (eds.), Feeling Academic in the Neoliberal University. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. 24 Paying attention under late capitalism is interesting. On the one hand, as Liz Kinnamon suggests, “paying attention on purpose, here and now, and in a non-judgmental way is a technique of attention management that exists in the service of capital accumulation.” On the other hand, she notes, attending to the self and others can be an important step toward “building a social infrastructure of care, collective enjoyment, and political change.” See Liz Kinnamon, “Attention under Repair: Asceticism from Self-care to Care of the Self,” Women & Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory 26:2-3, 2016, pp. 184-196.

15 (seemingly) secure it, like the US passport or a university degree.25 Value circulated through their hopes and desires (Chapters I and III), attachments and intimacies (Chapters

II and V), and attunements to the world (Chapter IV). Value that the pious Muslim women produced through hospitality, gift giving, and care work, which at times refused to succumb to neoliberal logics, was not directly subjected to exchange or market mechanisms. In the 1990s everything seemed to have an exchange value, which created confusion, class divide, and resentment as the financial crises and wars periodically shook Russia. 26 In the 2000s Vladimir Putin’s turn toward traditional values, the rule of law ( verhovenstvo zakona ), and a strong state generally resonated with the desires and hopes of the broader population. Family and patriotism were clear and secure social orientations, especially when jobs, social relations, and educational credentials could no longer provide the desired stability. The Russian Orthodox Church and official Muslim leaders have supported and furthered ethical orientations composed around strong leadership, nation, family, and community. 27 Although my interlocutors found these values meaningful in an abstract form, most of them were critical of them in practice.

Thus, what was truly valuable and important for them circulated through quotidian affects, bonds of reciprocity, and Islamic spirituality.

25 For example, my interlocutor Polina, who has dual US-Russian citizenship, left the United States and chose to reside in Russia, where as a veiled Muslim woman she has fewer opportunities. My interlocutors Farida and Salihat dropped out of college, not seeing value in education they were receiving. 26 In Chapter II my interlocutor Aliya alludes to these changes and the structure of feeling they produced. Also see Jennifer Patico, Consumption and Social Change in a Post-Soviet Middle Class . Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008. 27 For example, in their sermons and public addresses both Patriarch Kirill and Grand Mufti Gainutdin emphasize traditional values, but also coexistence, religious tolerance, and peace under the wise political leadership in Russia. See, for example, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b- INWWffX_I Accessed on August 6, 2018.

16 Telling Stories against Austerity

The chapters revolve around and reframe the idea of women’s labor, 28 which not only challenges the perception that Muslim women do not work, but also elicits how their

“inconsequential” labor is productive of solidarities, ethical orientations, and futurities that are expansive, inclusive, and attuned to the broader social good. I understand the

“social good” as varied and conflicting relationships, practices, and institutions that uphold responsibility toward others in need. 29 I use the word “conflicting,” because the

women often debated whether these relationships, practices, and institutions responded to

the communal and public needs. Despite the fuzziness of the definition, the common

good serves as an entry point into the discussion about ethical life, interdependency, and

the political. Islamic principles (e.g., intention or niya , reward or thawab , the good or khayr , and the prohibited or haram ), liberal ideas (e.g., anti-racist and pro-diversity), and socialist convictions (e.g., welfare state and pro-labor) informed the ways in which my interlocutors articulated and enacted their understanding of “the common good.” The

28 There is rich scholarship on gendered immaterial work coming from a feminist tradition (e.g., Arlie Hochschild’s The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling ; Eileen Boris Rhacel Salazar’s edited volume Intimate Labors: Cultures, Technologies, and the Politics of Care ; Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild (eds.), Global Woman: nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy , etc.). There is also a plethora of ethnographies that elucidate different forms of gendered labor (e.g., Homa Hoodfar, Between the Marriage and the Market: Intimate Politics and Survival in Cairo ; Zeynep Korkman, Gendered Fortunes: Feelings, Publics, and Labors of Divination in Postsecular Turkey (forthcoming), Attiya Ahmad, Everyday Conversions: Islam, Domestic Work and South East Migrant Women in Kuwait ; Farha Ghannam, Remaking the Modern: Space, Relocation, and the Politics of Identity in a Global Cairo , etc.) 29 There is a body of literature on salvationism (see Liisa Malkki) and self-care (see Nikolas Rose). Scholars have problematized (see Lauren Berlant on empathy) and complicated (see Liz Kinnamon on mindfulness) the forms of care driven by empathy and neoliberal ethics. In the dissertation I show how the laborious, gendered, and hopeful ways in which the women cared for the self and others, were not solely inspired by depoliticizing emotions, neoliberal techniques, socialist convictions, or religious imperatives. Rather, I illustrate the women’s attempts to make sense of the constellation of political power, material conditions, and personal struggles that are enmeshed with precarity, anxiety, and uncertainty.

17 work they undertook also sheds light on what they considered valuable and important, on their critiques of the present condition, and their responses to austerity.

Scholars have demonstrated how ordinary people resist austerity 30 or learn to live with it, 31 surviving in the midst of what Andrea Muehlebach calls “out-of-syncness.” 32 In recent years anthropologists and feminist scholars have shown how marginalized populations (e.g., minorities, women, and other groups who suffer from intersectional 33 forms of oppression) persevere in spite of exhaustion and neglect and create livable present and futures for their communities. 34 Inspired by these works, my ethnography demonstrates the importance of the overlooked, undervalued, and gendered labor of minority women that can potentially create a more just and dignified life for themselves and others. In the dissertation I show how while volunteering, cleaning staircases, rescuing stray animals, and running a small business, the women dream, create communal institutions, and explore religious affects. Their dreams, underpaid volunteer labor, and willfulness have the potential to uplift and sustain the marginalized Muslim community and the society as a whole in the times of economic downturn. It is true that these forms of gendered labor are easily dismissed, co-opted, and exploited, while social bonds it fosters are sometimes undermined by competition among women and their

30 See Asef Bayat, Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East . Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009. 31 See, for example, Daniel M. Knight, History, Time, and Economic Crisis in Central Greece. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. Laura Bear, Navigating Austerity: Currents of Debt Along a South Asian River . Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015. 32 Andrea Muehlebach, “Anthropologies of Austerity,” History and Anthropology 27/3, 2016, p. 360. The special issue of the journal is devoted to austerity-related issues and its effects on the lives of ordinary people in PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece, and Spain). 33 On intersectionality see Kimberle Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: a Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory, and Antiracist Politics,” University of Chicago Legal Forum, Special Issue: Feminism in the Law: Theory, Practice and Criticism , 1989, pp. 139-168. 34 Especially, the works of Elizabeth Povinelli and Donna Haraway.

18 ambivalent investments in patriarchal projects. However, once noticed, cultivated, and advanced, this potentiality can pave the way to a present and future(s), where all are responsible for each other and where precarity is truly a shared condition.

Chapter I tells a story of a small atelier run by a mother and two daughters. Trying to stay afloat in the business-unfriendly environment, 35 the women flirted with neoliberal self-managing that valorizes networking, discipline, and productivity. Sermons of Islamic televangelists and rags to riches stories of young entrepreneurs gained traction among the women, however, not for long. Instead of succumbing to neoliberal self-crafting or happily working against austerity, the women spent time welcoming guests, giving gifts, and dreaming about socially oriented projects they would like to pursue. While some may argue that entertaining potential clients and treating them with gifts are perfectly compatible with the capitalist logics of customer-friendliness and productivity, I show how through hospitality, sharing, and dreaming the women articulated their own vision of value, the meanings of precarity, and responses to it.

Chapter II focuses on two Muslim volunteers who rescue abandoned animals from slaughterhouses and profit-seeking animal traders. Together with prominent NGOs they also work with precarious population groups like military conscripts and prisoners.

The chapter shows the transformative potentiality of the relationships that the women develop with stray animals and the disadvantaged. First, it articulates precariousness as a universal condition that is experienced by marginalized humans and animals alike.

Second, the emergent interdependency that changes the women’s relationships with their

35 Over-regulation, high taxation, bureaucracy, lack of state-support for small and medium businesses, racism and Islamophobia, among other issues. More on the topic see Olga Gurova and Daria Morozovo, “Creative Precarity? Young Fashion Designers as Entrepreneurs in Russia,” Cultural Studies 32/5, 2018, pp. 704-726.

19 bodies, religion, and the other is important, because it raises questions about (un)livable life and multiplicity, as late capitalism and political authoritarianism seek to devour both humans and non-humans. The chapter concludes with the discussion of volunteerism and its cooptation by the Russian state, which slowly abandons many of its social obligations and outsources them to volunteers. The women’s critiques of their unpaid labor open up the conversation about the gendered nature of volunteerism and its political potentialities.

Chapter III takes a closer look at the historic presence of Muslims in Saint

Petersburg and its Islamic infrastructure, which is primarily sustained through the labor of pious Muslim women. Focusing on the recently established Muhtasibat or the Spiritual

Administration of Muslims in Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Region, I discuss what dilemmas women face when they work “within the system” that is traditionally dominated by men. In the context of austerity and political volatility, when the Russian state can easily shut down any organization, the women choose to participate in creating a physical space they can call their own. Through their important educational and administrative work, which often remains un(der)paid and unnoticed, the women debated, articulated, and tried to implement their visions of the communal life. However, not all visions were welcome, as some voices were excluded from this state-sponsored and male-run institution. Those women who kept their distance from Muhtasibat offered poignant critiques that shed light on the issues of belonging, women’s work, and religious authority in today’s Russia.

Chapter IV discusses how two pious Muslim women from Turkmenistan and

Kazakhstan built their lives in Saint Petersburg, where they experienced Islamophobia and racism, and had to work odd jobs to make ends meet. To respond to financial

20 hardships and social marginalization, both of them harnessed feelings that arose from reading religious texts and remembering their path to Islam. While this religious affect invited one of the women to problematize the unfair working conditions she found herself in, it helped the other woman to cope with and normalize precarity. The chapter analyzes the complex ways in which mental and physical health, capitalism, and religious affect are intertwined in the context of minority women’s experiences of migration and dislocation.

The final chapter demonstrates how in hard times the women found consolation in relationships with their Muslim sisters and family members, especially children. While serving as a pipeline of support, sisterhood also put much pressure on the women, who often competed with each other over men, power, and religious authority. Valorized and desired, motherhood was another source of anxiety, as my interlocutors tried to make a living without compromising social conventions around “proper” parenting practices.

Through motherhood the women provided interesting social commentary that was shaped by economic precarity, the rise of political conservatism, and broader debates about the social role of women. As the chapter demonstrates, some of them did not find family and community bonds uplifting. These “unruly” women drew on their past experiences to question the overlapping systems of patriarchy in Russia and within the ummah , while continuing to pursue their personal and professional interests and cultivate ties outside of the Muslim community.

In the epilogue I follow up on the lives of my interlocutors a year and a half after my fieldwork officially ended in December 2016. I show how their lives have changed

(or not) since then and what they make of their work today, when the economic crisis has

21 supposedly ended, Vladimir Putin was reelected as the president in March 2018, and

Russia has become a center of large-scale prestige projects like the Crimean Bridge or the

FIFA World Cup. I return to the idea of potentiality that is evasive and fragile, but promising, especially in the context of continuous political uncertainty. As the recent polls have shown, 42% of Russian citizens support radical and large-scale change, while

41% of respondents advocate for minor and slow improvements. The same poll also indicates that overall people feel abandoned by the state that “does not want to take care of them.” 36 How can minority women create spaces of potentiality where a commonly shared feeling and communal response to austerity will emerge?

On Method: More (Feminist) Ethnography is always a Good Idea

Throughout my eighteen-month-long ethnographic fieldwork I interviewed around thirty women, all of whom informed, inspired, and challenged 37 my research.

Some of them used our meetings to invite me to Islam, while others generously opened up their hearts and homes to me during our long interviews and hours of participant- observation. Several women became my close friends, while others refused to meet with me, referring to busy schedules or personal issues. My interlocutors constituted a loosely defined community, which included converts and “cultural” 38 Muslims, young, middle- aged, and older women, and women who were born in or migrated to Russia from the

36 https://www.levada.ru/2017/12/28/hotim-li-my-peremen/ Accessed on July 10, 2018. 37 Some of them found my research to be “non-academic,” because they saw it as unrepresentative and theoretically questionable. For example, Svetlana thought that only large- scale surveys and questionnaires could yield reliable data, while feminist theory could not offer any valuable insights. 38 Muslims who see Islam as a part of their cultural and ethnic identity and who were “born into” the faith, as opposed to those who converted to Islam.

22 former Soviet republics. What united these pious economically deprived women was their participation in and memories of Istochnik , an Islamic cultural center they established and ran, which was shut down by Russian security services (Chapter III). My key interlocutor Aliya whom I met in 2009 and who later introduced me to other women called her sisters in Islam “ svoi ” or “my people,” as they shared religious devotion, ethical orientations, constrained material conditions, and a project of rebuilding an

Islamic cultural center. After the center ceased to exist, new members joined this fuzzy community, while others moved abroad (e.g., to Egypt, Turkey, India, and Sri Lanka) or left it.

Although I was a so-called native anthropologist, 39 my fieldwork did not come easy to me. I was concerned about the disciplinary boundaries of area studies (e.g.,

Middle East Studies, Slavic and Eurasian Studies), which entrapped me and which I sought to traverse. I drew inspiration from this geographic and disciplinary liminality, but it remained a source of my anxieties and future precarity. Despite being a native speaker of Russian, I occasionally had issues expressing myself to my interlocutors, as my ideas, concepts, and terms were conceived in English in the US academy. “Embracing” came out of these linguistic “borderlands,” where one feels but cannot yet find the right word in a language. Moreover, in the course of collecting ethnographic data, I kept thinking about the politics of academia with its problematic emphasis on “edginess,” resistance, and theory with a capital T. As I was talking to my interlocutors, I could not (and did not want to) search for resistance, “squeeze” theorizing into their life worlds or initiate conversations about queer desires. After several months of worrying, I embraced the

39 See Lila Abu-Lughod, “Fieldwork of a Dutiful Daughter,” in Soraya Altorki and Camilia El- Sohl (eds.), Studying Your Own Society: Arab Women in the Field . Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1988. See also Soraya Altorki’s own work on Saudi women.

23 fieldwork with its messiness and miscommunications, tried to keep the urge to theorize under control, and followed my interlocutors instead of academic fads. The women were guiding me towards my findings, although they may disagree with my ensuing interpretations and arguments.

There were also issues with trust. As a Christian woman of Jewish background who was studying in the United States, I was a suspect. During one of our conversations,

Aliya confessed that initially she did not trust me and reluctantly agreed to our first meeting. She believed that my academic training in international relations and residency in the US indicated my possible connections to the Russian and American security services. Moreover, she thought that my interest in female Muslim circles in Saint

Petersburg could endanger the community, which sought to keep a low profile. After consulting with her husband and closest friends, she decided to take a risk and meet with me. After Aliya and the women tested my knowledge of Islam and Arabic language (i.e., for months I was taking Modern Standard Arabic and Levantine dialect with her), they began to open up to me. My status as a PhD candidate made me closer to those of my interlocutors who were students: we often brainstormed our projects and mobilized our respective connections to help each other. My marriage to a man of Arab descent who met some of the women, as well as my pregnancy also strengthened trust between us. 40

Throughout my fieldwork (and upon my return to Tucson) I eagerly offered help, participated in the women’s daily routine, taught them English, and carefully listened to their worries and shared mine with them. We became friends, and they allowed me to become a part of the community through my participation in Muhtasibat ’s gatherings and the work of the Women’s Council. Thus, my academic training in Middle Eastern

40 Many of them thought we could relate to each other as mothers.

24 Studies, solid knowledge of Arabic, and personal milestones indicated that I was “on the right path” and could be trusted.

There were things, however, that the women did not quite understand or approve of: Why would I not convert to Islam since I knew so much about it? Why did I bring up feminist ideas and was committed to them? Why was I researching something so unimportant and non-academic as minority women’s work? Why was I worried so much about my career when I could just focus on being a mother? I also did not understand some of my interlocutors’ decisions and beliefs. What helped us comprehend and complicate each other’s life choices and life worlds was the process of ethnography.

Responding to Tim Ingold’s provocative essay That’s Enough about Ethnography! ,

Andrew Shryock and Susan MacDougall call for more ethnography with all the care, attention, anxieties, and discomfort it requires and generates. 41 Indeed, as a way of relational engagement and a mode of writing, ethnography allowed me to observe, make sense of, and analyze the processes that were unfolding at the time of my fieldwork in

Russia and how they impacted the lives of the women. It also invited me to open up to my interlocutors’ questioning, critiques, and advice and to interrogate my own responses to the everyday challenges that life posed. It was through the relationality, reciprocity, and collaboration that emerged between us in the field that I could conceptualize minority women’s labor and the potentialities it radiated. Thus, ethnography allowed for a gentle and slow maintenance of difference and growth of trust between us, as much as it

41 Andrew Shryock, “Ethnography: Provocation.” Correspondences, Cultural Anthropology website, May 3, 2016. https://culanth.org/fieldsights/871-ethnography-provocation and Susan MacDougall, “Ethnography: Deviation.” Correspondences, Cultural Anthropology website, May 19, 2016. https://culanth.org/fieldsights/877-ethnography-deviation

25 reflected the potential of embracing labor, which involves fragile appreciation, quotidian acceptance of difference, and sympathy.

During my fieldwork I paid close attention to marginality and the intersectional power differentials in which my interlocutors were entangled. As I will discuss below, in eliciting women’s experiences and situated knowledges I drew inspiration from different strands of feminist scholarship and activism that work in the service of justice for disadvantaged communities and marginalized peoples. These concerns define what Dana-

Ain Davis and Christa Craven call a feminist ethnography. 42 Examining the debates around feminist ethnography and opportunities it presents, Lila Abu-Lughod writes:

By working with the assumption of difference in sameness, of a self that participates in multiple identifications, and an other that is also partially the self, we might be moving beyond the impasse of the fixed self/other or subject/object divide that so disturbs the new ethnographers. To speak more plainly and concretely, imagine the woman fieldworker who does not deny that she is a woman and is attentive to gender in her own treatment, her own actions, and in the interactions of people in the community she is writing about. In coming to understand their situation, she is also coming to understand her own through a process of specifying the similarities and the differences. Most important, she has a political interest in grasping the other’s situation since she, and often they, recognize a limited kinship and responsibility. 43

By analyzing what precarity means for pious working class Muslim women and how they respond to it, I try to offer a grounded sense of our commonly shared condition and our different 44 (yet in many ways similar) experiences of working, mothering, acting

42 Dana-Ain Davis and Christa Craven, Feminist Ethnography: Thinking Through Methodologies, Challenges, and Possibilities. New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016, p. 11. 43 Lila Abu-Lughod, “Can There Be a Feminist Ethnography?” Women and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory 5/1, 1990, pp. 25-26. 44 I was always aware of my privilege to study in the United States and have the opportunity to write about these women. Interestingly enough, many of my interlocutors did not consider my residence in the US a privilege. They told me “You live in the US, so what? The grass is always greener on the other side ( horosho tam, gde nas net ).” I recognized the differences in which we

26 ethically, and compromising in the context of austerity. My ethnography seeks to bring

out the particular 45 and the situated 46 in these women’s experiences without making them exceptional (e.g., over-determined by Islam 47 ). By drawing on the particular, I want to

show how connected, interdependent, and “accountable we all are for what is happening

down the street, south of the border or across the sea” and how “those of us who have

more of anything: brains, physical strength, political power, spiritual energies” should

“share them with those that don’t have.” 48

On Theoretical Framework: a Patchwork

How do thick ethnography and theorizing work together? I have learned from my

experiences in the field that the process of data collecting, as well as the empirical and personal contexts of discovery, drive theorization.49 Ethnographic description and the production of theory do not exist as binaries or mutually exclusive processes, but happen simultaneously, as the women of color scholarship attests to. 50 I believe there cannot be

experienced austerity: after all I had a place to live in Saint Petersburg and could move freely around the city without being racially profiled. As my interlocutor and I were once passing by the police station, she told herself “not to worry” because she is walking with a “white person.” Episodes like this one always reminded me about my multiple privileges. Nevertheless, my interlocutors recognized that like them I also faced material constraints and insecurities. I think that their small gifts and advice on how I should respond to hardships served as the recognition of a shared kinship Abu-Lughod is writing about. 45 On an “ethnography of the particular” see Lila Abu-Lughod, “Locating Ethnography,” Ethnography 1/2, 2000, pp. 261-267. 46 Donna Haraway, “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Particular Perspective,” Feminist Studies 14, 1988, pp. 575-99. 47 Although Islam plays a big role in the women’s daily decision-making and ethical commitments, it does not (over) determine their lives. Other factors also complicate their life choices. 48 See Gloria Anzaldua, “Forward to the Second Edition” in Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua (eds.), This Bridge Called My Back . New York: Kitchen Table, 1983, p. v. 49 See, for example, Richard Swedberg, “Theorizing in Sociology and Social Science: Turning to the Context of Discovery,” Theory and Society 41/1, 2012, pp. 1-40. 50 E.g., emphasis on experiential knowledge, political consciousness raising, and theorizing.

27 “too much description” and “not enough theorizing,” because theorization occurs through description. Coming from an interdisciplinary program with training in gender and women’s studies and history, I carried out a research that straddled geographic regions, temporalities, disciplinary conventions, and thematic concerns. To describe my theoretical engagements I find the metaphor of patchwork to be the most suitable. None of the (big) theorists alone could respond to the reproductive and transdisciplinary work I was trying to accomplish in the dissertation. Only by weaving together different theoretical threads I could unpack the delicate life worlds of my interlocutors without subjugating them to meta-theories.

My dissertation primarily draws on and contributes to three bodies of literature: a) feminist scholarship on affect and embodiment, where I am especially indebted to Sara

Ahmed, Judith Butler, Lauren Berlant, and Ann Cvetkovich b) ethnographies of late capitalism and precarity by Andrea Muehlebach, Amira Mittermaier, Joao Biehl, and

Elizabeth Povinelli and c) works that center the lives of (pious) Muslim women, where the names of Saba Mahmood, Lara Deeb, Lila Abu-Lughod, Amelie Le Renard, among other scholars, are important.

By bringing together feminist scholarship on affect and embodiment, I seek to unpack the meanings of care work that minority women in Russia perform. Here I follow

Michael Hardt’s observation that “although affective labor has never been entirely outside of capitalist production, this does not mean that it is no longer of use to anticapitalist projects.” 51 Indeed, I argue that the women’s care work has the potential to address capitalism-induced precarity not by openly or covertly resisting it, but by working toward mutuality, multiplicity, and reciprocity. This is where the earlier

51 Michael Hardt, “Affective Labor,” Boundary 2, 26/2, 1999, p. 90.

28 discussed embracing serves as a heuristic device to examine the ways in which women strive for solidarity. As the dissertation chapters will show, my interlocutors’

(re)productive care labor involves contradictions and setbacks. Yet I posit that it can potentially generate commonly shared affective economies 52 around austerity that are based on solidarity. The women’s work may contribute to questioning the “common sense” that disinvesting and living on less are morally correct and the only available response to the “objective reality” of neoliberal capitalism. It is difficult to measure potentiality – how can we gauge the capacity of minority women’s care work to affect and be affected by the “common sense”? As theorist of affect Kathleen Stewart notes,

“potentiality is a thing immanent to fragments of sensory experience and dreams of presence. A layer, or layering to the ordinary, it engenders attachments or systems of investment in the unfolding of things.” 53 Thus, the care work of my interlocutors can allude to a different “system of investment,” empowering “attachments,” and “sensory experiences and dreams” that can affect and transform their everyday life.

I also seek to contribute to ethnographies of late capitalism and precarity by focusing on Islamic piety. Scholars like James Hoesterey, Daromir Rudnyckyj, and

Andrea Muehlebach have demonstrated the complex relationships between religious devotion and neoliberal regimes of productivity. For example, in the Italian context

Muehlebach observes what she calls the “catholicization of neoliberalism,” where citizens are encouraged to mend the damages of excessive marketization through their

52 On how emotions create “shared “communal” visceral responses” see Sara Ahmed, “Affective Economies,” Social Text 79, 22/2, 2004. 53 Kathleen Stewart, Ordinary Affects . Durham: Duke University Press, 2007, p. 21.

29 unremunerated (religiously inspired) care work. 54 Similarly, Rudnyckyj shows how in

Indonesia Islamic principles are weaved into corporate management techniques to enhance productivity, motivation, and personal growth of workers. In my ethnography I also demonstrate how some pious Muslim women invoked religious feelings and teachings to normalize their marginalization and “happily” strive for success despite racism, Islamophobia, sexism, and the unfavorable economic situation. However, I also show how their (often faith-inspired) care work has the potential to morph into solidarity and empathy that question late capitalist status quo .

My final contribution is to the literature on the lives of devout Muslim women that has been advanced mostly by scholars of the Middle East and North Africa. Written after 9/11 in the context of global Islamophobia, these works focus primarily on the questions of modernity, piety, and agency. My ethnography, written after the 2008 world economic crisis, asks a different set of questions where Islam is an important but not the dominant variable in a constellation of forces that shape the lives of these women. As a post-socialist country with the largest Muslim minority population in Europe, 55 Russia offers an exciting opportunity to pose questions about the effects of austerity, gendered labor of minority women, feminization of poverty, and ethical ways of living under late capitalism. I am not concerned whether my interlocutors are “modern” or have agency or are subaltern subjects who vehemently resist. I am interested in how they orient their (and envision different) lives in the circumstances of continuous economic crises.

54 Andrea Muehlebach, “The Catholocization of Neoliberalism: On Love and Welfare in Lombardy, Italy,” American Anthropologist 115/3, pp. 452-465. 55 On the discussion around numbers and the meanings of being Muslim, see Egdunas Racius, Muslims in Eastern Europe. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018.

30 Following the works on Muslims in Eastern and Southern Europe, 56 I seek to

demonstrate the diversity within a long existing 57 Muslim community in Saint Petersburg

and the issues it faces after decades of socialism and the state’s ambivalent relationship

with religion, the gradual withdrawal of welfare state, and the introduction of market

economy and liberal democracy. Such global forces as the spread of Gulf-funded Islam,

religious experimentations of the 1990s, the tightening grip of the state in the 2000s, and

the micro-politics within the local Muslim communities have shaped the lives of my

interlocutors. Given the dearth of literature on gender and Islam in Eastern Europe and

Russia, 58 my ethnography centers on the lives of women, because their work is crucial

not only for the reproduction of communal institutions and practices, but also in eliciting

the effects of precarization and marginalization in today’s Russia.

56 See, for example, Kristen Ghodsee and Tone Bringa. Kristen Ghodsee, Muslim Lives in Eastern Europe: Gender, Ethnicity, and the Transformation of Islam in Post-Socialist Bulgaria. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009; Tone Bringa, Being Muslim the Bosnian Way: Identity and Community in a Central Bosnian Village. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995. 57 That is, in contrast to immigrant Muslim communities in Western Europe. Literature about Muslims in France, England, and Germany focuses mostly on the questions of conversion, Islamic radicalism, different forms of discrimination, communal life and institutions, and the questions of citizenship, belonging, and nationality. See, for example, the works of Esra Ozyurek and Katherine Ewing. Although these questions are also relevant for East European contexts, especially in light of the refugee and migrant flows and the rise of far-right populist politics (see, for example, Mary Neuverger, The Orient Within: Muslim Minorities and the Negotiation of Nationhood in Modern Bulgaria . Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004), Muslim minorities have different histories in Russia. 58 As opposed to works on gender and Islam in Central Asia, where scholars have explored the gendered legacies of communism and the “traditional” forms of Islam practiced by women, among other themes.

31 Chapter I

(Un)Stitching Precarious Worlds: Muslim Women’s Atelier in Saint Petersburg

It was a chilly November evening, when I was visiting Salihat, Ayna, and Farida at their atelier. Ayna was knitting a new purse and lamenting how last year nobody attended their fashion show, where they were eager to present their new collection. “For inspiration” Salihat suggested watching Business Youth, a motivational TV program that taught young entrepreneurs how to set up and promote their business. In the episode she found online, 17-year-old Eva was explaining how she earned her first million rubles ($17,810) in three months, selling cigarettes, grooming cats, and making furniture. Praising Eva’s amazing ability to “see money everywhere,” the program host called her a “true individual (nastoyashiy chelovek).” Full of enthusiasm, he said that her example “shows us that you can buy and sell anything, you just need to be motivated and ambitious.” As we were watching the program, I was rolling my eyes and fidgeting in my chair. - What? – asked Ayna, smiling at my reactions. - This is nonsense. A true individual? Really? – I exclaimed. - And why not? Eva is motivated and ambitious! She doesn’t steal from anyone or beg in the streets. This program expands your mental horizons – everything is possible, there are no limits. You disagree, because you just can’t fathom it. You have a Soviet mentality. When you need money, you do what you have to do, be it grooming cats or what have you. It is a terrible system, but this is the reality we live in. We all have noble motives in the beginning, but then succumb to our daily needs. These days we all have to hustle (prihoditsa krutitsa).

Ayna was right: during the 2015 economic crisis when global oil prices collapsed,

European and American sanctions soared, and the Russian government increased military spending on the conflicts in Syria and the Ukraine, ordinary people had to hustle. At the time anxiety, malaise, and exhausting attempts to persevere characterized the socio- economic and political landscapes of Russia. Factory workers and long-distance truck drivers were protesting austerity, 59 experts were criticizing the government’s investment

59 Alexey Polikovskiy, “Dalnobol. Gosudarstvo, Obvalivshee Ekonomiku, Reshilo Slomat Zhizn Dalnoboishikam,” Novaya Gazeta , 30 Noyabrya, 2015, https://www.novayagazeta.ru/articles/2015/11/29/66566-dalnobol-gosudarstvo-obvalivshee- ekonomiku-reshilo-slomat-zhizn-dalnoboyschikam Mapping Russian Labor Conflict, http://seansrussiablog.org/?s=map+of+labor+protests+in+Russia See also http://seansrussiablog.org/2017/01/16/russias-mass-protests-five-years-on/ Accessed on January 29, 2017.

32 in the import substitution economic plan, and political analysts were predicting a series of terrorist attacks sponsored by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. In the midst of all this, people were trying to make ends meet. With stagnant wages, growing food prices, 60 and the government’s advice to simply “hang in there,” 61 Russians devised different money saving strategies and took up second jobs. 62 The government was trying to improve the situation by indexing social payments and offering food stamps on basic commodities, but utility costs continued to rise, while layoffs and budget cuts in public and private sectors persisted.

This chapter examines how Ayna, the owner of a small atelier, and her two daughters Farida and Salihat responded to austerity and political volatility that engulfed

Russia in 2015 and 2016. I demonstrate how in order to keep their (unprofitable) business afloat the women engaged in neoliberal techniques of self-crafting through networking, reading self-help literature, watching motivational programs like Business Youth , and listening to sermons of Shamil Alyautdinov, a prominent Muslim preacher, who invites

Muslims of Russia to unlock their entrepreneurial potential. Simultaneously, the women spent hours welcoming guests, giving gifts, sharing their modest space and food with friends in need, criticizing “imams of capital” like Alyautdinov, and, most importantly, dreaming. I argue that these gendered and seemingly “unproductive” practices, in fact, translated an understanding of value that did not align with the discourses and

60 http://www.levada.ru/2015/12/28/tyazhelyj-god-kak-rossiyane-spravlyayutsya-s-krizisom/ Accessed on January 16, 2017. 61 In May, 2016 PM D. Medvedev visited the Crimea, and when a female retiree complained about small pensions, he responded “there is no money, but hang in there, stay healthy, and have a good day!” This phrase provoked popular outrage and became the subject of memes. 62 An average monthly salary in Saint Petersburg in 2015 amounted to 42,000 rubles (approximately 712 USD), http://www.vedomosti.ru/finance/articles/2014/12/08/zarplaty-otstayut Some of my interlocutors started baby sitting and became involved in network marketing after soul-searching debates with their Muslim sisters.

33 expectations from “good neoliberal subjects.” 63 Through dreaming in the times of austerity the women envisioned a potential future based on solidarity, interdependency, and the broader social good. An inchoate patchwork of ideas, their dreaming represented a critique of the Russian present.

Ambivalent Self-Enterprising

The atelier (see Appendix I) was hit hard by the economic recession of 2015: the sales had declined and prices on materials skyrocketed, as yarn, threads, and accessories were imported primarily from Europe. When I asked the women how they felt in the volatile economic situation, Ayna responded: “we exist against all odds ( vopreki vsemu ).”

Escaping the war in Dagestan in the 1990s, they moved to Saint Petersburg, and in 2007 opened their atelier . The degradation of the textile industry in post-Soviet Russia, lack of state support for small business, and skepticism of their unemployed male relatives created obstacles in their way. Nevertheless, the women managed to rent tiny windowless premises in downtown Saint Petersburg, where they worked every day until late making clothes for Muslim and non-Muslim women. From time to time the small guest room with clothing racks and shelves for Islamic literature and halal beauty products transformed into a meeting venue for Muslim women, who gathered together for worship, religious lectures, and fellowship. Farida usually bought materials from a store, whose manager was Ayna’s former coworker. They were imported from Italy, hence the quality was better and prices slightly higher. The women could not afford to hire any employees,

63 These autonomous empowered neoliberal subjects are expected to lead responsibilized and self-managed lives in order to succeed in the market economy. They are supposed to envision their lives as projects, and invest in and transform themselves to excel on the market. On different approaches to and aspects of neoliberalism see Simon Springer, Kean Birch and Julie MacLeavy (eds.), The Handbook of Neoliberalism . London: Routledge, 2016.

34 but they occasionally worked with Ayna’s friend who helped them for a small compensation. The women displayed their dresses, cardigans, blouses, skirts, pants, headscarves, and purses in the atelier’s guest room and posted photos on the company website. Usually Farida’s friend would model for the photos that Salihat took in a stylized studio or a nearby park. It was difficult to estimate the monthly scale of production , because it largely depended on the number of orders. The absence of concrete numbers illustrated that the business was not oriented toward growth or mass market.

When I inquired about the atelier’s financial standing, the answer was evasive. However, from the women’s recurring worries about rent payments and the need to take side jobs, 64

I understood that the income was not big or steady. A week before rent was due the women stayed in the atelier past midnight trying to get as much work done as possible.

On regular days Ayna’s husband or her son would pick them up around 10 pm and drive them home, where they would clean and cook long past midnight. The family of five shared their apartment on the outskirts of Saint Petersburg with Ayna’s mother and divorced brother, who worked as a taxi driver.

When the effects of the economic crisis became palpable, the women implemented a flexible payment plan for their clients, who could pay in installments, but payment deadlines were never specified, let alone met. They charged a minimum amount for their labor, which did not correspond to the money making imperative Business Youth gurus promoted. “Why don’t you charge more for your labor?!” – I repeatedly asked them. Farida would lower her gaze and quietly say: “If we increase prices, nobody will buy from us.” I heard a similar argument from the management of the Happy Studies

64 For example, a neighbor asked Ayna to make a dress for her daughter’s kindergarten New Year’s party or clients of her husband, who worked as a martial arts instructor, would order new training outfits. Such random orders provided additional income on the side.

35 language center, where I was teaching English during my fieldwork. Justifying low pay

($ 6 per a three-hour-long class), the owner of the center predicted the subsequent decrease in the number of clients and advised me to simply “work more.” “Your and my work is solely based on enthusiasm. You don’t make much money and undersell yourself, but somehow continue doing it,” – Ayna would tell me with disappointment in her voice.

Despite the lack of connections ( svyazi ), government support, and diminishing clientele, the women tried to remain optimistic. Their attachment to fantasies about their business resembled what Lauren Berlant calls cruel optimism. She notes that a

“relationship of cruel optimism exists when something you desire is an obstacle to your flourishing. These relationships become cruel when the object that draws your attachment actively impedes the aim that brought you to do it initially.” 65 Although the women realized that because of racism, Islamophobia, and the lack of social and financial capital their story would never become like the ones featured on Business Youth , they continued to hope. After reading motivational books about fashion designers or advice literature on money managing, Salihat would become inspired by the idea that “anyone can become anybody” ( lyuboi mozhet stat lyubim ) through the cultivation of “proper” dispositions.

Drawing on pop psychology books, Ayna would lecture me about the importance of

“proper surroundings” ( pravilnoe okruzhenie ), 66 while Farida would strive to implement time-management in her daily life. However, their desire to create what Nikolas Rose calls “enterprising selves” 67 exceeded the logic of capital accumulation and was intertwined with complex aspirations for respectability and middle-class modes of

65 Lauren Berlant, Cruel Optimism . Durham: Duke University Press, 2011, pp. 1, 2. 66 By “proper” surroundings Ayna meant people who think positively and act decisively. These people inspire and encourage by their example. 67 Nikolas Rose, Inventing our Selves: Psychology, Power, and Personhood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, p.154

36 consumption and leisure. 68 Thus, in spite of tight budget, the women would occasionally treat themselves with expensive loose-leaf teas, gourmet chocolates, and royal dates from the Finnish store Prizma . Knowing that austerity made “wasteful spending” impossible or even shameful, the women nevertheless purchased pricy materials to make evening dresses. When Ayna was showing me elegant velvet dresses adorned with sparkling crystals, she said: “Everybody got used to Muslims in Russia being poor, having no sense of taste, and looking non-presentable. I want people to know that Muslim women also go to theaters.”

The women’s attempts at self-crafting converged with their religious beliefs.

Scholars of neoliberalism and Islam have illustrated how religious practices are reconfigured to ensure productivity at work 69 and to reconcile Islamic piety and commercial success. 70 Ayna, Farida, and Salihat also saw accountability, personal responsibility, and self-discipline as Islamic virtues conducive to business success. For example, they believed that commitment to halal in its broader sense (i.e., where they purchased materials, who they employed, and how they did business) demanded self- discipline and contributed to the ultimate success of a business enterprise. Similarly, their friend and a pastry chef Zuhra tied together successful business, Islamic virtues, and personal accountability:

At work I apply the concept of halal everywhere, from how I earn money and communicate with people to where I buy the ingredients for my sweets. Environmentally friendly production and consumption are as important for

68 More on the topic of the embodied self-crafting see Carla Freeman, Entrepreneurial Selves: Neoliberal Respectability and the Making of a Caribbean Middle Class . Durham: Duke University Press, 2014. 69 Daromir Rudnyckyj, Spiritual Economies: Islam, Globalization, and the Afterlife of Development. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010. 70 James Bourk Hoesterey, Rebranding Islam: Piety, Prosperity, and a Self-Help Guru . Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016.

37 me as being fair to my employees. I always try to make their work easier and create suitable labor conditions for them. They are on my team, and I am responsible for them.

The women conceived of time-management, work ethics, and Islamic virtues in conjunction with each other. For instance, during one of the religious gatherings that took place at the atelier, a local religious authority figure Aliya (Chapter II) emphasized the importance of time as a resource:

In Islam time is seen as Allah’s gift to human beings, for which we will be asked on the Day of Judgment. Let’s think for a moment - how do we spend our time? Is it useful time-spending or is it mostly lahw 71 ? How much time do we waste? With every moment we become closer to Allah, that is, closer to our physical death, so it is important to use every opportunity to worship our Creator. As you understand, worship takes multiple forms and includes prayer, zikr , helping people, and being useful.

While the women agreed that time was the most valuable resource both in capitalist terms and from an Islamic point of view, a lot of it seemed to be “wasted” on chatting and tea drinking.

Ayna, Farida, and Salihat also considered the cultivation of positive attitudes to be important for overall success, especially in the times of economic crisis. Ayna viewed despondency as morally deficient and conducive to inertia and laziness. She praised her

Muslim sisters, who persevered, worked hard, and remained positive despite exhaustion and hopelessness. She believed that eventually their problems would get resolved, and with Allah’s help they would be rewarded with happiness. In The Promise of Happiness ,

Sara Ahmed states that happiness “is a disciplinary technique,” which “directs and orients” us toward particular objects and life choices.” 72 Indeed, for women in Ayna’s surroundings happiness emanated from the correct understanding of religious texts and

71 Lahw means amusement in Arabic. 72 Sara Ahmed, The Promise of Happiness. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010, p. 40.

38 following the “right path,” which promised a fulfilling present and future. During a lecture at the atelier, Ayna’s friend Abeer was talking about Nafs Mutma‘inna or Tranquil

Soul. Smiling to her Muslim sisters, she said:

Why do Muslims in Russia believe that happiness is only attainable in Heaven? We think that in this life we have to suffer and in the end we will be rewarded. This is wrong. Allah gave us everything to be happy in dunya and akhira . It is something inside us (my emphasis) that prevents us from being truly happy. Once we correctly understand Islam and its teachings, we almost have to become content and self-sufficient.

Although many women, who attended Abeer’s lecture that evening, could not find meaningful employment, were tied down by debt, and felt insecure in the prevailing economic climate, they were willing to bracket off their negative feelings and individualize and depoliticize them, while cultivating happy dispositions in order to be more productive and efficient.

As a neoliberal technique, happiness was one of the topics developed in the lectures of Shamil Alyautdinov, an imam of the Moscow cathedral mosque, a religious scholar, and entrepreneur. Most of Ayna’s friends came to his talk that took place in a five star hotel in April 2016. Confident, fit, and sleek, Alyautdinov began his lecture How to Become the Best in the style of Islamic televangelists like Amr Khaled of Egypt 73 and

Aa Gym of Indonesia, asking the audience to turn on their brains: “Your brains are like car engines – I am not sure though what cars you drive, a Ferrari or Lada .74 ” I observed how the women were writing down his advice to “work on oneself,” “to protect oneself from negative information,” and to develop a positive attitude toward such happy objects

73 See Hania Sobhy, “Amr Khaled and Young Muslim Elites: Islamism and the Consolidation of Mainstream Muslim Piety in Egypt,” in Diane Singerman (ed.) Cairo Contested: Governance, Urban Space, and Global Modernity. Cairo: American University in Cairo Press, 2011, pp. 415- 454. 74 A brand of cars manufactured in Russia. Here a synonym for unsophisticated, non-prestigious, and poorly designed.

39 as material wealth. “Remember, thoughts about poverty come from Shaytan . If someone tells you that money is evil, ask this person who pays his bills. Our high income is a sign of God’s grace to us,” – he kept repeating to the audience of minority men and women who could not afford to pay the original ticket price of $87. 75 Inspired by Alyautdinov’s talk, Ayna’s friend Lara embarked on her own coaching project Time-Management for

Housewives , while Ayna’s client Svetlana decided to organize a workshop called Family as a Business Model on the premises of an Islamic center or Muhtasibat (Chapter III). 76

Despite the attempts to “think bigger” and “reject a poor person’s mentality,” as

Alyautdinov advised, the women were systematically “failing” at becoming entrepreneurial subjects. Instead of working harder and smarter, they paradoxically engaged in tea drinking, hospitality, and dreaming. What does it mean to be conventionally “unproductive” at the time of economic insecurity and political volatility?

Giving away in Hard Times

When I visited Ayna and her daughters in their atelier, I noticed that they would always have guests: friends would stop by to wait out the rain or their Muslim sisters would come over to seek advice. Farida would serve tea with dates and Ayna would quietly listen to their visitors, while knitting and stitching. Sometimes they would just sit in silence, sipping tea and nibbling on bread. The women’s “unproductivity” sharply

75 Eventually the ticket price was reduced to $ 51. In the beginning of his seminar, Alyautdinov described the ticket price reduction as a “charitable gift” to Muslim communities of Saint Petersburg. Dressed in a business suit, the imam talked a lot about “giving away” wealth, which is a gesture of both material success and virtue. 76 Muhtasibat is a state-sponsored religious organization that functions under the umbrella of the Spiritual Board of Muslims of Russia and was opened in Saint Petersburg in Spring 2016.

40 contrasted with the discourse of productive citizenship promoted by imam Alyautdinov. 77

It also did not align with the incitement to risk-taking and self-investment that I observed at the event for female entrepreneurs in February 2016. At the roundtable, expert businesswomen were marveling at how “exciting it is to do business in the time of economic crisis,” and “how one can achieve anything without asking for government handouts ( poproshaynichat ),” as long as she is hardworking and has ideas. For these accomplished and “self-made” women the structural constraints that Ayna, Farida, and

Salihat were facing simply did not exist. “Frankly, it is surprising that Muslim women even do business. They should not face any issues with running their business, unless they come to fashion shows in their head scarves,” – one of the women told me.

When I asked Ayna why they were giving gifts and welcoming visitors instead of using every opportunity to network and increase productivity, she answered: “I don’t know. We just do.” They did not see the need to “cultivate” other women as potential clients, and they did not expect reciprocity from gift recipients. Through the acts of hospitality they were creating something from nothing, while making their tiny atelier a place of refuge in this rather inhospitable world. With her knitting needles Ayna was slowly restoring the bonds of solidarity that were fraying in the unfolding crisis. The practices of gift giving that Ayna engaged in challenged the economic “common sense” of building up human capital and networking, and indicated a different value system. A capitalist commodity under ordinary circumstances, clothes she was making became a

77 On the topic see also Yasmin Moll, “Building the New Egypt: Islamic Televangelists, Revolutionary Ethics and ‘Productive’ Citizenship.” Hot Spots (blog), May 23, 2013, Cultural Anthropology online, http://culanth.org/fieldsights/231-building-the-new-egypt-islamic-televangelists-revolutionary- ethics-and-productive-citizenship.

41 gift in the times of austerity and served to build relationships rather than generate profits. 78

In her study of a Sufi khidma in Cairo’s City of the Dead, Amira Mittermaier illustrates how this space where food is served and guests come to rest reveals an ethics of immediacy. This ethics implies orientation toward the present rather than market’s concern with future productivity and profits. She argues that khidma “epitomizes a particular kind of giving and togetherness” and attending to those in need around us. 79

Like Ayna, Farida, and Salihat, their visitors were also struggling with the consequences of the economic crisis and were considering different ways out of their precarious circumstances. “There is one sister, who wants to get seriously involved with network marketing, which according to Islam is haram . I understand the need to pay bills, but in this type of business you make money without producing anything of value. 80 As her sister in Islam, my duty is to warn her and think of other ways to make ends meet,” –

Ayna explained to me, commenting on one of her visitor’s situation. The atelier became a space where the women could contemplate their shared precarity and find support, while addressing each other’s immediate needs (i.e., advice, money, clothes, food, etc.). Their ethical and political act of hospitality entailed a different understanding of productivity that extends beyond GDP figures or labor productivity calculations that government news

78 On the translation of commodities into gifts and back see Anna Tsing The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015. 79 Amira Mittermaier, “Bread, Freedom, Social Justice: The Egyptian Uprising and a Sufi Khidma,” Cultural Anthropology 29/1, 2014. https://culanth.org/articles/726-bread-freedom-social-justice-the-egyptian Accessed August 2018. 80 As she explained to me later, a person involved in network marketing seeks to engage as many people in the business as possible to increase her personal commission, rather than to produce and sell a product. Hence, the transaction becomes focused primarily on earning the commission. Moreover, risks and profits are unevenly distributed in this arrangement.

42 channels were translating every day. Their hospitality and gift-giving practices produced solidarity and a different kind of value.

In his work, Marcel Mauss demonstrates that in gift economies gift exchange was not about having access to valuable goods or accumulating wealth for its own sake.

Rather, it served to cement personal relations (e.g., ties of friendship). 81 Especially in the times of crisis, personal relations for Ayna, Farida, and Salihat were the most valuable, as through them they could shield each other from the painful consequences of austerity, which included the loss of business not only in financial, but personal sense. Putting

Mauss’ and Marx’ work in dialogue, David Graeber argues that production “always means production of material goods and social relations. Nowhere in the ancient world….did it even occur to anyone to ask what are the conditions that would create the most wealth….Rather, it was assumed that wealth was one, often ambivalent factor in the real business of human life: the creation of human beings who could be proper citizens of their communities.” 82 Similarly, for the women gift giving and hospitality were not about producing and accumulating more wealth, but creating solidarities and becoming “proper citizens of their community.” Therefore they were highly critical of imam Alyautdinov’s incitement to moneymaking and the rentierism of network marketing. Leafing through

Alyautdnov’s book How to Become a Millionaire that I purchased at the event, Salihat chuckled and said: “I will tell you how. You come to Saint Petersburg, advertise your lecture among Muslims, charge them 5000 rubles for entrance tickets, and sell your books to them, making sure they are not accessible online for free. This is how you

81 Marcel Mauss, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies . London: W.W. Norton, 1990. 82 David Graeber, “It is Value that Brings Universes into Being,” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 3/2, 2013, p. 223.

43 become a millionaire.” As it is clear from Salihat’s words, for her entrepreneurialism and self-promotion were not the most suitable way out of precarity.

Although the women were watching and praising Business Youth , laughing at my

“Soviet mentality,” 83 and attempting to follow the advice of business gurus, they were profoundly concerned with other forms of value, which transpired through Salihat’s

“unproductive” dreaming.

Dreaming against Austerity

Ayna, Salihat, and Farida lived and worked in a precarious context: they did not know whether they could afford to pay rent the next month or whether there would be work at all. They were often harassed for wearing headscarves and discriminated against on the basis of their ethnicity. Ayna’s words “we live to work” ( mi zhivem, chtobi rabotat ) captured her felt precarity.

In a roundtable conversation with theorists writing on precarity, Jasbir Puar alerts us to its multiple meanings and unequal distribution. 84 Precarity can imply “existential insecurity and extramundane modes of struggle of and for life” as in post-invasion Iraq 85 or the exposure of targeted populations to “slow death” as it is in occupied Palestine. 86

Resulting from global economic restructuring, precarity can manifest itself in the zones

83 I think here they read my critiques of the money-making imperative and its connection to being a true human as unsophisticated, old-fashioned, and non-savvy (i.e., Soviet). 84 Jasbir Puar, “Precarity Talk: A Virtual Roundtable with Lauren Berlant, Judith Butler, Bojana Cvejic, Isabell Lorey, Jasbir Puar, and Ana Vujanovic,” TDR: The Drama Review 56:4, 2012, pp. 163-177. 85 Hayder al-Mohammad, “A Kidnapping in Basra: The Struggles and Precairousness of Life in Postinvasion Iraq,” Cultural Anthropology 27/4, 2012. 86 Jasbir Puar, The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability. Durham: Duke University Press, 2017.

44 of abandonment where people are left to die 87 or in seemingly less sinister forms like employment insecurity. Writing about Japan, Anne Allison notes, “insecurity at work spreads to insecurity when paying bills, trying to keep food on the table, maintaining honor and pride (in one’s community or head of household), finding the energy to keep going. It is not only a condition of precarious labor but a more general existential state – a state where one’s human condition has become precarious.” 88 For Ayna, Farida, and

Salihat precarity came in the shape of low wages, a possible eviction from their business location, 89 and deteriorating health. 90

The conditions and feeling of precarity often forestall the ability to imagine alternative futures, yet they can reaffirm moral orientations in the present. For example, when in 2016 Vladimir Putin’s government responded to Western sanctions by burning

European produce at the borders of Russia to prevent it from reaching Russian markets, people in Saint Petersburg began to tag buildings with graffiti that read “It is a shame to bury food in the city that survived the siege 91 ” (see Appendix II). Ayna, whose father was a prisoner of war in Nazi Germany, strongly criticized the government for neglect and the meaningless display of authority in the face of poverty in Russia. Similarly, she was criticizing their local competitor on the Muslim fashion market, who according to Farida, chose to use cheap labor from Central Asia to cut down costs and “borrowed” ideas from

87 Joao Biehl, Vita. Life in a Zone of Social Abandonment . Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. 88 Anne Allison, Precarious Japan . Durham: Duke University Press, 2013, p. 18. 89 The atelier was located near the church, which, as Ayna told me, sought to appropriate the land for its use. 90 Ayna was earlier diagnosed with anemia and was rapidly losing weight. 91 During World War II Nazi Germany besieged Leningrad (today’s Saint Petersburg). The blockade lasted for 872 days and led to mass starvation and death among the city’s population.

45 Farida to stay afloat in the harsh economic environment. For Ayna precarity did not justify opportunism, despite her occasional references to the “need to hustle.”

Although Russian citizens may not have been able to imagine alternative futures or act upon them, they could still critique the regime’s policies as the cause of their precarity. For example, on the National Unity Day in November 2016 an artistic collective {motherland} did a photo shoot that went viral on the Internet. Titled “War,

Unemployment, November,” the series of photographs featured the members of the collective holding posters that read “you cannot change anything,” “you will not outlive the regime,” “the only hope is death,” and “everybody is dead but some are more dead than others.” This “death-drive” sharply contrasted with the festivities and populist slogans of the National Unity Day and presented a powerful critique of what was thought to be the cause of economic instability in the country. Salihat’s dreaming also serves as a form of such political critique.

The commonly shared sense of vulnerability and indeterminacy also affected

Ayna, Farida, and Salihat. While Farida and Ayna were seemingly trying to bootstrap themselves out of the difficult situation, Salihat succumbed to “unproductivity.” She spent time dreaming about better futures. Transitory and fleeting, her dreaming and hoping contrasted with the future-oriented pulse of the market and dwelled in the uncertain present. A patchwork of inchoate ideas, her dreaming revealed that precarity could yield what Elizabeth Povinelli calls “a new ethics of life, sociability, and an alternative set of human and posthuman worlds.” 92 I do not suggest that Salihat’s

92 Elizabeth Povinelli, Economies of Abandonment: Social Belonging and Endurance in Late Liberalism. Durham: Duke University Press, 2011, p. 109. See also Andrea Muehlebach, “On Precariousness and Ethical Imagination: The Year 2012 in Sociocultural Anthropology,” American Anthropologist 115/2, 2013, pp. 297-311.

46 dreaming presents a radical alternative to or resistance against austerity regime, precisely because it emanated from the neoliberalizing economic context. 93 However, I posit that it can bring forth mutuality and interdependence as the foundational values of future worlds. Studying a different kind of dreaming (i.e., dreams during sleep), Amira

Mittermaier discusses its potential as political commentary, where politics is defined as a way of relating to one another. 94 Similarly, Salihat’s dreaming illustrates gendered critiques of the prevailing political and economic climate and reveals cautious hopes for a future oriented toward the broader social good.

A reserved and kind young woman, Salihat was Farida’s younger sister and helped her with order delivery, photo shootings, and website management. Compared to Ayna and Farida, who worked all the time, Salihat seemed unproductive and unfocused. It looked like she “opted out” of laborious precarity and devoted much of her time to contemplating and dreaming. Her “wasteful expenditure” of time, energy, and money was in a way an antithesis to productivity that her mother and sister embraced. During several of our conversations she shared her big dream with me: she wanted to open an experimental, free of charge, ethnically and religiously diverse education center for children, where they could take a variety of classes from financial education to sports, languages, literature, music, theater, arts, rhetoric, and dancing. “Children need to try everything by the time they become downtrodden adults. Childhood is the most important period of a person’s life, because this is when she learns about her interests and how to defend them,” – Salihat told me.

93 On how neoliberal logics become embedded in hoping and dreaming see Hirokazu Miyazaki, “Economy of Dreams: Hope in Global Capitalism and Its Critiques,” Cultural Anthropology 21/2, 2006. 94 Amira Mittermaier, Dreams That Matter: Egyptian Landscapes of the Imagination . Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011.

47 Salihat’s dreaming was embedded in her experiences of war, 95 anxieties, and patriarchy: early encounters with death, relocation to Saint Petersburg, racism at school, and her father’s systematic undermining of her interests and achievements had an impact on how she moved through the world. During our conversations she told me: “I have so many ideas about how to help children not to become like me, but as of now I can’t bring myself to doing anything ( sizhu na meste ).” As she was trying to present to me her vision of the education center, she used neoliberal vocabulary like “increasing productivity,”

“maximizing opportunities,” and “generating information.” However, for her “developing talents” did not entail producing more “men in suits,” but allowed for a different kind of thinking and experiencing the world:

Growing up, many children don’t know that they are important and can give to the world. We owe a lot to this planet, and it is important to teach children that each one of them can do something meaningful for it. Look at what humans have done to the planet! I do not remember being taught at school to take care of it. Only our English teacher told us to turn off the water when we brush our teeth. Children need to think about the environment and to know that since we are indebted ( zadolzhali ) to our plant, we are responsible for it. Children should feel the interconnectedness of every living thing and dead matter. Trans-generational and trans-species ties are one example of it. I was thinking of combining the center with a senior home. It is important for children to remain open to the world ( ne byt zazhatimi ). 96 I want them to know that nobody will subjugate them in our society, and that they can be comfortable in their own skin regardless of ethnicity, religious belonging, or class. I also want them to learn how to shed ( otbrosit ) what does not have any true value.

This glimpse of Salihat’s project illustrates the importance of interconnectedness of

“every living being and dead matter” and the responsibility of all inhabitants of this planet for one another. This mutual accountability is expressed in her idea of debt

(zadolzhennost ). As her words illustrate, debt should not be calculated, individualized,

95 The war in Chechnya in the late 1990s. 96 This word encompasses a range of meanings: it implies having anxieties, not willing to give, being aloof and disinterested, etc.

48 and profited from, but should be viewed as something that ties us to each other, enabling life for all. In their work, David Harvey and David Graeber show how debt is a socio- political relationship of domination and subjugation. 97 At the time of my conversations with Salihat, debt was rapidly increasing in Russia through the privatization of higher education and the expansion of housing loans. Debt payments were violently extracted from people and foreclosed a positive future for most of them.98 What Salihat articulates in her dream project is an idea of debt that does not allow for exploitation and violence, but brings people together as a mutually dependent collective, where everybody is always already indebted to each other.

Salihat’s dreaming also contrasted with imam Alyautdinov’s advice to cultivate entrepreneurial subjectivities to become millionaires. As Miranda Joseph shows, “the ideal entrepreneurial subject of neoliberalism lives only one side of a contradiction: she borrows and invests to build a future for herself and her family. Meanwhile, she somehow avoids the dialectic that transforms credit received into a debt and binds the present to the past.” 99 In criticizing Alyautdinov’s “pious neoliberalism,” 100 Salihat demonstrated that she was cognizant of credit-debt contradictions and the ultimate

“failure” of the ideal neoliberal subject. Her education center is also an argument against the concept of “human capital.” In The Birth of Biopolitics , Michel Foucault discusses

97 See David Graeber, Debt: The First 5,000 Years . New York: Melville House, 2012 and see https://theintercept.com/2018/01/21/marxist-scholar-david-harvey-on-trump-wall-street-and-debt- peonage/ (check out D. Harvey’s book Marx, Capital, and the Madness of Economic Reason). 98 See Daria Danilova et.al, “Dolgovoy Okop,” Expert Online , 2016, http://expert.ru/russian_reporter/2016/06/dolgovoj-okop/ Accessed on August 6, 2018. 99 Miranda Joseph, Debt to Society: Accounting for Life under Capitalism . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014, p. 62. 100 The term belongs to Mona Atia. See Mona Atia, “‘A Way to Paradise:’ Pious Neoliberalism, Islam, and Faith-Based Development,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 102/4, 2012.

49 “homo oeconomicus as an entrepreneur of himself, being for himself his own capital, producer, and the source of earnings.” 101 Like elsewhere, in the socio-economic context of Russia the discourse of homo oeconomicus has become pervasive, be it professional or personal life. Scholars have successfully argued that the economization of noneconomic spheres of life has political consequences, that is, the erosion of democratic institutions and dreams. 102 In largely non-democratic Russia this discourse undermines the possibility of collective action and marginalizes already disadvantaged populations (i.e., the poor and minorities). 103 As illustrated in the beginning of the chapter, the idea of human capital was translated in Business Youth , where possessing the right skillset was connected to the true meaning of humanity. Salihat watched the program for “inspiration” and “confidence boost,” as she found the idea of “becoming anything one fancies” empowering. However, her dream project was not based on the idea of human capital that reified ethnic, class, religious, and gender divisions in the Russian society. Instead, it was inspired by humanistic values, which explains the emphasis on the humanities and outdoor activities in the curriculum of her dream center.

There is a temporal aspect to Salihat’s, Ayna’s and Farida’s responses to the economic crisis. In their seminars and workshops, Business Youth experts and imam

Alyautdinov urge their followers to orient themselves toward the future by investing in

101 Michele Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the College de France, 1978-1979 . New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008, p. 226. 102 Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos. Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution . New York: Zone Books, 2015. 103 On the state policies of normalizing the poor see Marianna Pavlovskaya, “Ontologies of Poverty in Russia and Duplicities of Neoliberalism” in Sanford F. Schram and Marianna Pavlovskaya (eds.), Rethinking Neoliberalism: Resisting the Disciplinary Regime . London: Routledge, 2017.

50 their success today. According to them, success whose primary indicator is access to wealth and opportunities is achieved through cultivating oneself as human capital.

Alyautdinov invites fellow Muslims to do so through practicing Islamic piety, while the

Business Youth gurus consider critical introspection as the first step to “becoming the best.” For them time is saturated with work that promises to transform the self into a better self. Be it labor, leisure, or the intimate moment of prayer, their time is carefully segmented, and every moment is directed toward future self-improvement. This is why in his lecture Alyautdinov talked much about healthy dieting, exercising, and getting enough sleep. This “assembly line” logic of building oneself up through work in the present will guarantee personal success in the future. Along the way, Alyautdinov encourages believers to work harder, dream bigger, and “ask God for more” (e.g., a bigger apartment or a better car), while the founders of Business Youth persuade people to envision themselves with more opportunities in the future. This linear segmented time accelerates as one demands more from life.

The mode of time that Ayna, Farida, and Salihat inhabit is quite different.

Through dreaming, tea drinking, and chit chatting they reclaim the present moment and refuse to operationalize it in the service of future profits. By doing what Business Youth experts and, perhaps, Alyautdinov would consider a waste of time, the women reject the path to prosperity and self-affirmation, where time is bound to money and virtue. Farida and Ayna trade future success and productivity for a wealth of relations and pleasures in the present. Going to a nearby perfume store to try out expensive perfumes or supporting a friend in need here and now reveal the women’s attachments to the present,104 which

104 Anne Allison and Charles Piot, “Editors’ Note on “Neoliberal Futures.” Cultural Anthropology 29/1, 2014: 3-7, https://culanth.org/articles/723-editors-note-on-neoliberal-futures

51 does not presuppose the self that unfolds into the future. Salihat also reclaims present time to dream about the future or capture the fleeting moments on her black and white camera. Her dreaming is a push back against the time oriented toward market futures and ethics that underpin it.

Patchwork: Gendered Labor of Stitching and Unstitching

This chapter has discussed how Muslim owners of a small atelier were trying to run their family business when the economic crisis hit Russia in 2015 and worsened in 2016.

I demonstrated how the women attempted to cultivate entrepreneurial subjectivities to keep their business afloat. They resorted to expert opinions, drew ideas from Islamic televangelist Shamil Alyautdinov, read self-help literature, and adopted time- management. Nevertheless, their attempts were largely unsuccessful, as prices were increasing and their clientele slowly diminishing.

Instead of maximizing their human capital and bolstering resilience in the face of economic depression, Ayna, Farida, and Salihat were welcoming guests, giving gifts, sharing food and space with friends in need, dreaming and hoping. I witnessed how through their hospitality, the women were stitching together and unraveling life-worlds under precarious conditions. On the one hand the atelier was a site of production, consumption, and enterprising. One the other hand, it was a space where friendships were strengthened, dreams circulated, and religious socialities flourished. The women’s practices of giving and dreaming were an attempt to slow down production and retune the demands for material progress.

52 One summer afternoon we were drinking tea, eating dates, and contemplating the future of their business. With a smile on her face, Farida was describing atelier as an open and green space with rooms for designing clothes, welcoming visitors, teaching and learning, resting and socializing. It was a space of collaboration and creativity. It did not produce more clothes for mass market or design luxury items. Instead it created better work conditions, hired women in need of employment, and transferred knowledge and traditions of clothes-making for Muslims in Russia. Farida’s dream atelier, as much as the real one, was stitching together safety nets for precarious populations.

In Dreams That Matter, Amira Mittermaier shows how “dream stories offer insights into politics and ethics of everyday life that easily elude empiricist observers.” 105

Similarly, Salihat’s and Farida’s dreaming can shed light on the critiques of the neoliberalizing state, offered by marginalized minority women. Their hoping and dreaming also show the ethical orientations for the futures that may or may not come.

105 Amira Mittermaier, Dreams that Matter , p. 234.

53 Chapter II

Creating Human-Animal Solidarities: Muslim Women’s Labor with the Unworthy

It was a warm Ramadan night in the end of July 2014, when Aliya, Gulnara, Polina, and I gathered at Aliya’s modest apartment. We broke the fast with dates and water, and the women began reading the Quran. Aliya’s rescued dogs were quietly sitting nearby, listening to the Arabic verses. Occasionally they would step on her prayer rug, but she would not chase them away. Perhaps, the dogs were also praying for something. In- between prayers Aliya and Polina would give them shots and change their bandages, quickly perform ablution, and resume praying. I felt that among other things their dua was devoted to these abandoned animals. Before sunrise we had suhur – the dogs ate the leftovers – and prayers resumed. That night I remember Aliya smiling at me and saying “It may be laylat al-qadar tonight.” Indeed, it was a special night, quiet and miraculous. The following year I was sitting in Gulnara’s kitchen drinking tea, when I asked her about Aliya. She shrugged and turned to the sink: “I don’t know, we rarely talk these days. It seems she cares more about her dogs.”

This chapter explores human-animal attachment, abandonment, and feminized care labor through the work of two Russian converts to Islam, Aliya and Hafsa.106 The women rescue stray animals from the slaughterhouses of Belarus and find homes for them in Russia, Finland, and the Baltic states. Hafsa also rents stables for horses that can no longer work, were abused by their owners, and sent to meat factories. Analyzing the women’s experiences, I ask what kind of politics emerges out of the women’s care labor with the unworthy? What ethical possibilities nest in human-animal relationships, which materialize through the labor of Aliya and Hafsa? In what follows I argue that the women’s labor on the margins is a powerful source of agency in the world, where the bonds of solidarity and reciprocity are wearing out and social divisions are becoming sharper. I will also demonstrate how their seemingly insignificant and inconsequential care work exhibits a vocal critique of the state and the Muslim community.

106 Throughout the dissertation I use pseudonyms for all women. Sometimes when people convert to Islam, they take up a Muslim name.

54 The first section of the chapter shows how exposure to the suffering other, witnessing pain, and touching/being touched trigger “new capacities to sense, know, and act.” 107 Treated as waste ( musor ) by the Housing Services and Utilities ( ZhKH ) of Minsk, homeless animals are pushed out of sight, hunted down, and killed in slaughterhouses. By turning the discarded bodies of injured animals into companion species, 108 the women bind together humans and non-humans. Out of these entanglements emerge cross-species solidarities and the reaffirmation of discarded lives as valuable. They also remake the women’s relationships with their bodies and religion. To illustrate this, I take us to the animal clinic, where Aliya and I spent hours talking and waiting for dogs to be treated.

The second part of the chapter revolves around the disposability of life. Cruelty toward stray animals in Russia is emblematic of the systemic treatment of life as expendable and open to exploitation. Violent extraction of value from animals and humans reveals the instrumentalization and depreciation of life in the context of growing inequality, rampant corruption, and popular disenchantment with political life in today’s

Russia. Studying human-animal relations in Ottoman Egypt, Alan Mikhail shows how with the advent of modernity

…what happened to animals would eventually happen to certain kinds of humans. Just as livestock, dogs, and elephants were stripped of their constructive social and economic functions in early nineteenth century, so too were Egyptian peasants, the uneducated, the disabled, the poor, the sick, the criminal…As their animal counterparts were confined in veterinary holding pens and the zoo, these humans would be subjected to similar nineteenth- century projects of enclosure – the prisons, asylum, conscription camps, hospital, and school. 109

107 Judith Butler, Senses of the Subject . New York: Fordham University Press, 2015, p. 60 108 Donna Haraway, The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness. Cambridge: Prickly Paradigm Press , 2003. 109 Alan Mikhail, The Animal in Ottoman Egypt . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014, p. 15.

55 Similarly, in Russia the lives of some humans and non-humans are open to violence: hazing is widespread in the army, torture is ubiquitous in prisons, and corporal punishment in orphanages and nursing homes for the elderly are not a rare occasion.

Hafsa’s volunteer work with animals and non-governmental organizations like Soldiers’

Mothers and Imprisoned Rus’ further fleshes out the troubling parallels between the lives of stray animals and the “human fodder.” Abandoned after losing productivity, these lives become devalued and confined to disciplinary institutions. To illustrate these points, I analyze Hafsa’s and my visits to the stables and the training session for teenage military conscripts at Soldiers’ Mothers.

The final section of the chapter demonstrates how the women’s care work is a part of a broader discourse on volunteerism and unremunerated gendered labor, which is saturated with depoliticized affect. The exhibition of the Best Social Projects in the Field of Family, Maternity, and Childhood 110 that I attended on the eve of the International

Women’s Day in downtown Saint Petersburg sheds light on the cooptation of women’s care work. However, along with this cooptation Hafsa’s and Aliya’s labor also produces complex political effects. Through unpaid and precarious work, they problematize the state’s gradual withdrawal from its social obligations and reject the violence that permeates social relations in Russia. Moreover, they vocally critique the “apolitical” stance of the Muslim community in Saint Petersburg.

110 Vistavka Luchshih Sozialnih Proektov Sankt-Peterburga v Oblasti Podderjki Sem’yi, Materinstva i Detstva. The event was organized by the city government, devoted to the “Woman of the Year,” and featured local social organizations, which are mostly staffed with and run by women. https://gov.spb.ru/gov/otrasl/kom_zan/news/84197/ Accessed on March 25, 2017.

56 Thus, the chapter illustrates that although the women’s care labor is always already subjected to cooptation by the patriarchal state and the Muslim community, it radiates critiques and possibilities for new life worlds to emerge.

Witnessing Pain

On February 24 th 2016 Aliya and I met at Prospekt Prosvesheniya metro station at

Grand Canyon shopping mall near the veterinary clinic, where she took stray dogs for sterilization and treatment. 111 Thin and tired-looking, she was wearing ski pants and a sweater. “I apologize for my look,” – she told me, smiling. “In the past I would have never worn anything like this, but now I am with dogs, you know.”

In her late fifties, slender, quiet, and introspective, Aliya had become a religious authority figure in the Muslim community of Saint Petersburg. She gained respect among community members for her knowledge of multiple languages, most importantly Arabic, and for her ability to recite Quran by heart and refer to hadiths. She was also well versed in Middle Eastern politics, read widely on Islamic thought, and led a modest and pious life. A former geologist, who after the dissolution of the Soviet Union worked odd jobs ranging from language tutor to hotel maid, she became Muslim during the times of

“Putin’s prosperity” and taught herself about Islam. The 1990s were the times of chaos, as many industries disintegrated and people lost their jobs. With sadness seamstress Ayna

(Chapter I) talked about the collapse of the textile industry, as many state factories became dilapidated due to government disinvestment. Geology, among other professions, faced similar fate. “There was a man who like me worked as a maid at the hotel. We

111 This clinic cooperates with the city government and provides free sterilization services as a part of the city program. While Saint Petersburg government implemented free sterilization program for stray animals, in Moscow they are hunted down and killed.

57 called him a stargazer ( zvezdochet ), because he used to work as an astronomer,” – Aliya told me with a sad smile. At the same time, during the first post-Soviet decade anything seemed possible. With the fall of the Iron Curtain, liberalization, and deregulation people were looking for new political orientations, work opportunities, and spiritual experimentation. Aliya and her husband were searching too until one day he gave her

Quran as a Christmas gift. “It stayed on my book shelf for some time, but when I began reading it, everything fell into place,” – she told me when I asked her about her conversion. After embracing Islam, she began to attend informal religious classes and

Arabic language lessons taught by immigrants from the Middle East. Between 2008 and

2009 she studied Arabic language at the Abu Nour University in Damascus, where in

2010 she also completed a program called Hiwar al-Hadarat (Dialogue of Civilizations).

Aliya is a community-building figure. Upon her return from Syria to Saint

Petersburg, she devoted much of her time and energy organizing the work of the Islamic cultural center Istochnik (Source), where I first met her in 2009. After the Russian security services shut it down around 2012, her modest apartment became the site of women’s unofficial gatherings. On different occasions up to fifteen women would gather in her small living room, where they would pray together, share meals, and engage in discussions. She called these women svoi (my people), which indicated their close and long-lasting relationships.

When I met Aliya again in 2014 and 2015, she was becoming seriously involved in animal rights activism. Her newly found vocation surprised me, as I knew about the ambivalent attitude toward dogs in Islam. 112 Depending on a school of thought within

112 Sara Tlili. Animals in the Qur’an. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015 and Richard C. Foltz, Animals in Islamic Tradition and Muslim Cultures. Oxford: One Word Publications,

58 Islamic jurisprudence, dogs and their fur or saliva are considered ritually impure or najis as they usually feed on garbage. However in his study of animals in Ottoman Cairo, Alan

Mikhail demonstrates that until the 19 th -century transformations in the Ottoman Empire, dogs were “economically, socially, culturally and ecologically productive historical actors and Ottoman official actively encouraged the increase and maintenance of dog population.” 113

Despite these ambivalent attitudes, every day Aliya would spend hours waiting in veterinary clinics, talking to activists and animal caretakers, transporting dogs from one part of the city to another, and looking for sponsorship. In the evenings she would post information about the “newcomers” on social media, hoping to find potential owners and receive donations. In addition to abandoned animals, she was also taking care of her old mother and ill husband, and giving private English language classes to make ends meet.

When we were having sandwiches and coffee at the shopping mall cafe and waiting for a phone call from the clinic, Aliya told me how she became a volunteer:

When I was little I didn’t have enough companionship with dogs (nedosobachivanie ). I didn’t have a dog until I was forty, and now I have thirty of them. As a child, I used to walk down the street and imagine that there was a dog accompanying me. I dreamed of becoming a vet, but instead I became a geologist. I have always had better contact with animals than people. Finally Allah led me to working with animals and made me useful to Him. I see my work as a form of worshiping and serving God.

Her words reveal the importance of the senses (i.e., visual and tactile) that would become instrumental in the developing of attachments between Aliya and her dogs. As a child, she would visualize this companionship, which only became possible when she turned

2006. See also Vire, F. “Kalb,” in P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, W.P. Heinrichs (eds.), Encyclopedia of Islam , Second Edition, Leiden: Brill, 2012, consulted online on 12 May 2017

59 forty. The affective power of visual encounter with stray animals directed Aliya to volunteerism. She told me how she first saw stray cats hiding under staircases and dogs searching for food in dumpsters near her apartment complex. She vividly remembered their eyes: “It is impossible to escape their gaze…I simply couldn’t pass by…especially the eyes of old dogs. Like old people, they look at you as if they are apologizing for their weakness and illnesses. It moves me.” 114

From Aliya’s stories I learned that her affective encounters with homeless animals impressed themselves upon her body, transforming and binding her to the suffering animal. Judith Butler notes that we “come to be always partially undone (and formed again) by what we come to sense and know. What follows is that form of relationality

(my emphasis) that we might call ‘ethical:’ a certain demand or obligation impinges upon me.” 115 This emerging relationality and ethical obligation are encapsulated in Aliya’s words: “when in 2014 I saw a dog that was bound to her kennel and immobile for two months, I felt I had to help (my emphasis). This was my first rescued dog. After that it was like a snowball, and soon I ended up with thirty dogs and several puppies. I would organize an animal shelter in my apartment if it wasn’t for my husband and mother.” As it becomes clear from the descriptions of Aliya’s encounters with abject animals, affect that circulates between their bodies serves as a powerful force of action. 116 It directs her towards them, thus prompting her to respond to their suffering.

114 For the discussion of ethics and face-to-face encounters see Emmanuel Levinas. 115 Butler, p. 60. 116 On different strands of affect theory see Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth (eds.), Affect Theory Reader. Durham: Duke University Press, 2010. Brian Massumi, for example, argues for precognitive and unstructured dimensions of affect, while scholars like Lauren Berlant, Sara Ahmed, Ann Cvetkovich, among others are interested in the socially constructed dimensions of emotion and their public display.

60 Aliya’s obligation to respond to violence, alleviate pain, and affirm life is also reinforced by the act of witnessing. In her analysis of animal rights activism in India,

Naisargi Dave notes that to “witness is to exercise a disciplined presence to violence that opens up a death that then compels a new kind of responsible life in a previously unimaginable skin. In the case of animal activists, it is a skin also inhabited by the animal.” 117 Aliya’s words about witnessing dogs’ pain and coming to physical contact with them reveal the transformative nature of these visual and tactile experiences:

“Animals understand everything. When you let dogs out of car cages,118 they lick your hands, smile, nestle against your body…some just nuzzle their faces into your knees.”

These skin-to-fur encounters between Aliya and stray dogs unsettle the human-animal boundary, thus “creating an affective opening of bodies to other bodies.” 119 As I learned from our conversations, she shares her bed with rescued dogs and sometimes eats with them from the same plate. This seemingly reflects the dominant pet habits in Russia, where dog owners tend to treat their purebred 120 pets like family members. On many occasions I saw pets accompanying their owners on vacations, wearing expensive outfits, and being treated in expensive pet clinics. However, Aliya is not concerned with the purity of breed or such status-inferring accouterments as dog garments. For her

117 Naisargi N. Dave, “Humans, Animals, and the Politics of Becoming,” Cultural Anthropology 29, no. 3 (2014): 433–456. http://culanth.org/articles/745-witness-humans-animals-and-the-politics-of 118 In these cars dogs are transported from slaughterhouses to patrons. There is an elaborate system of patrons (kuratori), who rescue animals from slaughterhouses and look for temporary caretakers ( perederzhka ) for them. Meanwhile patrons collect money for their treatment and maintenance, and “promote” their cases (i.e., take professional photographs and compose their stories) in order to find permanent homes for them. Aliya is in contact with patrons from the United States, Finland, Belarus, the Baltic states, and different cities in Russia. 119 Sara Ahmed, Strange Encounters: Embodied Others in Post-Coloniality. London: Routledge, 2000, p. 45. 120 Adopting animals from shelters is not wide spread, as many dog owners are interested in the purity of breed and pedigree.

61 companionship involves the ethical desire to “preserve in one’s being” and further this possibility for others. 121

Along with the increasing number of pets and pet owners in Russia, there have been multiple cases of animal cruelty, especially directed at stray animals. It is difficult to estimate the exact numbers of stray dogs in Saint Petersburg as they rapidly grow, but in

2015 the population of homeless canines amounted to seven thousand. 122 While the city government in cooperation with vet clinics launched sterilization program for local stray dogs, dog hunters exterminate them, pointing to the threat dogs pose to public safety and the environment. Infamous cases of violence toward abandoned dogs have recently taken place in several regions of Russia, including Chechnya and Dagestan. Thus, in

Khabarovsk pretending to be animal rights activists, two young women adopted puppies from dog shelters and tortured them. They recorded torture on camera and uploaded the videos on social media, which provoked heated debates in press and on TV about humanity, animality, violence, and ethics.123 In Saint Petersburg a group of teenagers attempted to behead a dog that was severely injured, but managed to escape and was rescued by one of Aliya’s friends. In Daghestan locals started shooting stray dogs after they allegedly killed a nine-year-old girl. As autopsy indicated, the girl had been raped and murdered before her body incurred dog bites. 124 Besides general disapproval, such

121 This understanding of ethics comes from the works of Baruch Spinoza. For further discussion see Olli Koistinen (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza’s Ethics . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. 122 http://www.baltinfo.ru/2015/01/26/Yurii-Andreev-Soobschestvo-dogkhanterov-stanovitsya- modnym-u-molodezhi-474790 Accessed on February 17, 2017. 123 http://www.interfax.ru/russia/576323 Accessed on February 17, 2017. 124 http://www.ntv.ru/novosti/1772816/ Accessed on February 17, 2017.

62 cruelty toward dogs did not elicit response from Muslim communities in Russia, and

Aliya’s Muslim friends continued to see her volunteerism as inappropriate and strange.

However, she takes working with dogs as an ethical obligation to care for the world and multiplicity in it.

Encountering stray animals, witnessing their pain, and ethically responding to violence also prompted Aliya to radically rethink her relationship with Islam and her body. When we were at the clinic waiting for her dogs to be discharged, she told me:

You know, many Muslims refuse to think outside of the haram-halal [binary,] but working with dogs showed me the true flexibility of Islam. For example, many say that dogs are unclean animals and cannot be kept inside the house. They also say that touching dogs’ saliva or dog’s fur makes one ritually impure. I have done some research, and it turned out that many of our assumptions about dogs – for example, keeping a dog in the house - are based on hadith ahad ,125 which cannot be used for tahreem (prohibition) . I think that showing mercy to any living being created by Allah is Islam. The example of the Prophet Sulayman who could understand and speak the language of animals shows that humans have to live in harmony with animals and nature. If we look at the history of Islamic societies, we will see that, for example, in medieval Damascus and Ottoman Istanbul there were shelters for old animals, and violence towards dogs was unacceptable. 126

In our conversations Aliya always emphasized the nuanced, vibrant, and contextual nature of Islamic teachings and its orientation toward pluralism, inclusion, and ethical treatment of all living beings. According to her, Islam’s moderate nature or wasatiya , as she called it, renders Islamic practice to re-interpretations and allows for multiple forms

125 Hadeeth Ahad is a prophetic report that had a single witness. It is juxtaposed with Hadith Mutawattir , which was widely attested by many witnesses on different occasions. 126 Around 2005 Aliya became interested in the work of the scholar Tariq Ramadan, especially in the concepts of Islamic ethics and Euro-Islam. She attended summer schools and discussions organized by the European Muslim Network and Tariq Ramadan himself. She closely read and translated his works from English into Russian, namely, In the Footsteps of the Prophet: Lessons from the Life of Muhammad . She discussed with him the ethical dilemmas she had regarding animals (e.g., the permissibility of neutering and her strong attachment to dogs) and told me that his views on Islam, ethics, and human-animal relations influenced her.

63 of ethical agency. It creates a space for female religious authority and action. It provides opportunity to further radical multitude and make all lives livable.

When I spent time with Aliya and her dogs in vet clinics, I could observe affection that tied them together. When dogs were undergoing treatment, Aliya would pet them, hold their paws, and carry their heavy bodies to animal taxi that would wait for us outside. Covered in bandages and weak after anesthesia, the animals would lean toward her, aching and grateful for her love. I was observing this affection and wondering about the questions of ritual purity ( tahara ), upon which observing Muslims place great importance. From Aliya’s friends I learned that several women in the community limited contact with her due to her work with dogs and the tahara -related issues. From our conversations with Aliya I understood that she carefully followed prescriptions regarding bodily purity, but did not overemphasize them: “if a dog licks me, I just clean that spot with soap under running water and do not perform ablution. My work with stray animals is multidimensional: it is my service to God, a way to express my civil position

(grazhdanskaya poziziya ), and an opportunity to spread the good name of Islam. I have no time for “purity debates” within the haram-halal [binary.]”

In light of the drive in today’s Russia to exterminate, purge, and purify (e.g., streets from stray animals, country from migrants, and political arena from opponents), I see

Aliya’s work as being conceptually against purity. Although she observes the religious prescriptions of tahara , through her volunteerism with animals she demonstrates how we are always already “contaminated,” because we are co-constituted with others. 127 Not valuable to her Muslim friends, Aliya’s encounters with animal pain become a vehicle to

127 See Alexis Shotwell, Against Purity: Living Ethically in Compromised Times . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016.

64 counter purity and facilitate a response against the haram-halal binary. She reacted in a similar way on other occasions. Thus, she followed a man who refused to sit by her on a metro train and invited him for a conversation. She would exchange greetings with socially invisible Muslim construction workers from Central Asian countries and invite me to pray with her, when some women asked me to leave the prayer room, because I was not Muslim. As her broader outlook on life, her work with stray animals confirms that to be “one is always to become with many,” 128 be it non-Muslims, immigrants, or dogs.

In this part of the chapter I demonstrated how through her labor with abandoned animals Aliya responds to religious prescriptions and social realities that reify boundaries between species and enforce purity through violence. This response becomes possible through her affective encounters with stray dogs and witnessing their pain. As Elizabeth

Grosz notes, it is through touch that the “crossing of the subject to the object” 129 takes place, which indicates our profound envelopment in the world and ethical responsibility toward each other. Touch unsettles the boundaries and undermines drive for purity, thus creating life worlds based on solidarity and mutuality. The next section of the chapter tells a story of another Russian convert to Islam, whose work with animals presents a powerful social critique of violence.

128 Donna J. Haraway, When Species Meet . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008, p.4. 129 Elizabeth Grosz. Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994, p. 40.

65 Disposable Lives

A charismatic woman in her late thirties who converted to Islam in the 2000s,

Hafsa was working as a lawyer, raising her six-year-old son, and volunteering on multiple fronts. She was the original founder of the Islamic charity organization Sadaqa in Saint Petersburg and collaborated with such NGOs as Soldiers’ Mothers , Committee

Against Torture , Imprisoned Rus ,’ and The Memorial . She was also active in the Saint

Petersburg Muslim community, promoting volunteerism. On August 13, 2015 I met with

Hafsa at Farida’s atelier (Chapter I), which was rare luck as it was difficult to catch her.

She struck me as a politicized person with a strong desire for justice and a complicated life story:

When I was seriously involved in human and animal rights activism, I met my ex-husband, who did not allow me to continue with it. You see, I only had to solve his problems and no one else’s. By the way, everybody knows he was in prison, right? What?! You didn’t know that my husband is a terrorist? He was accused of everything: assault, illegal possession, I don’t know, space travel – a standard set of charges that young Chechen men faced in the 2000s and to which they had to confess under torture. He was given a twelve-year-prison sentence, which was reduced to six years, thanks to me. He went through all those horrible places, like Chernokozovo, where prisoners are abused and tortured. I saved his life, gave birth to his son, and as a sign of his profound gratitude to me he would regularly beat me up. Since domestic violence is a Chechen favorite thing, we got divorced. What makes me really angry is that for a while he prevented me from doing my activist work, because he was shitting in his pants ( shtanishki bili v kakashkah ). We were under FSB surveillance, police constantly harassed us, the government had a massive file on us…I am glad that now I am back to volunteer work.

I was struck by Hafsa’s self-reflexive sarcasm, dramatic life story, and her poignant critique of the unevenness of care labor. It was fascinating how she contrasted the social conditions of her life (i.e., oppressive state encounters, abusive husband, and the difficulties of single parenthood) with the rewarding labor of volunteerism. For Hafsa,

66 human and animal rights activism, entangled with care and power, represented a force through which she was working against the pervasive patriarchy in her relationships with the state and her former husband.

During our several meetings she showed me the horse stables, told me about working with prisoners, and took me to a Soldiers Mothers’ event. Through her work, I saw the parallels between modern industrial slaughterhouses, prisons, and army barracks as institutions of confinement, where value is violently extracted. These spaces of enclosure profit from animal and human bodies, rendering them “useless” once their labor is appropriated. Gendered and racialized notions of humanness and animality are also produced in these institutions through hazing, torture, and the act of killing itself. As sites of accumulation, 130 these spaces represent “material institutions and technologies of speciesism,” 131 where “unworthy” human and animal lives are intertwined through the production of human fodder ( pushechnoe myaso ) or fertilizer ( udobrenie ), as Hafsa called it. These bodies are physically consumed (i.e., horse sausage) or absorbed by the military machine for conflicts in the Ukraine and Syria or locked away as a result of chronic political violence in the Caucasus. Hafsa commented on the ubiquity of violence that becomes visible not only in dramatic moments like imprisonment or encagement, but also in everyday life:

A man died at my work. I woke up that morning in a bad mood and thought to myself ‘life is shit, I am thirty seven years old, there is no stability, and I am falling apart ( vsya razvalivayus ).’ I come to work and am told that a man who was working in the neighboring office ( za stenkoy ) died unexpectedly that night. What a nice man he was, worked like a dog (my emphasis), and I was

130 Michael J. Watts, “Afterword: Enclosure,” in Chris Philo and Chris Wilbert (eds.), Animal Spaces, Beastly Places: New Geographies of Human-Animal Relations. London: Routledge, 2005, p. 298. 131 Nicole Shukin, Animal Capital: Rendering Life in Biopolitical Times. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009, p. 11.

67 just talking with him in the elevator the other day. The most troubling thing is that he and his wife were raising their grandchildren alone.

Thus, the exposure to the extraordinary violence of torture or the mundane violence of labor affects the lives of both humans and animals. Hafsa’s work reveals that vulnerability to violence blurs the boundaries between species. It is under the conditions of violence when the human-animal binary is no longer firm.

Hafsa’s volunteer labor also sheds light on the productive power of marginality. An embodied state, which is particularly attuned to injustice, marginality generates ethical responses to violence: “Let’s say a stray animal or a homeless person is suffering. If I have an opportunity to help but don’t do it, how will I live with it? What will I say to myself? Allah will hold me responsible ( sprosit s menya ) for my actions, ” – Hafsa told me many times. Her marginality and care labor also challenged unethical political and socio-economic systems by revealing their violent foundations:

Violence and impunity are everywhere - in courts, law enforcement, patriarchal families, prisons, and the military. Just like a corrupt judge, an abusive husband knows that he won’t be brought to justice. There is so much violence, because from the Soviet Union we have inherited the society of executioners and snitchers ( obshestvo palachey i stukachey ), who have not been punished yet. We must face violence like Soldiers’ Mothers or volunteers at Saint Petersburg Nochlezhka 132 do. They get up every morning and do their woodpecker work (my emphasis), serving food to the homeless or helping mothers, whose sons have been wronged or maimed.

Hafsa’s words illustrate that resistance to violence does not take the form of an open political protest or everyday subversive practices that Asef Bayat, for example, discusses in his work. 133 It is manifested through the woodpecker-like labor of volunteers, who

132 An NGO that assists the homeless. 133 Asef Bayat, Life as Politics: How Ordinary People Change the Middle East. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009.

68 drum on the system the way woodpeckers drum on wood. It demonstrates that through the proximity and exposure to violence the speciesist dichotomies are subverted: humans are becoming woodpeckers.

On a grey rainy day of November 8, 2015 Hafsa, Roza, and I went to the stables.

Sympathetic to Hafsa’s work but not an animal rights activist, Roza wanted to “visit”

(navestit ) the animals and brought two bags of carrots and apples for them. “The animals are terrible beggars, especially the donkey, so they will not appreciate if you come empty-handed,” – Hafsa instructed us the day before our trip. Located in Lomonosov in front of the Menshikov palace and the Orienbaum garden, the stables represented a temporary wooden building surrounded by industrial trash, uprooted trees, and dirty snow

(see Appendix I). They were dark, crowded, and moist and housed several rescued horses, donkeys, and dogs. As we were driving there, Hafsa was looking at the stormy

Gulf of Finland and remembering her visits to her imprisoned ex-husband:

These were fantastic places. For hundreds of kilometers there were no people, just wild birds and animals, decaying wooden churches, and traditional Russian houses ( izbi ), deserted and literally grown into the ground. There were no asphalt roads and no cell phone coverage. I remember praying among those wild trees. This is where NKVD prison camps used to be. Later the state dismantled railways, so prisoners and their families would never leave those places. One can still find prisoners’ records scattered all over the abandoned buildings. It is unbelievable how the state is ready to gobble up ( zhrat’ ) and grind ( molot’ ) its citizens alive. Modern Russia hasn’t changed much – today we celebrate Joseph Stalin as a model ruler. Prisoners are not the only ones imprisoned there. Correction officers are also subjected by this system. I saw it all in my husband’s second prison…terrible place, inhuman conditions. These prison guards and their families live in rotten barracks with no hot water…They are like chained dogs (my emphasis) who are always abused…they are a write-off (otrabotanniy material ).

This rich fragment from her memories lays bare the violence that permeates the political system of Russia, and the intersections of the human and the animal in the production of

69 violence. Thus, as Hafsa’s husband and many of his countrymen ( zemlyak ) became the victims of “anti-terrorist campaigns” in Chechnya in the 2000s, 134 the horses she rescued were also abandoned by their previous handlers and thrown in slaughterhouses. For example, butchers described to Hafsa her first rescued horse Argun as a “young racing stud,” but when she came to pick him up from the slaughterhouse he turned out to be a

“smelly old nag with no teeth, a walking skeleton, who was abandoned by his multiple owners.” Her other horse Kukla (doll) also ended up in a slaughterhouse, where she was beaten so hard that she lost her unborn foal. After being rescued, for a long time she did not allow people to approach her, but during our visit to the stables she was gratefully accepting carrots from Hafsa. I watched Hafsa run her fingers through horses’ manes, press her face against their faces, and promise them to find sponsors, so they could live in spacious stables with large green spaces for galloping and grazing. As Donna Haraway notes, “touch ramifies and shapes accountability. Accountability, caring for, being affected, and entering into responsibility are not ethical abstractions; these mundane, prosaic things are the result of having truck with each other. Touch peppers its partners with attachment sites for world making.” 135 While observing Hafsa feed, caress, and walk the horses, I could get a glimpse of that world making, based on human-animal relationality and reciprocity. This world demonstrated that the humanist framings of singularity are incomplete without bringing the animals into it.

134 The Russian government presents all political opposition to Ahmad Kadirov’s rule and the Russian state as salafi-jihadi and, hence, as terrorists. In the name of fighting terror, the state security forces launch brutal anti-terrorist campaigns that aim to eliminate real and potential sympathizers to ISIS and to take homegrown terrorism under control. As I understood from Hafsa’s words, in collaboration with Kadirov’s thugs FSB acts with impunity, fabricates evidence, tortures prisoners, and abducts suspects. 135 Haraway, p. 34.

70 Hafsa practices ethical accountability and responsibility within the unaccountable and irresponsible political system ( sistema ), which violently extracts resources from humans, animals, and the environment. Thus, her work with Soldiers’ Mothers demonstrates another way in which human and animal lives are intertwined. Established in 1991 in Saint Petersburg and located on Raz‘ezzhaya 9 Street in a 19 th century revenue house ( dohodnyi dom ), this human rights organization provides legal and social assistance to draftees, soldiers, and their families, and monitors the breaching of their rights. 136 Among the main aspects of its work are to combat torture and violence and to fight against corruption in the army, which exposes the organization to government harassment. A small collective of lawyers, psychologists, and volunteers that includes

Hafsa, accompanies draftees to courts, conducts regular workshops, and prepares them for medical exams and visits to military enlistment offices. On April 22, 2016 Hafsa invited me to one of such workshops about the alternative civil service ( alternativnaya grazhdanskaya sluzhba ), which draftees could select instead of the mandatory military service.

When I entered the building, I saw a hall where seminars would usually take place.

Plastic chairs were set in front of a white board, and photographs of dead young soldiers hung on the walls. As Hafsa and I were going up the steep wooden stairs to the kitchen, I noticed a plaque with the caption “Do Not Give Away Your Sons!” On one side of the tablet there was a prayer for children and on the other side there was a black and white drawing depicting a young man in military uniform wreathed in flames. The hands were reaching out to grab him. “There was also a large crucifix downstairs, but after a FSB visit we had to move it upstairs to the kitchen,” – Hafsa told me. In the kitchen three

136 https://soldiersmothers.ru/about/istoriya-organizatsii

71 female workers were drinking tea with chocolate and strategizing how to talk to military academy students about the alternative civil service. “Their commander called me “a girl” in front of the students. No wonder they arrogantly dismissed everything I was talking about,” – said one of the women. “It is the valorization of the military that has to be dealt with, but how? I know young women who dated these students and were regularly beaten by them. And guess what? These women would still not leave these men,” – sighed another one. I was looking at these modestly dressed middle-aged women, who help dozens of young people every day, and thinking about Hafsa’s descriptions of their labor conditions: “The government is pressuring them really hard and there is almost no money. Every day people have to come to work and come up with the ways to do their job.”

By 7 pm the hall was full: senior high school students and their mothers, grandmothers, and girlfriends were sitting on the chairs and talking. That day the workshop was conducted in a form of a role-play: future draftees had to face the military enlistment committee and request an alternative civil service. Three 18-year-old men volunteered to participate in the mock interview. I anxiously observed the event that lasted about an hour and a half. The atmosphere was oppressive. The arguments of the young men about service to the nation through volunteer work at hospitals and schools, the irrelevance of the military to their lives, inability to submit to orders, and aversion to violence were collapsing in the face of “the committee’s” cynicism:

Conscript: Russia is a free country, so I am free too. I don’t want to work for the military industrial complex and I want to think before executing somebody’s orders.

Committee member : We are not talking here about your choices and your freedoms, but about your responsibility as a male citizen of Russia. I remind you that besides freedoms you also have duties and loyalty to your motherland. Or maybe you should consider

72 becoming a citizen of another country? I don’t understand…don’t you want to become a real man? Or are you afraid of pain? To do alternative service means to avoid work. Do you know that you can be arrested for abrogating your responsibility to work? Let me ask you something, during the Great Patriotic War would you also choose alternative service?

This conversation is telling, as it shows how one’s value and social contribution are based on gendered labor extracted from them in the interest of the nation. Volunteer labor at hospitals and schools is seen as non-work and a cheap attempt to avoid the “real” work.

Commenting on the event, Hafsa told me how young men are abused in the military: they are lured by the empty promises of financial security, subjected to hazing, humiliation, and extortions, and suffer from government neglect if they are physically or psychologically injured during service. 137 “I tell draftees, ‘if you want to become fertilizer (udobrenie ) in the Ukraine or Syria, go for it. After the war is over, we will come and plant potatoes in the fields where your bodies are buried’,” – Hafsa said in indignation.

Soldiers consuming dog food 138 and viewed as “human fodder” or “fertilizer for potato fields” reveal what Mel Y. Chen calls “animacy hierarchies, shaped by what or who counts as human and what or who does not.” 139 The conversation between the conscript and the “enlistment committee member” cited above betrays the objectification of draftees: labeled as not-yet-men, they are stripped of their capacity for judgment and subjectivity, are recognized as socially worthy only through military service, and are subjected to biopolitical management (i.e., health exams and drilling). As with abandoned

137 See Serguei Alex. Oushakine , Patriotism of Despair: Nation, War, and Loss in Russia . Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009, pp. 130-202. 138 In May 2011 it was revealed that in one of the military bases soldiers were fed expired dog food: http://www.bbc.com/russian/russia/2013/02/130206_soldiers_food_investigation 139 Mel Chen, Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect. Durham: Duke University Press, 2012, p. 30.

73 animals, Hafsa’s labor with conscripts speaks against the extractive logic of the state

(sistema ) and for rearticulating the value of the most vulnerable.

This section has illustrated the multiple intersections between human and animal lives that transpire through Hafsa’s volunteer labor. It also showed how under the conditions of mundane and extraordinary violence human-animal hierarchies become dissolved. In other words, exposed to violence humans and animals become entangled with each other in new ways. Like Aliya’s work against purity, which disrupts the haram- halal binary, Hafsa’s encounters with abuse produce the new ways of thinking about humans and non-humans as always already bound. Like Aliya’s, Hafsa’s labor also illustrates how a possibility of living an ethical life emerges out of these human-animal entanglements, exposure to pain, and the questioning of speciesist hierarchy.

The final section analyzes the women’s labor as a part and parcel of the global discourses on volunteerism and gendered care work. It problematizes the women’s affective labor as captured by the state, yet capable of articulating powerful critiques of the state and religious institutions.

Ambivalences and Potentialities of Gendered Care Labor

When I arrived in Saint Petersburg in July 2015 to do my fieldwork, I noticed the proliferation of discourses on volunteerism: TV channels were reaching out to ordinary citizens asking them to donate money to ill children, 140 advertisements in metro were recruiting volunteers to take care of cancer patients and the elderly (see Appendix II), large metal containers for clothes donations for Ukrainian and Syrian refugees were

140 For example, the Fifth Channel announced the “Day of Good Deeds” and with the help of celebrities collects money for ill children: http://www.5-tv.ru/programs/broadcast/508546/

74 placed in almost every neighborhood, and the figure of a philanthropist was popularized through media channels. For example, a documentary Blagotvoritel (Philanthropist) that came out in spring 2016 and was shown on government-owned Russia 1 channel opened with the phrase: “There are people in Russia ( Rus’ ) who just do good deeds despite economic crisis and lack of profits. For them money is not treasure, but a means to do charitable work. Viktor Ivanovich Tirishkin is a man who builds houses, schools, and churches.” 141

Charity in Russia has multiple genealogies, which, on the one hand, are rooted in the Russian Orthodox tradition of benevolence in the Russian Empire, 142 the welfare policies in the Soviet Union, and poverty-relief efforts in post-socialist Russia.143 On the other hand, the current surge in volunteerism is triggered by the visible erosion of public services, which has shifted the burden of economic recession onto citizens. The promotion of volunteerism among ordinary people surprised me, because it was not a part of the public discourse, when I was growing up. Despite the chaos of the 1990s, it was still the state that was seen as the main provider of social services. With the proliferation of private clinics, schools, and caregiving in the 2000s, these services became commodified, which reflected a global trend. 144 During my fieldwork the call for

Russians to take care of themselves and each other was prominent.

141 https://russia.tv/video/show/brand_id/9361/episode_id/1265933/video_id/1430254/ Accessed on April 10, 2017. 142 See Galina Ulianova, Philanthropy in the Russian Empire in the 19th and early 20th Centuries. Moscow: Nauka, 2005. See also the works of Adele Lindenmeyr on voluntary associations in Imperial Russia. 143 Melissa L. Caldwell, Not by Bread Alone: Social Support in the New Russia . Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. 144 On the privatization of care services around the world see, for example, Jessica M. Mulligan, Unmanageable Care: An Ethnography of Health Care Privatization in Puerto Rico . New York City: NYU Press, 2014 and Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild, Global Women:

75 In addition to the well-being of ill children, the subjects of benevolence and care in today’s Russia include the homeless, 145 the elderly, the disabled, 146 the mentally ill, 147 and stray animals. As I discussed above, care for stray animals and the condemnation of violence against them became visible during my fieldwork. For example, in different neighborhoods of Saint Petersburg residents constructed makeshift houses for abandoned animals, animal rights organizations were mushrooming, and multiple cases of animal abuse were discussed in popular talk shows and on social media. As an animal rights activist, Hafsa was also invited to the radio station Baltika and asked to comment on the recent infamous cases of violence against animals. 148 This newly articulated concern for vulnerable humans and stray animals converges with the broader discourses about disability, affinity between different forms of life, 149 and the meanings of ethical life.

Salvationism is another component of these discourses: female volunteers are hailed as the ones who can heal the ruptures in society, which are caused, first and foremost, by economic inequality and eroding state support. 150

Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy . New York: Henry Holt, 2002. Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Forced to Care: Coercion and Caregiving in America. Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2012. 145 Olga Allenova, “ ‘Nochlezhka’ Odna, a Nas, Bomzhey Mnogo,” Kommersant Vlast 8, 29.02.2016, http://kommersant.ru/doc/2922727 146 Alexandr Shlichkov, “Kogda Hichetsa Byt Poleznim,” Izvestiya , 02.09.2016, http://izvestia.ru/news/630111 147 Olga Allenova, “Nemzi Priuchili Rebyat Hodit v Nochnie Klubi,” Kommersant Vlast 4, 01.02.2016, http://kommersant.ru/doc/2901488 148 https://baltika.fm/broadcasts/16/year/2016/month/10 Accessed on February 15, 2017. 149 On theoretical discussions of this see Cary Wolfe, What is Posthumanism? Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010 and Lisa Kemmerer (ed.), Sister Species: Women, Animals, and Social Justice. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2011. 150 For example, when my fieldwork began in 2015, the Russian Ministry of Finances submitted a draft law to the Duma, which sought to reduce government funding to non-commercial organization (https://www.asi.org.ru/news/2015/03/17/proekt-minfina-sokrashhayushhij- finansirovanie-nko-vnesen-v-gosdumu/ ). As government investments in the military and security

76 As a political movement and practice, volunteerism in Russia is depoliticized through its incorporation into state initiatives. For example, Olga Allenova, the author of a special project about volunteerism in Saint Petersburg and Leningrad region in a weekly business magazine Kommersant Vlast , sees volunteerism as a “special type of alternative civil activity” 151 capable of stimulating changes in the socio-political sphere and drawing critical attention to the violence and injustice that take place in Russia. The government, however, attempts to bring volunteerism into its fold by channeling its energy into government-created youth organizations like Nashi 152 or through legal instruments. The draconian Federal Law 121 from June 20, 2012 exemplifies the use of legal mechanism to significantly constrict or eliminate the work of NGOs, which receive sponsorship from abroad and are considered “politically motivated.” Labeled “foreign agents,” such NGOs serve vulnerable population groups, namely, orphans and ill children. In light of these political developments many volunteers see their labor as complementary to the state. Thus, a social activist Vladimir Berhin notes,

The president has ordered the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation and the Agency of Strategic Initiatives together with volunteer movements to design a plan on how to improve volunteer laws and eliminate barriers to cooperation between volunteers and government agencies. Volunteer community is interested in working together with the state , where the government could invest minimal resources and gain support from the most dynamic part of civil society (my emphasis). 153

services were increasing in 2016, social sector was receiving less financial support (https://www.gazeta.ru/business/2016/10/03/10229015.shtml#page1) 151 Olga Allenova, “Ranshe Nas Prosili Uyti s Detskoy Ploshadki. Seichas Etogo ne Proishodit,” Kommersant Vlast 1-2, 18.01.2016, http://kommersant.ru/doc/2890149 152 See, for example, Julie Hemment, “Nashi, Youth Volunteerism, and Potemkin NGOs: Making Sense of Civil Society in Post-Soviet Russia,” Slavic Review 71/2, 2012, pp.234-60 and Julie Hemment, “Redefining Need, Reconfiguring Expectations: The Rise of State-Run Youth Volunteerism Programs in Russia,” Anthropological Quarterly 85, 2, 2012, pp. 519-54. 153 Vladimir Berhin, “Tvorit’ Horoshie Dela,” Izvestiya , 18/02/2017, http://izvestia.ru/news/664579 Accessed on February 18, 2017.

Berhin’s normalization of government’s minimal investment in social projects and routinization of unremunerated volunteer labor highlights how volunteerism can enable the state’s withdrawal from its social obligations and attempts to fill the void with primarily women’s care work.

The appropriation of gendered labor transpires in the event I attended on the eve of the International Women’s Day that took place in downtown Saint Petersburg. As I was passing by Malaya Konushennaya Street on March 1, 2016 I saw performers in traditional Russian costumes dancing and singing, while pedestrians were learning about social projects at information booths. “Please study each project carefully and vote for your favorite one by giving this white balloon to the representative,” – a smiley young woman told me and handed me the balloon. Local social organizations and volunteers carried out this event with the support of the Saint Petersburg government. It featured several projects: The School of Healthy Diet sought to help people with eating disorders;

Free Seminars for Future Mothers were conducted under the banner “Motherhood is in

Vogue”; Magic World Map deployed cartoon therapy to work with differently abled children and children diagnosed with cancer; and Kidburg invited children to try out different professions and educated them into “successful and responsible adulthood.”

One project caught my attention, because it centered specifically on care labor.

Established by female volunteers from a charity organization It is Time to Help, The

Museum of Mitten 154 represented “an art space, which narrates a story of warmth 155 coming from hands and souls.” To show that “warmth is both a physical and a spiritual

154 http://www.музей-варежки.рф/english-version.html Accessed on April 7, 2017. 155 Teplo : also care, kindness, and affection in Russian

78 phenomenon,” the Museum organizes information sessions about the opportunities to help the needy, thus “encouraging people to care for their neighbor.” It also houses several social clubs, like Bundle of Kindness for the Elderly , where they meet, socialize, and make clothes for orphans. As the description of the club stated, “despite their vulnerability, the elderly can be active in the changing world and help ( prinosit pol’zu ) another socially precarious ( sozialno nezashishennie ) group of people, namely, orphans.”

Warm Mail is another opportunity for people to express kindness, care, and thoughtfulness by “writing a letter to an ill child, who because of illness does not have friends, or to a lonely grandmother, who lives in a retirement home.” Local volunteers collect and deliver the letters to addressees on a weekly basis.

The Museum of Mitten vividly illustrates the booming social care infrastructure, which is enabled and supported by the labor of female volunteers. As mentioned earlier, the incitement to help is promoted by the state and saturates public discourse with calls for benevolence, kindness, and care about the needy. It is primarily women who are deemed responsible for the emotional and affective labor that sustains volunteer efforts.

In his address to women on the 2016 International Women’s Day, President Putin highlighted the emotional labor that women undertake daily: “You fill this world with beauty and life energy, and you warm ( sogrevaete ) it up with affection and emotional generosity. Your labor does not allow for weekends – even today you are consumed by your daily duties and concerns.” 156 Feminist literature on women’s devalued affective/emotional labor 157 illustrates how it fills in the void in the fraying social safety

156 http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/54007 Accessed on May 10, 2017. 157 Eileen Boris and Rhacel Salazar Parrenas, Introduction in Intimate Labors: Cultures, Technologies, and the Politics of Care , in Eileen Boris and Rhacel Salazar Parrenas (eds.).

79 net in postindustrial global economy. In charge of social reproduction, 158 women are tasked to mend social bonds, especially on the margins, by working with orphans, the elderly, the disabled, and the homeless. As I showed above, Aliya’s and Hafsa’s work is a part of the larger care labor ecosystem, which is depoliticized and saturated with affect.

As anthropologists have demonstrated, gendered volunteer work is performed for a variety of reasons. For example, Andrea Muehlebach argues that the depoliticized “labor of love” that volunteers in Milan undertake, becomes “a paradigmatic act of ethical citizenship.” 159 It also serves as “a form of public recognition” and provides a “means

[for volunteers] to purchase some sort of continued social belonging.” 160 Discussing volunteer labor for the Red Cross in Finland, Liisa H. Malkki shows how it is a “vitally meaningful care of the self” that creates socialities in the society where loneliness and isolation are prevalent. 161 As Lara Deeb illustrates, for pious Shi‘a women of Southern

Beirut volunteer work for the community is a “powerful normative marker of morality,” progress, and political convictions. 162 In turn, analyzing a Sufi khidma in Cairo, Amira

Mittermaier reveals that the labor of sharing food and space with strangers is about

“attending to those around us,” and thereby “living an implicit form of justice.” 163 Both

Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010. For distinction between emotional, affective, and feeling labor see Zeynep Korkman, “Feeling Labor: Commercial Divination and Commodified Intimacy in Turkey,” Gender and Society 29/2, 2015, 195-218.

158 Silvia Frederici, Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation. New York: Automedia, 2004. 159 Andrea Muehlebach, The Moral Neoliberal: Welfare and Citizenship in Italy . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012. p. 133. 160 Ibid., p. 139. 161 Liisa H. Malkki, The Need to Help: The Domestic Arts of International Humanitarianism. Durham: Duke University Press, 2015, p. 137. 162 Lara Deeb, An Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shi‘i Lebanon. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006, pp. 207-8. 163 Amira Mittermaier, “Bread, Freedom, Social Justice: The Egyptian Uprising and a Sufi Khidma ,” Cultural Anthropology 29/1, 2014, pp. 54-79. https://culanth.org/articles/726-bread-

80 Hafsa and Aliya expressed similar reasons for their volunteer labor, but while Aliya emphasized service to Allah and articulated claims to intimate citizenship, 164 Hafsa often talked about her ethical disposition that did not allow her to act otherwise. Whatever the reasons behind gendered volunteer labor are, the state seeks to depoliticize and appropriate it, while withdrawing from its social obligations. In his address to the Duma on December 1, 2016 President Putin noted:

The will and generosity of the citizens who participate in [volunteer] projects create in Russia the necessary atmosphere of commonly shared duties ( obshie dela ) and have enormous social potential, which has to be harnessed. In the young generation of volunteers I see a reliable and strong support for Russia….Therefore, I ask all of you [mayors and governors] to help finance volunteer activities of not only government organizations, but also NGOs. Care for people in need is very important! 165

Putin’s words indicate how (primarily women’s) volunteer labor becomes captured by the state, which prevents any critiques of corruption, social inequality, and authoritarianism.

His words also foreshadow the new modes of patriarchy, when the state seeks to bind the society together through the unremunerated labor of vulnerable populations.

Despite being embedded in the care labor infrastructure, Aliya’s and Hafsa’s work with stray animals and marginalized populations critiques the state and social dislocation, which volunteerism is supposed to heal. Thus, Hafsa often told me: “You think I derive

freedom-social-justice-the-egyptian 164 Lauren Berlant, The Queen of America Goes to Washington City: Essays on Sex and Citizenship . Durham: Duke University Press, 1997. Describing (post)-Raeganist American public sphere and sentimental cultural politics that unfolds within it, Berlant argues that claim to citizenship came to be rooted in intimacy and emotion-driven actions. Populism suffuses the public sphere with emotions that depoliticize the debates and shift attention away from structural problems to identitarian politics. Aliya noted that her volunteer work with stray animals is an expression of her civil position, as she seeks to contribute to the flourishing of the city where all animals as well as humans should have a home. 165 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4Plm4qADdo Accessed on June 3, 2017.

81 pleasure from seeing animals with missing limbs or working with a mother, whose son was thrown out of the window at a military base? No, it takes a lot of my time and emotional energy. But I have to do it. Otherwise, who else will? The state? It does not need these animals or people. Sometimes I feel government servants ( chinovniki ) would be better off if we all just disappeared.” She often juxtaposed the indifference of the state to social problems with the volunteer labor of noticing. Sara Ahmed argues that “noticing is a form of political labor,” 166 because “turning toward what is difficult” uncovers the issues of structural violence and prompts a response. By noticing pain and acting upon it

Aliya and Hafsa respond to precarity, and this response is based on the cultivation of relationality and mutuality, inclusiveness and solidarity.

Through their labor on the margins, the women also express their criticism of the

Saint Petersburg ummah . During one of our meetings Hafsa and I discussed volunteer work in the Muslim community of Saint Petersburg. She openly critiqued the power politics of volunteerism:

You know, these days it is prestigious to run a charity. Although you may care less about the needy, at a public gathering you will proudly say ‘I have a charity (fond )’. This is what happened to [the Islamic charity organization] Sadaqa – it became a vanity project of its current head, and I did not want to be a part of it anymore. Some people volunteer to meet a prospective suitor or project a pious self-image. In Chechnya it has become fashionable to show up at some charity event, take selfies ( Hafsa rolled her eyes and made a ‘duck lips’ impression) and upload them on Instagram .

From our conversations I learned that both Hafsa and Aliya see volunteerism as a personal act that should not be publically displayed to gain political capital or prestige, hence their emphasis on sincerity, modesty, and true commitment to the cause. The women also view it as a collective and politically potent endeavor, but the ummah is

166 Sara Ahmed, Living a Feminist Life . Durham: Duke University Press, 2017, p. 32.

82 unable to participate in it and see unconditional giving as an opportunity to foster social ties:

I don’t understand…when an ill child needs help, why does it matter what ‘aqida (creed) his family professes or whether his mother wears hijab or not. Human rights activists who work with prisoners have approached me many times saying that our Muslim brothers in prisons need Qurans and prayer rugs. Where is our ummah ? What do all these pious girls do, when their husbands get imprisoned? They do nothing, because they wear hijabs and can only post hearts on Facebook . When people disappear in Chechnya or are harassed by the state security forces, the ummah is silent. We are ready to denigrate the “kuffar ” and “ taghut worshipers,”167 but we are the first in line to receive social assistance from them. Sometimes I really despise our lazy, hypocritical, and stupid ( otmorozhennaya ) ummah.

Hafsa’s words are a vocal reminder to the Muslim community of Saint Petersburg about its political and ethical obligations to Muslims and fellow citizens. Through exposing the ummah’s hypocrisy and cravenness she provocatively invites its members to have an open conversation about its internal issues and relations with the state. These words also exhibit that the women’s volunteer labor is not only driven by religious sentiments or salvationism, but is politically potent.

This chapter has demonstrated how through working with stray animals and disempowered populations two Russian converts to Islam, Aliya and Hafsa, live ethical lives. It is through the everyday labor of noticing injustice and acting upon it, they subject themselves, the state, and the Muslim community of Saint Petersburg to rigorous critiques. There is also something queer 168 about the women’s work: they form cross- species relationships and articulate a different understanding of kinship, care, and responsibility. These intimate relationships are formed through encounters with suffering and pain and through the affective power of touch. The women invest their labor in the

167 Non-Muslim citizens of Russia 168 See Siobhan B. Somerville, “Queer” in Bruce Burgett and Glenn Hendler (eds.), Keywords for American Cultural Studies. New York: New York University Press, 2007, pp. 187-191.

83 futures that are not based on profitmaking, the economy of blood, 169 or difference and hierarchy, but on mutuality, solidarity, and radical care. Aliya and Hafsa also undermine the binary thinking that revolves around the concepts of the human-animal and the permitted-forbidden. Their work is significant because it decenters the normative discourses on the meanings around being human, living an ethical life, and the permitted in Islam. It questions the taken for granted ideas about care work by offering deeply gendered and ethically situated answers to these questions.

169 Frances Bartkowski, Kissing Cousins: A New Kinship Bestiary . New York: Columbia University Press, 2008, p. 13.

84 Chapter III

“Muhtasibat Needs You:” Rebuilding Islamic Institutions in Saint Petersburg

Gulnara, aunt Munira, Svetlana, and I were sitting in a small kitchen of Gulnara’s rented apartment and drinking tea with wafer rolls. Sipping tea from her cup, Svetlana was talking about the upcoming opening of a new state-sponsored Islamic organization Muhtasibat: “Inshallah, in the spring we will have our own space in Saint Petersburg. We have lived in a vacuum for too long, it has done a lot of harm. We have lost much time and many people, but nevertheless we say al-hamdulillah. Allah gives everything at the right time. The center will invigorate the religious life of the city.” The women were hopeful and excited. As I was listening to them discuss ample opportunities the center would bring, I was thinking about the words of another interlocutor: “Such centers like Muhtasibat emerge when the state lets the leash loose (oslabit povodok). They function as long as they serve the purpose…to promote Putin’s Islam.”

This chapter explores how the volunteer labor of pious Muslim women is captured and subordinated to the goal of establishing an “enlightened Islam,” promoted by

Muhtasibat or the Spiritual Board of Muslims in Saint Petersburg and Leningrad Region.

In the chapter I ask, what does it mean for women to work within (and outside of) male- run institutions and invest their undervalued labor in the projects sponsored by the state?

Analyzing the stories of Svetlana, Gulnara, and Dina, I demonstrate how they make uneasy compromises in the male-dominated organization to pursue their own interests and implement their vision for the ummah . Simultaneously, I interrogate the critiques of those women, who chose to remain “outside” of this institution and search for other ways to serve the community. These critiques, where gender, ethnicity, and class intersect, demonstrate the different ways in which women debate the meanings of “moderate

Islam” and their role in defining, shaping, and promoting it. In what follows I will sketch the contours of “Muslim Saint Petersburg” and map out the power dynamics between different Islamic institutions in the city, which will help situate the women’s labor and reveal the web of contradictions in which it is immersed. I will proceed to demonstrate

85 how Svetlana, Gulnara, and Dina navigate the organization, while working in the so- called Women’s Council or Zhensovet . The final section of the chapter will flesh out the critiques voiced by women who refuse to work “within the system.”

Islam in the City

There is a growing interest in Muslim Saint Petersburg ( Musulmanskiy Peterburg ) among scholars of Islam in Russia and practicing Muslims. As local historians were giving lectures about Islamic quarters of Saint Petersburg and the historic life of Muslims in the city, my interlocutors were also organizing city tours that connected urban topography with the histories of Muslims. When I inquired whether the women imagined the city as Muslim, they concurred that for them it is “neither Muslim, nor Christian,” but it invites Muslims to be its productive and active part.

With its monumental Orthodox cathedrals and baroque palaces, Saint Petersburg has always been viewed as a “European” city. However if one walks through its streets and alleyways, in their names (e.g., Tatarsky alleyway and Barmaleeva street) one will find the residue of historic Muslim presence there. It is inscribed in such material objects as the arabesques of the House Muruzi 170 or the Moorish room in the Yusupov Palace. 171

The presence of Islam in its different manifestations can be found both on the outskirts of

Saint Petersburg and in its downtown. Thus, between Sadovaya Street and the Fontanka

River there is a large market called Apraksin Dvor , where shops selling cheap clothing and miscellaneous items, a barbershop, halal cafes, and a Shi‘i musalla coexist with bars

170 The house belonged to Alexander Muruzi, the son of an Ottoman official of Greek origin who was beheaded for assisting the Russians on the eve of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812. http://stpetersburg.berkeley.edu/muruzi/history.html 171 The Yusupovs were a noble family that descended from the ruler of the Nogai Horde, Khan Yusuf.

86 and nightclubs. 172 My interlocutor Svetlana would often stroll through the market looking

at clothes or getting a bite before her classes or a meeting. Historically Apraksin Dvor

was a center of criminality and trade, where Jews were selling goods in the 19 th century. 173 Withstanding several demolition attempts and surviving reconstruction projects, the market attracts traders from Iran, Afghanistan, former Soviet Republics,

Northern Caucasus, and China. It slowly merges into Sennaya Square, where trade,

hooliganism, and debauchery have flourished. Now one can find there multiple kiosks

selling miscellaneous goods and cheap “ethnic” food (i.e., chayhanas and shawarmas ).

The city of vibrant cultural and intellectual life, Saint Petersburg has historically positioned itself as multi-confessional, multi-ethnic, cultured 174 and tolerant. 175 Thus,

street posters, which depicted the peoples of Russia dancing and holding hands,

172 During my fieldwork I attended a seminar “Muslim quarter of Saint Petersburg: Sennaya Square, Apraksin Yard, and their environs” at the European University at Saint Petersburg, where a historian Leonid Landa presented a history of Apraksin Dvor . See http://www.the-village.ru/village/city/places/234277-aprashka Accessed on December 5, 2017. 173 From a lecture by a historian Leonid Landa “Muslim Quarter of Saint Petersburg: Sennaya Square, Apraksin Dvor and the Environs.” European University in Saint Petersburg, March 29, 2016, https://eu.spb.ru/news/16413-musulmanskij-kvartal-s-peterburga-sennaya-ploshchad- apraksin-dvor-i-okrestnosti Accessed on December 7, 2017. 174 For example, Peter the Great and other Russian emperors invited famous artists, architects, shipbuilders, and scientists from Europe. Weapons, luxury textiles, jewelry and spices were brought to the city with diplomatic missions from the Middle East and Central Asia. Merchants were hosted in karavansarays and esteemed guests from Persia, Bukhara, and the Ottoman Empire resided in the city’s palaces. 175 For example, inspired by the ideas of Enlightenment and for political reasons, Catherine the Great issued a decree about “tolerance of all religious” in 1773. The decree ordered the construction of prayer-houses for religious minorities. Despite the policy of toleration that allowed the imperial regime to present itself as a patron of Islam, the relationships between minorities and the state remained complex in different periods of time. As Mustafa Tuna warns us in his study of Muslims in the Volga-Ural region, the imperial accommodation of difference should not be overestimated. See Mustafa Tuna, Imperial Russia’s Muslims: Islam, Empire and European Modernity, 1788-1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. Although problematic, tolerance has remained Saint Petersburg’s “trademark” until today. When I was doing my fieldwork, I noticed posters all over the city celebrating tolerance. They usually depicted minority groups in national costumes, thus festivalizing and depoliticizing diversity.

87 advertised diversity (see Appendix I) and betrayed Russia’s nostalgia for its imperial past. Present in the city since its foundation in 1703, Islam is a part of this festivalization 176 of religions and ethnicities. Muslims from Kazan, Ufa, and Astrakhan were brought for the construction of the new capital, where they settled in Tatarskaya

Sloboda , a historic neighborhood near the Peter and Paul fortress. 177 Muslims served in the Russian military, took part in the political life of the empire, and actively contributed to the (re)production of knowledge through teaching, publishing, and translation work.

Their names pepper the historical chronicles of Saint Petersburg: among them are the son of rebellious imam Shamil, Magomed Shapi, a cornet in the imperial cavalry in 1861;178 shaykh Muhammad Ayad al-Tantawi, a professor of Arabic language at Saint Petersburg

State University (1840-1861); Ilyas-murza Boragansky, a publisher and the founder of a publishing house “Publishing House and Lithography of I. Boragansky and Co” in

1894. 179 As many others, these individuals signify the prominent contribution of Muslims to the city’s flourishing. They also show the legacy of Russian colonialism and the fraught relationships between the state and its minorities.

Although Muslims from different regions worked and lived in Saint Petersburg,

Tatar communities from Poland, the Crimea, and the Volga region dominated the

176 I borrow the term from Aomar Boum’s, “Festivalizing Dissent in Morocco,” Middle East Research and Information Project 42/263, Summer, 2012, pp. 22-25. 177 Almira Tagirdjanova, Musul’mane v Zhizni i Kulture Peterburga: XVIII-XIX vv. Sankt- Peterburg: Poltorak, 2013. See also Daut A. Aminov, Tatari v St. Peterburge . Moskva: Ald, 1994. Five Corners ( Pyat’ Uglov ) and Moskovsky district ( Moskovsky Rayon ) also became important neighborhoods, where Tatars historically lived. 178 Imam Shamil symbolized resistance of the Caucasian peoples to colonization in the 19th century, but then submitted to the imperial crown. Similarly a century later a prominent Chechen resistance leader Ahmad Kadyrov took the side of the central government in Moscow during the Second Chechen War (1990-2000). A bridge in his name was opened in Saint Petersburg in 2016, provoking much controversy and disapproval. 179 Ibid., See also Anas B. Khalidov, “The History of Islam in Saint Petersburg,” Religion, State and Society , 22/2, 1994, pp. 245-49.

88 demographics. 180 Significant historic landmarks of Muslim life have remained in the city until today: they include streets (e.g., Karavannaya street), graveyards (e.g., Muslim section of the Volkovskoe cemetery), traditional teahouses (e.g., on Sherbakova street), and the Saint Petersburg Cathedral mosque. 181 Built in 1910, the mosque is a “near- replica of the Gur-e Amir—Tamerlane’s tomb—in Samarkand, but its main body is built in Northern Art Nouveau, the style popular in Saint Petersburg and the Baltic states from the late 1890s to the early years of the 20th century.” 182 The mosque has traditionally attracted Tatar Muslims, but in the last decade migrant workers from Central Asia have also been attending it. On religious holidays, mosque goers would block the main street, preventing transportation from driving through the Trinity Bridge to the great dissatisfaction of city dwellers.

The Ponchaev family runs the mosque: Ja‘afar Ponchaev served as the imam- khatib for 36 years until 2012, and after his passing his son mufti Ravil Ponchaev became his successor. From my interlocutors I learned that Ponchaev the son lacked a clear vision for the community and distanced himself from worshipers, who critiqued his

“appointment,” irresponsiveness, and arrogance. Some women also questioned his religious credentials: “Instead of studying in Syria, Egypt, or Bukhara, the way it has always been done, Ponchaev got his training at the Oriental Studies department of Saint

Petersburg State University. Secular clergy, so to say.” Another mosque (i.e.,

180 Historically Tatars have been the most established, assimilated, and wealthy Muslim community in Russia. They were the first among Muslim peoples to be absorbed into the growing Russian empire. They have also historically dominated various Islamic organizations and served as intermediaries between the government and other Muslim groups. 181 Renat Bekkin and Almira Tagirdjanova, Musulmansky Peterburg. Istorichesky Putevoditel: Zhizn Musulman v Gorode na Neve i ego Okrestnostyah. Moskva: Izdatelstvo Instituta Afriki RAN, 2016. 182 http://archive.aramcoworld.com/issue/201006/russia.s.wider.window.htm Accessed on March 28, 2017.

89 Kolomyazhskaya Mechet’) is located at the Udelnaya metro station and was built between

2006 and 2009 with the financial assistance from Turkey, as the women told me. Several times I accompanied my interlocutor Hafsa to juma’ prayer before going to the vet clinic with her (see Chapter II). I noticed that male attendees were mostly migrant workers from

Central Asia, as they were wearing workers’ uniforms. Traditional clothing colors and patterns and the ways of donning hijabs revealed that female worshipers were Tatars,

Tajiks, and Russian converts. After the end of Friday khutba , people would stream out of the mosque to find police cars surrounding it and policemen checking documents.

The Islamic infrastructure 183 of the city also includes Islamic cultural centers, most of which cater to particular ethnic communities. During my fieldwork I attended a women’s meeting in the Ingush center, 184 a celebration of the World Hijab Day in the

Dagestani center, 185 and an art exhibition in a Tatar center. In addition to religious matters (e.g., each center has a medresse attached to it), these centers seek to promote national cultures, languages, and arts and crafts, thus serving, first and foremost, their own ethnic communities. 186 Some women actively participate in large youth movements that deal with issues important for all Muslims (e.g., proper burial of deceased Muslims or high unemployment rates among women), but they rarely collaborate with each other,

183 By infrastructure I mean physical spaces that underpin and structure Muslim life in the city. Although they somewhat root Muslims in place, the community under study is relatively diffused and their socio-religious life goes beyond these institutions. 184 Located on the Vasilevsky Island, the center is mostly visited by worshipers of Ingush descent. 185 The center is situated on Primorskaya metro station, and is believed to be Sufi-oriented, as worshipers perform zikr , among other rituals associated with Sufism. It is important to note that historically Islam arrived in the Caucasus through Sufi orders (e.g., Naqshabandi and Qadiri ), and Sufism remained there until today. See Moshe Gammer and David J. Wasserstein (eds.), Daghestan and the World of Islam . Helsinki: Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, 2006. 186 This is a reflection of the Soviet policy that fostered national cultures.

90 as these organizations have a pronounced ethnic/nationalist component (e.g., Tatar women’s movement Ak Kalfak ).

The community I studied included very diverse Muslims. Some came from

Middle Eastern and Central Asian countries and other attendees were of Tatar and

Caucasian descent. 187 There were also many Russian converts to Islam and those who wanted to convert. They communally opened and gathered at the center called Istochnik

(Source), 188 which was located in an apartment on the first floor of an apartment building at Narvskaya metro station before it moved to Lesnaya. In 2007 my friend invited me to come to an event, where a group of men and women were sharing their experiences from travels in Morocco with fellow worshipers. In 2008 I attended Arabic language classes and seminars on Muslim thinkers, which were held at the center. Istochnik also offered language classes (Arabic and Russian for migrants) and lessons on Quran, hadith , and

Islamic history, in addition to hosting various events (e.g., celebrations of religious holidays). My interlocutors always remembered the center fondly. Thus, Hala, a hairdresser from Astrakhan, told me that “its upbringing and warm atmosphere

(dushevnost) united us, center sisters ( zentrovie sestri ). As they say, squeezed but pleased

(v tesnote da ne v obide ). We would get together and pray for the entire ummah . Can you imagine the scale? The power?”

187 It is estimated that about 20 million Muslims live in Russia, with 1 million residing in Saint Petersburg. However, the numbers fluctuate due to migration from the Commonwealth of Independent States. On the discussion around numbers of Muslims in Russia see Egdunas Racius, Muslims in Eastern Europe. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018. http://gov.spb.ru/static/writable/documents/2017/05/11/ЭА%20Мониторинг%20демографическ их%20процессов_4кв16.pdf Accessed on September 5, 2017. 188 See a short footage about Istochnik in a TV program Musulmane : https://russia.tv/video/show/brand_id/3959/episode_id/121488/video_id/121488/ The program was made in 2012. Accessed on November 10, 2017.

91 While such Muslim relics as arabesque facades that adorn the cityscapes are tolerated, some other signs of the current Muslim presence in the city are not. As Wendy

Brown notes, “tolerance as a political practice is always a certain expression of domination even as it offers protection or incorporation to the less powerful.” 189 Indeed, the vibrant Muslim communal life has always been precarious and subjected to harassment and even erasure. Thus, spurred by political instability in Russia and the

Muslim world, a wave of crackdowns on Islamic centers took place in Saint Petersburg around 2012. In response to mass protests against the allegedly flawed legislative elections in Russia and the uprisings in the Middle East, several Islamic cultural centers, including Istochnik , were shut down. 190 The putative reasons ranged from issues with registration or fire safety to security concerns, but my interlocutor Svetlana argued that such policy was typical for Saint Petersburg:

Piter (Saint Petersburg) has always been politically difficult. In Moscow there are many religious centers, but here everything with religious flavor has been looked down upon. Such policy may have something to do with the geopolitical location of Saint Petersburg, I don’t know. But after the centers were closed down, people started gathering in private apartments, watching TV, browsing online, searching…Every year around 700 people would leave to fight in Syria and Iraq. It is wrong to prohibit everything and allow only that which seems controllable.

The feeling of malaise and fatigue coupled with economic hardships and lack of communal religious life triggered what Svetlana called “searching.” Searching for religious authority, opportunity to make money, and personal meanings led many to the

189 Wendy Brown, Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008, p. 180. 190 General mistrust of Muslims proliferates in contemporary Russia in light of the Chechen conflict, series of deadly attacks, and the spread of Saudi-funded literature and interpretations of Islam . These, among other factors, have created suspicion among Russia’s security apparatus towards Muslim associational life. See Roland Dannreuther, Russia and Islam: State, Society, and Radicalism. London: Routledge, 2010.

92 battlefields of war-torn Middle Eastern states. Thus, one of my interlocutors whose close friend became mujahid and was killed in Syria wondered whether the presence of a center could have prevented him and many others from leaving.

Assessing the situation, the Russian government decided to finance the establishment of Muhtasibat or the Spiritual Board of Muslims in Saint Petersburg and

Leningrad Region. Officially opened in 2016, 191 it operates under the umbrella of the

Spiritual Administration of Muslims of the Russian Federation ( Duhovnoe Upravlenie

Musulman Rossii or DUM), which is located in Moscow and is headed by mufti shaykh

Ravil Gainutdin. 192 Tasked with the facilitation of educational, social, and spiritual work in Saint Petersburg is young, charismatic, and energetic imam Damir Muhetdinov,

Gainutdin’s first deputy. Damir Muhetdinov or Damir hazrat , 193 as my interlocutors called him, would become instrumental in recruiting the women and their labor for

Muhtasibat. A member of the Civil Chamber of the Russian Federation, the president of

Islamic Institute of Hussein Faizkhanov in Nizhny Novgorod, the editor-in-chief of the publishing house Medina , several Islamic Internet portals, newspapers, and academic journals, Damir hazrat has published works, where he promotes Islamic humanism and enlightened Islam, also advanced by the women.

191 There are Muhtasibat offices in Moscow, Ekaterinburg, and other cities of Russia. See Alfrid K. Bustanov and Michael Kemper, “Editorial: Russia’s Islam and Orthodoxy beyond the Institutions: Languages of Conversion, Competition and Convergence”, Islam and Christian- Muslim Relations , 28, 2, 2017, special issue: Russia's Islam and Orthodoxy beyond the Institutions, ed. A.K. Bustanov and M. Kemper, p.130.

192 http://www.dumrf.ru Accessed on July 17, 2017. 193 An honorific title in Islam and a respectful way of addressing a high-ranking clergyman.

93 Prior to the establishment of Muhtasibat in 2016, an Islamic cultural center Luch

(Ray of Light) opened in Krasnoe Selo 194 in 2015. As it is clear from the speech that shaykh Ghainutdin delivered at the opening ceremony of Luch , the initiative belonged to the state:

We follow the call of our president (Vladimir Putin – my clarifications ) in our daily lives. The president urged us: “Build not only mosques, but also Islamic cultural and educational centers, so that Muslims will have their own social institutions ( sozialnie obyekti ).” Our task is to spread peace and coexistence among the citizens of our country. Enlightened ( prosveshennie ) and educated people will not join the ranks of ISIS. 195

When we were drinking tea at Gulnara’s kitchen, Svetlana told us that the imam-khatib of the cathedral mosque Ponchaev did not take well the news about the opening of Luch and

Muhtasibat :

He perceives it as a threat to his authority, so he decided not to cooperate. Despite Ponchaev’s position, Muhtasibat will open on Liteyny Prospect , not far from the FSB headquarters, by the way. As they say, safe as in Christ’s pocket ( kak u Hrista za pazuhoy ). At least now we will not have police storm into classrooms, where children study Quran, and throw books on the floor in search for “banned” literature ( zapreshennaya literatura ). The center will focus on the promotion of enlightened Islam. Different religious events, lectures, professional development seminars, and shared projects with the university and museums will take place there. I think it is time we introduced academic Islam and improved the standards, so to say.

Thus, both the cathedral mosque with the Ponchaevs as imams and Muhtasibat with imam

Muhetdinov as its curator in Saint Petersburg are state-sponsored institutions, and there is a fierce competition between them for the hearts and minds of the local ummah . As I understood from my interlocutors, personal ambitions and different views on Muslim life in the city interlace with the deeply entrenched divide and rule policy of the state toward

194 Located an hour away from Saint Petersburg. 195 Ravil Ghainutdin, “Stroite Kulturnie Zentri,” Al-Minbar 6 (006), February 2016, p. 1.

94 Muslim populations.196 Thus, the women who supported the idea of enlightened Islam 197 were caught up in competition between powerful men.

Muhtasibat occupies the first floor of a historic building on Liteyny Prospect

46. 198 It has a cozy courtyard that the women gathered to beautify soon after it opened.

They were planting flowers and cleaning, thus claiming the space as theirs. By the way they were working with earth, making flowerbeds, watering plants, and greeting by- passers I could tell how important it was for them to have a space of their own “right in the city’s downtown” ( pryamo v zentre goroda ). Inside the building there are classrooms, praying area that also serves as a lecture hall, an office room for staff, a library, a kitchen, and a dorm room, where several young men live. Awarded government scholarships to do undergraduate and graduate work at the Oriental Studies department of Saint

Petersburg State University and provided with rooms on the premises of Muhtasibat , these young men were trained to become imams who will be well versed in religious and non-religious disciplines. Svetlana explained to me the need to train future imams in such a way, so that their knowledge and service are relevant to the needs of the ummah . She emphasized that “northern Muslims” ( severnie Musulmane )199 have specific concerns, traditions, and historical experiences, and therefore need imams who know the context and have both religious and non-religious education. She said: “Of course, it is

196 It turns out that the state supports both Ponchaev and Muhetdinov, thus putting these competing factions under its supervision. 197 By enlightened Islam imam Muhetdinov and my interlocutors imply emphasis on education, Islam’s compatibility with “modernity,” appreciation of “high culture” and overall support for state policies. 198 As of August 2018 it has moved to Vasilevsky Island. 199 In addition to Svetlana, my other interlocutors used this term in our conversations. By this term they referred to Muslims who live in the North of Russia (e.g., Saint Petersburg), Siberia (e.g., Tyumen) or Far East (e.g., Yakutia). Due to cold climate and such natural conditions as white nights, religious life is experienced differently. For example, fasting in the summer becomes very difficult, as nights are short and days are long.

95 prestigious to study in Medina or Cairo, but often these imams spend a decade overseas and lose touch with the local ummah. Moreover, the interpretations of Islam they bring home do not always respond to the needs of believers here.”

The idea to train specialists with the knowledge of Islam and its history and culture belongs to the Russian president Vladimir Putin. The state-run program designed to cultivate religious cadre engages the leading universities and museums of Russia (e.g.,

Muhtasibat works closely with the Saint Petersburg State University and the Hermitage) and provides future imams with internship and educational opportunities in Europe. 200

State-sponsored professionalization of imams and the religious apparatus as a whole is what Michael Kemper and Alfrid Bustanov call “ muftiism .” 201 It represents “a combination of Soviet-style administrative authority and the public authority of Muslim officials.” Muftiism seeks to “persuade Muslims in the need for the religious elite in turbans” by promoting the positive image of Islam, acting as the intermediary between the ummah and the state, protecting Muslims from xenophobia and religious radicalism, and uniting various Muslim groups in Russia. 202 Muftiism also echoes the policies toward

Muslims in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. As Robert D. Crews demonstrates,

200 Press Center of Muhtasibat, “20 Marta 2016 Goda Ispolnilsya God so Dnya Naznacheniya Damira Muhetdinova Glavoy Sankt-Peterburgskogo Muhtasibata,” Al-Minbar 8 (008), April 2016, pp. 1, 3. 201 This phenomenon is not unique to Russia and is typical for the broader Islamic World. On Saudi Arabia see Madawi al-Rasheed, Muted Modernists. The Struggle over Divine Politics in Saudi Arabia. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016; on Turkey see Mona Hassan, “Women Preaching for the Secular State. Official Female Preachers in Contemporary Turkey.” IJMES 43, no. 3 (August 2011): 451-73; on Morocco see Margaret J. Rausch, “Women Mosque Preachers and Spiritual Guides: Publicizing and Negotiating Women’s Religious Authority in Morocco,” in Masooda Bano and Hilary Kalmbach (eds.), Women, Leadership, and Mosques: Changes in Contemporary Islamic Authority. Leiden: Brill, 2012, pp. 59-84; on Syria see Thomas Pierret Religion and State in Syria: The Sunni Ulama from Coup to Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. 202 Alfrid Bustanov and Michael Kemper, Islam po-Russki. Analiz Sovremennoy Islamskoy Literaturi v Rossii. Sankt-Peterburg: Prezidentskaya Biblioteka, 2016, pp. 95-6.

96 from the nineteenth century onward the tsarist state created Islamic institutions (e.g., The

Imperial Muftiate of 1788) to advance its political authority and to police and integrate

Muslim subjects into the imperial domain. Muslims, in turn, engaged with state institutions to promote “orthodox Islam” and resolve religious disputes. 203 It is noteworthy, the institutions that regulated the religious affairs of Muslims in different regions of the empire answered to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Similarly, in the 1920s and 30s People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) and since the 1940s State

Security Committee (KGB) played a major role in administering religious affairs in the

Soviet Union. 204 In light of these historic facts, Svetlana’s comment about Muhtasibat being located in the vicinity of the Federal Security Service office (FSB) indicates the continuation of this policy.

The empowerment of Islamic establishment through state-sponsored institutional channels also continued during the Soviet era: Spiritual Boards or Directorates (DUMs) were created to act as intermediaries between the state and Muslims. As Yaacov Ro’i notes, the Soviet state always faced the dilemma: strengthening the directorates would increase state control over the lives of Muslims, yet give them some autonomy and power. Hence the state closely monitored the directorates’ activities to “ensure no room for doubt as to where real power and authority laid.” 205 Concessions the directorates had to make provoked suspicion among believers, which parallels the mistrust some of my interlocutors felt toward Muhtasibat .

203 Robert D. Crews, For Prophet and Tsar: Islam and Empire in Russia and Central Asia . Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006. 204 Yaacov Ro’i, Islam in the Soviet Union: From the Second World War to Gorbachev . New York: Columbia University Press, 2000, p. 18. 205 Ibid., p. 156.

97 In order for the newly established Muhtasibat to function, Damir hazrat reached out to the local Muslim women and invited them to contribute to the life of the center.

Svetlana, Dina, and Gulnara became prominent participants in its everyday activities and invested their knowledge, time, and energy into its flourishing. During my research I observed how in the organization predominantly staffed and run by men Gulnara became in charge of the children’s program, while Dina launched a Family Center project, which aimed to help Muslims find a spouse and resolve marital issues. Svetlana began with volunteering, but when I was leaving the field she was serving as the head of the DUM apparatus ( rukovoditel apparata ) in Saint Petersburg and the Leningrad region. The women’s promotion in the organization is complicated, because it reveals their ambivalent investments in the patriarchal logics of Muhtasibat . However, they also use the organizational space to advance within its administrative ranks, serve the ummah , and fulfill their personal aspirations. While the space was opened for some women, it was

“closed” for others: the women’s critiques of Muhtasibat ’s education agenda and political allegiances are an indicator of such exclusions.

Putting Women to Work

During his speech that inaugurated the opening of Muhtasibat , Damir hazrat addressed Muslim women: “Do you know what needs to be done to have a Muslim president in Russia? You need to raise one.” “What right words he said!” – exclaimed

Gulnara, as we were having breakfast at her apartment several days later. “Now we need a group of active and committed women ( aktivistki ), who are ready to give back to the

98 center and the ummah ,” – said Svetlana, not troubled by the gendered nature of Damir hazrat’ s comment.

Originally from Grozny, Svetlana converted to Islam in 2006 after she arrived in

Saint Petersburg to study medicine at the First Pavlov State Medical University of Saint

Petersburg . For financial reasons, she dropped out of the program and spent several years working odd jobs. In 2010 she enrolled in and graduated with honors from the Islamic

Institute in Moscow, which functions under the auspices of DUM of the European part of

Russia. 206 DUM noticed her academic accomplishments, and she was awarded a scholarship to do graduate work in the Oriental Studies department at the Saint

Petersburg State University. Before Svetlana was officially hired as a staff member in

2016, she had been volunteering at the Islamic Cultural center on Vasilyevsky Island: she taught tajweed (Quranic recitation) to children and women, the history of the prophets, akhlaq (Islamic ethics), and Arabic language. During my fieldwork I was observing her rapid promotion, as she became the only woman, who occupied an executive position in the organization. Although the pay was not high by Saint Petersburg standards (15,000

RUR or 248 USD a month), it came with permanent employment and the opportunity to receive graduate education and serve the community. In addition to holding a full-time position in Muhtasibat and studying in the MA program, Svetlana was also teaching

Arabic to an Uzbek family. She commuted from Saint Petersburg to a nearby town of

Pavlovsk twice a week, which took her four hours to get there and back. In return, instead of monetary compensation for teaching she and her husband could live in her clients’ apartment, paying only for utilities.

206 http://www.miu.su/index.php/ob-institute Accessed on June 15, 2017.

99 In addition to managing different projects in Muhtasibat , Svetlana became in charge of the so-called Women’s Track ( Zhenskoe Napravlenie ) that aimed to engage active, well-educated, and accomplished Muslim women. “It is a platform for us to socialize, spend time together, plan events that interest us, and see how we ( Muhtasibat – my clarification ) can help you and you can help us,” – said Svetlana at the first meeting of the Women’s Council (Zhensovet ). During the monthly gatherings of Zhensovet older women with religious education would deliver lectures on religious topics and younger women would plan volunteer activities and personal growth seminars.

In the beginning of each session Svetlana would ask women for more active participation and help. She framed the physical and emotional labor that was requested from them in terms of “internal need” ( vnutrennaya potrebnost ). When we were talking over Skype six months after I left the field she explained to me: “You see, not everybody can be a project manager. The organization can become successful thanks to people, who quietly come and help clean and volunteer at events. Alhamdulillah we have sisters like this now and I recognize myself in them. They have permanent occupations ( osnovnoe delo ) and families, but they also have the need to do something good for the center.” She criticized those Muslim women who sought monetary compensation for their labor or acted “irresponsibly” by not fully committing to the job they agreed to undertake.

Svetlana, on the other hand, would often stay in her office until late, grab something quick to eat on her way back home, and arrive in her apartment past ten in the evening. As it appeared in our conversations, multitasking and different pressures exhausted her: she developed headaches, back pains, and anxieties, and resented the lack

100 of help from her Muslim sisters. When we were drinking coffee and eating ice cream at a café after one of Svetlana’s long workdays, she told me:

Damir hazrat has big hopes for me – I can’t let him down. I don’t want him or other men to think that women cannot be trusted with this kind of work. This is why I need a team. But Muslim women became lazy and got glued to their couches ( prirosli k divanu ) during the years of [organizational] vacuum ( za vremya vakuuma ). They don’t want to do anything, and I can’t cajole people into doing anything. Either the desire to work for Islam and the ummah exists or it doesn’t.

Svetlana was often worried about her reputation in Muhtasibat . In the beginning of her career she felt as if Damir hazrat was “testing” her. “I have to watch what I say and how I act. Damir harzrat is watching me,” – she often told me. While presenting herself as pious and reliable, she had to demonstrate that she differed from “zealous” converts to

Islam, who often joined radical organizations. When she became established, she often had to assert her executive authority: “I am not worried about the boys (future young imams – my commentary ) – they are still chickens in the shell ( ptenzi ), who hang on to the system’s every word ( smotryat v rot sisteme ). I am worried about those men who perceive me as a good person, but not as an executive in charge.” Svetlana’s anxieties indicate how women in Russia, especially minority women, have to navigate a patriarchal authority structure in order to succeed and in some ways trouble the existing power arrangements.

Despite being viewed as natural, 207 effortless, and of low economic value, 208 the women’s labor significantly contributes to social, institutional, and communal

207 Once Svetlana asked me to meet a delegation of Islamic scholars from the UK and Germany at the airport and accompany them to the hotel. The task was to make the guests feel welcome, sustain a small talk, and translate for them. The representative of Damir hazrat and one of the imams were also there with me. The imam was pleased to have me around, because, according to him, women were supposed to “ease the tension with their smiles” and “make the conversation flow freely.”

101 reproduction. Thus, Gulnara’s project of religious education for children sustains and furthers the ummah , while Dina’s Family Center project seeks to cement ties within the community through arranged marriages. However, the women’s productive labor of paying attention, 209 interacting with people, and volunteering has a toll on them. In our conversations Svetlana lamented about losing touch with the spiritual side of the Islamic practice. Although she saw her work as service ( khidma )210 to Allah and the ummah , she often felt alienated from it:

I know my work is important. For example, I carefully fill out and file dozens of papers to the local authorities, requesting approvals for religious gatherings. I do it so that my brothers and sisters in Islam could pray together during Kurban Bayram (Feast of Sacrifice – my commentary ) without being harassed or disbanded. At the same time, I feel that my direct engagement with the spiritual is diminishing. I do many things automatically and get lost in the bureaucratic red tape ( burokraticheskaya volokita ). I have been Muslim ( ya v Islame ) for over ten years now and I always think about what I have achieved as a Muslim and what I managed to give up ( ot chego smogla otkazatsa ).

Gulnara was also trying to resolve her difficult housing situation and Dina had health issues, so when three of them gathered at Gulnara’s apartment for breakfast or dinner

208 The expectation to work for free is ubiquitous and is often framed as training and an opportunity to “show oneself.” I heard similar justifications of free labor from my interlocutors. See Francesca Coin (ed.), Salari Rubati. Economia Politica e Conflitto ai Tempi del Lavoro Gratuito. Verona: Ombre Corte, 2017, pp. 99-106. On the devaluation, feminization, and commodification of emotional labor see, for example, Eileen Boris and Rhacel Salazar Parrenas (eds.), Intimate Labor: Cultures, Technologies, and the Politics of Care . Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010. 209 In one of our post-field interviews Svetlana lamented that as soon as she distanced herself from the Women’s Council events, other sisters “filled in the void” and began promoting Salafi views. Leaving behind other tasks, Svetlana had to return to the meetings to rectify the situation. As she admitted, paying close attention to developments on multiple fronts was mentally exhausting for her. 210 Although there is no such concept in the Quran, Svetlana used it in our conversations. There is a shared understanding among the women that one of their religious obligations to Allah and the community is to serve, to be useful, and to do good deeds for the sake of God and salvation. The concept figures in Sufi literature and is popularized by such Islamic Revivalist movements like Gulen. On the idea of hizme t see, for example, M. Hakan Yavuz, Toward an Islamic Enlightenment: The Gulen Movement. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.

102 they often discussed the ways to rekindle the spiritual awe and reverence ( blagogovenie ) they used to feel right after embracing Islam.

Despite occasional frustrations and difficulties, the women’s labor was fulfilling and rewarding, because it was tied to the cultivation of good personhood (e.g., being useful, serving God, and doing good for the community). On multiple occasions Gulnara told me that it was an obligation for a Muslim to share the knowledge she acquired. A soft-spoken, humble, and kind woman in her early forties, Gulnara emigrated from

Turkmenistan to Saint Petersburg in search for employment opportunities. First in

Moscow and then in Saint Petersburg she worked as a baby sitter, a kindergarten teacher, and a janitor before she became a pious Muslim ( poklonyaushayasa Musulmanka ). After she embraced Islam she enrolled into and graduated from the Islamic Institute in

Moscow, and began teaching Quran, hadith , Arabic language, and tajweed to children .

Living in a rented one-bedroom apartment with her husband, mother, and four children, two of whom were in elementary school, Gulnara would think of creative ways for her little students to understand hadiths and recite passages from the Quran. Patient and articulate, she would purchase cardboard, color pencils, shiny stickers, and glitter to construct little cubes with Arabic letters for children to memorize. Svetlana and Gulnara were close friends, and often discussed teaching philosophy and ways to engage children.

When I visited Gulnara for the first time, on the walls of her tiny kitchen I noticed posters with hadiths about learning and motivational apple trees that her children colored when they memorized and understood a passage from the Quran.

For Gulnara, striving for and sharing knowledge ( poluchat znaniya ) were a religious duty. Simultaneously, her labor gave her meager, but respectable income and

103 the opportunity to plan for the future. For example, she was saving the little money she was earning from teaching at Muhtasibat to send her children to the Islamic school, for which her husband refused to pay. “The school is expensive, but what a wonderful opportunity it will be for my children! They will have companionship ( obshenie ) of other

Muslims, there will be no issues with food because everything will be halal , and they will learn foreign languages including Arabic. This is what I am working for.”

Similarly, for Dina, who was highly respected in the community, the Family

Center project allowed her to be “useful” for Islam ( prinosit polzu dlya Islama ) and the ummah. She would often repeat: “Islam teaches us that the best of believers are those who are useful to people, and we are told to compete in righteousness and good deeds.”

Originally from Stavropol region, Dina has lived in Saint Petersburg for several decades with her husband (a Russian convert to Islam) and two sons. A graduate of the Islamic

Institute in Moscow and the Russian Islamic University in Kazan, she was working on a

Family Center project, which would operate on the premises of Muhtasibat and offer services to women. In addition to a respectable matchmaker, they will be able to seek help from an Islamic psychologist, a lawyer, and an imam . The project also aimed to address issues like intermarriages, polygamy, divorce, and domestic violence.

Commenting on the significance of the project, Dina said that it was important to help

Muslim women (especially converts to Islam) create families with respectable men: “For years we have had cases of young people getting married ( chitali nikyah ) in cars (as opposed to making marriage public – my commentary ) and then the men turned out to be charlatans. We have to protect the honor of our sisters.” In addition to setting up the

104 Family Center, Dina was teaching Arabic language, but for personal reasons she refused to be paid. 211

Thus, Muhtasibat recruited Svetlana, Gulnara, and Dina for (gendered) key projects, and their labor sustains and reproduces the community and its religious life through education, family planning, and communal worship. Although exhausting and materially unrewarding, this labor remains meaningful for these women: it has allowed them to create space for themselves in the male-run organization and to serve the ummah , while pursuing personal goals. In what follows I will demonstrate how women’s labor fueled the work of Muhtasibat through the Women’s Council.

Zhensovet and the Ambiguities of Women’s Volunteer Labor

Much literature on female religious circles ( halqat) and charitable foundations

(jam‘eya, vakif ) analyzes the questions of religious socialities 212 and the meanings of religious learning. 213 Some scholars discuss the questions of piety, ethics, and agency, 214 while others focus on religious devotion and political activism. 215 Ethnographies on devout Muslim women’s activism have also highlighted welfare provision as an

211 She never said what these reasons were, but I suppose that her refusal to take money for her work is related to the idea of doing good, being useful for the ummah , and fulfilling her personal and religious duty as a pious Muslim woman. 212 See chapter three in Amelie Le Renard, A Society of Young Women: Opportunities of Place, Power, and Reform in Saudi Arabia . Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2014, pp. 85-106. 213 See chapter four in Mandana E. Limbert, In the Time of Oil: Piety, Memory and Social Lie in an Omani Town . Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2010, pp. 82-114. 214 Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011. See also Hilary Kalmbach, “Social and Religious Change in Damascus: One Case of Female Islamic Religious Authority,” BJMES 35 (1), 2008, pp. 37-57. 215 Lara Deeb, An Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shi‘i Lebanon . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006.

105 important component of their work. 216 While building on this literature, this chapter seeks to bring forth the contradictory meanings embedded in pious women’s volunteer labor.

As illustrated earlier, multiple factors motivate the women to work for Muhtasibat , which is a male-run patriarchal institution. Among them are religious devotion, ethical convictions, personal interests, and encouragement from above. The women’s labor sustains the activities of Muhtasibat through the Women’s Council or Zhensovet , which combines the elements of a halqa , informal gatherings, and Soviet-style female organizations that promoted state feminism.

Before Muhtasibat officially opened in 2016, women would gather at Farida’s atelier (see Chapter I) for the so-called Five O’clock Tea . These meetings took place once a month and each session was devoted to a religious topic (e.g., women in Islam, Islamic view on happiness, and the concept of time in Islam). Farida’s friend Fatima, a Shi‘a

Muslim from Azerbaijan, usually delivered the lectures, but after she moved to Moscow, other women were asked to facilitate the meetings. Sometimes up to fifteen women and their children would gather in a tiny guest room of the atelier for a prayer, lecture, and potluck. With the opening of Muhtasibat, the meetings were moved there. “I have always been worried for Farida and her family. How were they not afraid to host so many people at their place! Had the security forces found out about the gatherings, they would not have liked it. Now we can meet comfortably here” – Svetlana told me, as we were sitting in her office on Liteyny 46.

Monthly meetings were viewed as an important part of the Women’s Track and were open to all Muslim women. However, in its daily activities Svetlana relied on the

216 Catharina Raudvere, The Book and the Roses: Sufi Women, Visibility, and Zikir in Contemporary Istanbul. Bjarnum: Bjarnums Tryckeri AB, 2002, p.31.

106 “activist core” that remained more or less intact since the times of the Islamic cultural center Istochnik . To my surprise, I was also recruited for the work of the organizing committee ( Orgkomitet ). Several women rejected Svetlana’s invitation to get involved.

When she and I met at a coffee shop near Muhtasibat on June 1, 2016 she lamented:

I really wanted some sisters to participate, but they refused. Their reasoning does not make sense to me. They said that Istochnik maintained good relationships with Ponchaev, and they do not want to ruin these relationships by becoming involved with us (i.e., Muhtasibat – my commentary ). I do not understand this. Istochnik does not exist any more and the relationships with Ponchaev were never good. In fact, there were no relationships. Now we have such a great opportunity to do something for Islam and Muslims, and I do not call this work “volunteerism.” I call it activism. I know many are against working with the state. 217 I am well aware of the state’s position and I myself saw many things when I lived in Chechnya. But what can I do about it? We live in the country, where things will never be different. But a space has just opened up for us, and now we have to use this chance to create something that is our own ( chto-to svoe ), to develop and strengthen it, to work on it and slowly change the system from within.

Svetlana’s words illustrate how women’s labor, desires, and anxieties are embedded in a complex web of men-made decisions and power politics, which they have to navigate by compromising, pushing back, and relying on each other’s unpaid work to secure a physical space, from which they may be able to initiate “change from within.” At the time of my fieldwork Svetlana was not sure how that change would look like, but she felt it was necessary to begin with women-driven volunteer work.

On June 15, 2016 Roza, Hafsa, Khadija, and I met at Svetlana’s office to discuss volunteer opportunities. Women came up with several suggestions. An inheritance lawyer, Khadija suggested providing free legal help to migrant workers, while Roza

217 At the time of our conversation, there were discussions about opening “special prisons for terrorists.” Moreover, on Islamic websites articles were circulating about the continuous frisking, torture, and disappearance of Muslims in the Caucasus.

107 thought it was necessary to support Muslim single mothers and the elderly 218 with cleaning, grocery shopping, and baby-sitting. However, Hafsa was calling for a more radical participation of the ummah in the life of the city and non-Muslim communities:

Why don’t we work with Nochlezhka 219 and help the local homeless? We can cook meals for them or give away clothes and toiletries. We could also set up a soup kitchen for the elderly. It is not necessary to offer expensive food – simple pies and tea will be enough. You know, there are many things we could do, but it all needs human resources and commitment. Do we have that? Some volunteer activities require re-educating Muslims. For example, there are many Muslim orphans who need help. But the ummah is not ready for that kind of work.

Svetlana looked uncomfortable when Hafsa suggested participating in human rights activism and financing Muslim startups. When we were walking to the metro station after the meeting, Svetlana told me: “We have to be very careful. Politicized volunteerism is out of the question. Applying for international grants is also not possible - we don’t want to be labeled a foreign agent. Also, Muhtasibat is a religious organization that is not allowed to fundraise, so material help to Muslim entrepreneurs may be very difficult.”

This discussion revealed the political constraints in which Muslims as a minority population have to operate. It also showed how creative the women have to be in order to provide assistance to the always already marginalized without raising suspicion, drawing unnecessary attention, or losing the support of the state. Driven by the desire to do good

(mi hotim delat dobro ), Svetlana was facing multiple issues: lack of engagement from

218 Together with the Alliance of Tatar Youth and Ingush cultural center Zikr, Muhtasibat occasionally supported poor local Muslim families. For example, for the 2015 Sacrifice feast over 250 Muslim families, disabled individuals, orphans, war veterans, and the elderly received help. See press service of Muhtasibat, “Vozrozhdenie Dobroi Tradizii,” al-Minbar 3 (003), October- November 2015, p. 8. Moreover, Muhtasibat seeks to provide special assistance to the Muslim survivors of the siege of Leningrad (1941-1944). See Marat Bulatov, “Musulmane Goroda Svyato Hranyat Pamyat of Blokade Leningrada,” al-Minbar 7 (007), March-April 2016, p. 3. 219 The oldest NGO helping the homeless and people without registration.

108 Muslim sisters, volatile and precarious political context, and the hardships of what feminist Marxist scholars called the second shift. 220 Thus, the women’s volunteerism was tightly bounded in these constraints, in fact, disallowing many types of activism. As we were saying goodbyes after the long meeting, Hafsa sighed: “I am so tired that I don’t want to do anything. But I have to come home, respond to several work-related phone calls, and act like ( izobrazhat iz sebya ) a mother after all!”

Along with the dilemmas about how to multitask and mobilize women to volunteer, Svetlana, Gulnara, and Dina were facing critiques from their Muslim sisters.

As I gathered from my interlocutors, their critiques focused on three aspects: the colonial and irrelevant message of Muhtasibat , its identitarian politics, and gender and religious authority. In response to my questions about these critiques Gulnara frowned and

Svetlana sighed: “You know, Tanechka, 221 initially I reacted to the accusations of collaborating with the state, but then I stopped. Many of these people have recently converted to Islam and for them any contact with the state is sinful. This is why I fully support the education of Muslims and I don’t understand how else it can be done other than through institutions like Muhtasibat .”

Indeed, working for the state-sponsored institution that promotes an enlightenment agenda was one of the reasons why some women disapproved of

Muhtasibat’s initiatives. My interlocutor Maria told me:

This organization has compromised itself by being on friendly terms with and receiving money from FSB. Damir Muhitdinov now speaks on behalf of all Muslims. I didn’t sign up for this. This vertical power structure creates an illusion of activity, but in fact what do they do? They meet with somebody,

220 Arlie Hochschild and Anne Machung coined the term in their 1989 book The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home . 221 A diminutive form of my first name Tatiana. This is how my interlocutors, including Svetlana, called me.

109 take selfies, and then publish a memo on their website saying that they “have met and come to an agreement.” What agreement? On whose behalf? It reminds me of the colonial 222 discourse that Muslims need to revive something and learn from the Europeans. Why does Muhitdinov seek legitimacy by cooperating with Western rather than Muslim scholars? Who is this done for? Who is his audience? What is “Islamic” about his addresses?

When I asked her what would be the right approach, she said:

I don’t know. I believe in the theory of small deeds ( teoriya malih del ). For example, there are scholars of Russian Islam, who attempt to rethink how Islam was practiced in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, and how Muslims responded to imperialist discourses. This is our history, so this kind of work is truly meaningful. As a state-sponsored organization, Muhtasibat imposes structural constraints ( stavit strukturnie ramki ) and it is good if you fit in them. But what if you don’t? We had a center (Istochnik – my commentary ) where we were doing the work from below ( provodilis meropriyatiya snizu ). We were organizing things ourselves, but the center was shut down. Now there has to be permission from above, and things are being done for five Tatar grannies. And what about the rest of us?

Having experienced harassment from the state security services, Maria told me that similar debates had already taken place in the history of Islam in Russia (e.g., jadidist movement). For her the inability to collectively reflect on the experiences of Muslims in

Russia and the eradication of community-driven ways of living a Muslim life were the main reasons why she did not wish to participate in the events organized by Muhtasibat .

In her critiques, my interlocutor Iman emphasized the problematic identitatrian and generational politics of the organization:

222 Here she refers to Jadidsm, which is an Islamic reformist movement among Volga Tatars in the Russian Empire in 1880s and in Central Asia between 1900s and 1920. It focused on modernization and the education of Muslims as a way to achieve moral, social, and economic progress. Jadidist press, literature, and the “new method” schools were the instruments through which the reform was sought. K. Hitchins, “JADIDISM,” Encyclopaedia Iranica , XIV/4, pp. 339-346, available online at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/jadidism (accessed on 3 August 2017). See also Adeeb Khalid, The Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform: Jadidism in Central Asia. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.

110 It is a Tatar-dominated “fest” ( tatarskaya tusovka ), and it can’t address the needs of Muslim youth in Russia, at least not through academic conferences it organizes. Moreover, there are many Muslims in our ummah who have non- conventional knowledge, experiences, and ideas, but the organization does not want them. Everything has to be approved from above first. We had a center (Istochnik – my clarification ) where we were our own bosses ( sami sebe hozyaeva ), but it was shut down. The only thing the state was doing when Istochnik existed was policing and creating barriers for Islamic centers to emerge. Do you know how difficult it is to register a religious organization? First, a community has to be officially recognized and exist for fifteen years! I am not even talking about purchasing premises. Registering as a non- commercial organization (NCO) is impossible – NCOs today are the enemy of the nation.

Indeed, Tatar men constitute the majority among the executive and low-ranking employees of Muhtasibat, which marginalizes women and non-Tatar Muslims. Exclusion of “non-sanctioned” knowledges also took place - a potential educator in Muhtasibat has to have both religious and relevant non-religious education in the approved institutions in

Russia and the Middle East. In our conversations Iman implied that the type of education the center promotes depoliticizes dissent and does not resolve the pressing issues of

Islamophobia, poverty among Muslims, and discrimination Muslim women face.

Issues concerning Muhtasibat’s enlightenment agenda and the exclusions it produces were not the only reasons why some women refused to join its ranks. Thus, my interlocutor Asma questioned the outcomes of working within the system:

I understand the position of many sisters (who refuse to join Muhtasibat ). On the one hand, we can remain in opposition ( bit v kontrah ) and wait until we are arrested. On the other hand, we can do something useful together with Muhtasibat . But don’t you think that by investing our energy and helping it develop, we are creating a Trojan horse? Let’s be honest here, the government does not care about Muslims. At the same time, it seems that the doors of Muhtasibat are open for such vocal critics like me. I am still trying to figure out that Damir guy. He is definitely smart and maybe even trying to defend Islam. Maybe once he is firmly established, he will “show his teeth” and defend Muslims? But if this is indeed his plan, it is wrong. Look at people like shaykh Hamzat Chumakov. He is a real Muslim, whose

111 heart is burning for his brothers and sisters in Islam and who is not afraid to defy the system.

Shaykh Chumakov is a popular preacher and imam in the village of Nasyr-Kort in Ingush

Republic. In his khutbas he openly criticizes corrupt government servants and law enforcement agencies, speaks against gender-based violence, and discusses the issues of

Chechen and Ingush youth. It is not surprising how Asma juxtaposed the oppositional voice of the charismatic shaykh with the corporatist and bureaucratic habitus of

Muhtasibat ’s employees.

In their critiques Asma called the young imams “shallow boys” ( pustishki ), Maria sarcastically laughed at Damir hazrat ’s Soviet-style photos on Muhtasibat ’s Facebook page, and Anna accused Svetlana of benefitting from the center’s hiring policy and the protection of powerful men within the system. Their words exhibit how ethnicity, age, class, gender, and anti-statist sentiments intersect in shaping the complex politics of

Islamic institutions in the city. They also show how some women are vocal critics of the

Muhtasibat ’s political course and marginalization it produces. Their references to

Istochnik show how women used to be much more prominent and influential in creating and sustaining the communal life from below and how excluded they feel today.

Reflecting on the conversation at Gulnara’s house when Svetlana announced the opening of Muhtasibat , I wondered why despite the existing issues the women persist in offering their unrecognized care labor to the institution, where men set the tone. As the chapter has demonstrated, the confluence of religious devotion, personal interests, and ideological convictions fuel their labor that gives Muhtasibat its spirit. They are ready to make temporary compromises in order to claim, own, and transform the space that they acquired by chance. These painful negotiations resulted in their decision to take

112 advantage of that chance and strike roots before the state eradicates the organization once again. Seven months after I concluded my fieldwork, I talked to Svetlana over Skype.

She was working hard to establish contacts with women’s organizations in Siberia,

Ingush Republic, and other parts of Russia. One of the venues was a conference in

Yekaterinburg devoted to Mukhlisa Bubi, the first female qadi , abistay , 223 and a prominent religious figure in the beginning of the 20 th century. As Svetlana explained to me, many Muslim men did not recognize Bubi as a religious and legal authority until she was executed by the Soviet regime in the 1937. Now she is celebrated as a martyr and a great example of power Muslim women can wield in the ummah . Svetlana wondered: “If today we elected a female qadi , will the clergy ( svyashennosluzhiteli ) follow her edicts?

Will they stand behind a female imam ? They eloquently talk about women’s rights in

Islam, but they are the ones who encroach on these rights. We need to start raising these questions within our ummah , and Damir hazrat gave me the green light to do so.” As

Svetlana’s words indicate, although promising, the quiet revolution within the system still required the approval of powerful men.

On September 15, 2016 I was invited to attend the Muhtasibat -sponsored celebration of Kurban Bayram in Taleon Imperial Hotel. The only luxury palace hotel in the historic part of Saint Petersburg, it impressed the guests with its golden lamps, marble stairs, and spacious halls. Behind the check-in desk there was a wall painting of Peter the

Great receiving various subjects of the Russian Empire and a stand with a photo of Putin.

After the main part of the celebration where women sang and read poetry and men recited

Quran and delivered congratulatory speeches, everybody proceeded to a large reception

223 See Rozaliya Garipova, “Muslim Female Religion Authority in Russia: How Mukhlisa Bubi Became the First Female Qadi in the Modern Muslim World,” Die Welt des Islams 57, 2, pp. 135- 61. Abistay is a Muslim woman teacher, usually married to a local mullah .

113 hall. Waiters in white gloves were serving food and drinks to the guests, who were awkwardly standing by their tables. We were drinking coffee and looking at beautifully adorned ceilings and walls, when my interlocutor Ekaterina (see Chapter IV) said: “I attended dozens of boring events like this one in Kazakhstan. Nothing new for me here.”

“But look at the scale ( razmah )! We have never gathered at such a luxurious place before! The level ( uroven ) and the visibility are amazing! Alhamdullilah for this opportunity,” – said one of the organizers. As I was listening to numerous admirations, my eyes were searching for the women who shared with me their critiques of Muhtasibat .

Not surprisingly, I did not see them: either they were not invited or chose not to attend.

114 Chapter IV

Feeling Depressed, Becoming Old: Public Life of Emotions in Saint Petersburg

It was 6:30 pm and I was waiting for Ekaterina outside of the Mayakovskaya metro station. The ice on the Neva River broke and it was very cold outside. A former Olympic athlete, tall and fit, she suddenly emerged from the sea of people, took me by the elbow, and led me to the Burger King –“I just got out of work and want to eat something deadly, like French fries. Do you mind?” While we were standing in line to order food, an argument broke out between a cleaning lady and a group of teenagers. “Go call the manager, you churka 224 !” - a young woman yelled at a female janitor from Central Asia, while her male companions burst out laughing. When I placed the tray with fries and Coke on a table by the window, a young woman sitting nearby turned to me and said: “You don’t want to sit here. Gypsies and their filthy children have infected this table with germs.” Responding to my bewildered look, Ekaterina scolded me: “Tatiana, you always attract negative situations to yourself. Your surroundings are the reflection of your inner state. This is why I do psychotherapy to cleanse my fitra. 225

This chapter focuses on the lives of 28-year-old Ekaterina and 60-year-old

Munira, two migrant women from the former Soviet republics, who came to Saint

Petersburg in search for better opportunities for themselves and their families. As they were struggling to find employment and fix their legal status, they experienced discrimination and health issues that involved depression and bodily pains. In Saint

Petersburg both women became observing Muslims, with Ekaterina also resorting to psychotherapy, meditation, and relaxation bodily practices to offset the pernicious effects of Islamophobia, exploitative labor conditions, and economic hardships. Entangled with the women’s material circumstances, the religious feelings they harnessed moved them into different directions: away from the exploitative work conditions and toward finding meaning in grueling labor.

224 An ethnic slur directed toward migrants from Central Asia. 225 Fitra is often translated as “original disposition,” “natural condition,” or “innate nature,” equivalent to Islam and all good that is in it. See Jon Hoover, “Fitra,” Encyclopedia of Islam 3rd ed., London: Brill, 2017.

115 There are three interventions I am making in this chapter. First, Ekaterina’s and

Munira’s health issues that developed as the women were working to make ends meet are socially grounded. Cultural theorists and feminist scholars reject approaches to mental and physical health as solely an individualized biological condition and illustrate that affects like anger, fear, or happiness circulate in larger socio-economic contexts, producing tangible bodily effects. 226 For example, tying together feelings and capitalism,

Ann Cvetkovich sees depression as a social phenomenon and a “category that manages and medicalizes the affects associated with keeping up with [the] market economy or with being completely neglected by it.” 227 Scholars have also noted the proliferation of

“negative passions,” especially panic and depression, as “all energies in capitalist societies are mobilized in order to prevail [over] the other.” 228 For example, Mark Fisher sees bi-polar disorder as lying at the heart of capitalist rhythms. He shows how “with its ceaseless boom and bust cycles, capitalism is itself fundamentally and irreducibly bi- polar, periodically lurching between hyped up mania and depressive come-down.” 229

Building on the literature that examines the public life of emotions, I demonstrate how

Ekaterina’s cycles of depression and mania, and Munira’s deteriorating physical health

226 See Lauren Berlant (ed.), Empathy: The Culture and Politics of an Emotion . London: Routledge, 2004. Sara Ahmed, The Cultural Politics of Emotion . London: Routledge, 2004; Wendy Brown on queer ressentiment in States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995; Judith Butler on mourning in Precarious Life: The Power of Mourning and Violence. London: Verso Press, 2004; Carla Freeman on neoliberal affect “Embodying and Affecting Neoliberalism”, in Frances E. Mascia-Lees (ed.), A Companion to the Anthropology of the Body and Embodiment . Hoboken: Weley-Blackwell, 2011; Linda Green, “Fear as a Way of Life,” Cultural Anthropology 9/2, 1994, pp. 227-256. 227 Ann Cvetkovich, Depression. A Public Feeling . Durham: Duke University Press, 2012, pp. 47- 8. 228 Franco “Bifo” Berardi, The Soul at Work: From Alienation to Autonomy . Los Angeles: Semiotexte, 2009, p. 92. 229 Mark Fisher, Capitalism Realism. Is There No Alternative? Winchester: Zero Books, 2009, p. 35. See also Emily Martin, Bipolar Expeditions: Mania and Depression in American Culture. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007.

116 were inscribed in their daily work lives, underpinned by Islamophobia, racism, and material needs.

The second point I am advancing in this chapter concerns the different kinds of work emotions can perform. Scholars of affect have shown how power circulates through feeling. 230 With populism on the rise in Russia, as well as in other parts of the world, emotions can perpetuate injustice. For example, discourses about family values, religious sentiments, and “threatening” immigrants divert attention away from the causes of structural violence. 231 On the other hand, feminist writers have argued that affects can lead to self-possession, political resistance, and the important ways of being and knowing. 232 In this chapter I argue that for Munira religious affect depoliticized and, in some ways, helped normalize social suffering, while serving as a safety valve to relieve pressures she faced as a female migrant worker in Saint Petersburg. On the other hand, for Ekaterina (at least initially) religious affect and psychotherapy helped generate important critiques of her work and prompted her to reclaim time for activities she deemed meaningful.

The final point I am making in this chapter centers on the embodied effects of feelings. For example, in Russia, as in other countries, affects become entangled in political processes like racialization, reflected in discourses about “depressed” 233 or

230 Carolyn Pedwell and Anne Whitehead, “Affecting Feminism: Questions of Feeling in Feminist Theory,” Feminist Theory 13/2, 2012, p. 116. 231 For example, Lisa Duggan, The Twilight of Equality? Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democracy . Boston: Beacon Press, 2004. 232 For example, Audre Lorde demonstrates how practicing self-care while dealing with terminal illness serves as a political act of resistance. See Audre Lorde, The Cancer Journals . San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1980. 233 Ana Yolanda Ramos-Zayas, “Affect: Learning Affect/Embodying Race,” in Frances E. Mascia-Lees (ed.), A Companion to the Anthropology of the Body and Embodiment. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2011.

117 “diseased” 234 migrants and the practices of compulsory medical examination, language testing, and racial profiling. 235 Anti-immigrant discourses have prevailed in Russia, but resurfaced with vigor in winter 2016, when a nanny from Uzbekistan beheaded a 4-year- old girl in Moscow. 236 “Mentally disturbed,” “aggressive,” and “zealous” migrants (read:

Muslims, Central Asians) are often accused of slowing down productivity, over- burdening the national healthcare system, and posing a vital threat to the wellbeing of the nation. In the chapter I show how Ekaterina’s conversion to Islam was medicalized, rendering her “mentally disturbed” and her body “incapable” of performing work.

Powerful emotions from her religious experiences and engagements with religious texts allowed her to decisively respond to structural violence and capitalist labor regime by rejecting its bodily and mental discipline. Munira, on the contrary, was a “happy migrant” despite racism, material needs, and health issues, which made her age prematurely.

Strong emotions that she experienced from reading hadiths, praying, and remembering her pilgrimage to Mecca gave her the energy to carry on with her work, persevere, and remain optimistic, which was work on its own.

Labor migrants from Central Asia constitute the majority of migrants in Russia, along with the citizens of the Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldavia. In 2016 “Russia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs has reported almost 5 million entries of Central Asian natives to the

234 In public discourse in Russia labor migrants are frequently seen as a health hazard. It is claimed that many have TB, AIDS, or syphilis. 235 For example, in Germany refugees are presented with “sex manuals” that instruct them on how to be intimate and have sex in a “proper” way. 236 http://www.mk.ru/social/2016/03/01/nyanya-otrezavshaya-golovu-devochke-15-let-stradala- tyazheloy-shizofreniey.html Accessed on January 25, 2018.

118 country.” 237 As statistics demonstrate, migrants have “irregular legal status and are often exploited by their employers and harassed by law enforcement agencies, while their ethno-racial background and religion add to their economic and legal marginalization.” 238

Below I will demonstrate how Ekaterina’s and Aunt Munira’s experiences also reflect the hardships that migrants face in Russia, yet differ from them in a number of ways.

Ekaterina was born and raised in the city of Temirtau 239 in the North-West of

Kazakhstan, where her family arrived on the peak of the Khrushchev’s Virgin Lands campaigns. 240 After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the deterioration of socio-economic conditions, and the rise of ethnic nationalism in Kazakhstan, her family immigrated to

Saint Petersburg. In her twenties, Ekaterina was a professional athlete and strove to become a member of the Russian Olympic rowing team, which accelerated her path to

Russian citizenship. Depression accompanied her daily training regiments and attempts to adjust to the new environment. As a result of physical exertion and stress, Ekaterina experienced visions ( epizodi , as she called them) and was subsequently diagnosed with bi-polar disorder. 241 Ever since then she has been having recurring episodes of mania and

237 Natalia Zotova and Victor Agadjanian, “Gendered Pathways: Central Asian Migration through the Lens of Embodiment,” in Murat Yucesahin and Pinar Yazgan (eds.), Revisiting Gender and Migration , London: Transnational Press, 2017. 238 Ibid. 239 During the Soviet era the Karagandy Region where the coal-mining town of Temirtau is located was a center of Gulag labor camps. It was also a site where ethnic Germans were deported following the Second World War. Ekaterina’s father whom she barely remembers was German, while her mother was of Slavic descent. 240 To increase agricultural produce, Khrushchev encouraged Soviet citizens to migrate to Kazakhstan and Western Siberia for the cultivation of the so-called virgin lands. However, agricultural output from these lands in the 1960s proved to be disappointing. See Ronald Grigor Suny (ed.), The Cambridge History of Russia, Vol. III The Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006, p.429. 241 She informed me that the diagnosis was later retracted.

119 depression, which she controls by medications. 242 During one of such episodes, she had a vision where she “met Allah ” and which prompted her to embrace Islam.

Of Tatar descent, Munira arrived in Saint Petersburg in the early 2000s from

Dashoguz in the North-East of Turkmenistan. Originally from Saratov in Southwestern

Russia, her mother moved to Turkmenistan for family reasons before the Second World

War. After the Soviet Union ceased to exist, ethnic nationalism made the lives of non-

Turkmens difficult: Munira remembers how she was pejoratively called “that Russian,” which was a reminder of her not belonging there. Upon arrival in the “city of culture,” she faced xenophobia as an “interloper” ( ponayehavshaya ) and encountered the effects of the saturated labor market with limited opportunities for migrant workers. A nurse in

Turkmenistan, she could not obtain an equivalent job in Saint Petersburg. Moreover, when she eventually received Russian citizenship, she lost her pension and benefits in

Turkmenistan and was only eligible for a minimum compensation in Russia. Warped by odd jobs and poor living conditions, energetic and lively Munira aged and became aunt

Munira.243 She developed migraines, high blood pressure, and excruciating pain in her hands, which eventually forced her to leave her job as a janitor. Like Ekaterina, she “got on the path of prayer” ( vstala na molitvu ) and donned the hijab following her daughter

Gulnara (Chapter III).

I analyze Ekaterina’s and Munira’s cases together, because they illustrate how religious affect can work differently in the context of racism and capitalist exploitation.

Praying and citing hadiths allowed aunt Munira to give meaning to cleaning staircases, while prompting Ekaterina to critique her office drone job as useless and exploitative.

242 She stopped taking medications when she learned about her pregnancy. 243 In Russian, “Aunt” ( tetya ) is an intimate way of addressing a biologically non-related woman, an equivalent of “Aunt” ( khalti or ‘ amti ) in Arabic. It is also a sign of age-inferred seniority.

120 The women’s conversion to and practice of Islam 244 helped them make sense of their lives and navigate the painful post-Soviet experiences of dislocation, labor regimes, and discrimination. The two cases also allow me to think through materiality and affect together, because the different trajectories in which the women were moved arose out of their different material conditions (e.g., class position, age, and ethnicity).

In what follows I will first examine Ekaterina’s story by highlighting how she dealt with everyday stress by drawing on religious and therapeutic resources. I see

Ekaterina’s psychotherapeutic practices not as a “neoliberal technology of the self” to ensure positive thinking and productivity at work. 245 Rather, her cycles of depression and mania and the subsequent sessions with a therapist became a meaningful experience and a source of knowledge about labor, migration, and femininity. I will then proceed to analyzing aunt Munira’s story and her engagement with hadith literature to illustrate her coping with health issues, persistent othering, and alienation in Russia. I will conclude with outlining the possible avenues of thinking about labor, religious affect, and mental/physical health in the times of economic crisis and political uncertainty, especially felt by marginalized minority populations.

244 Their Islam did not involve a rigorous engagement with religious texts and was not institution- based. Rather, it transpired through their daily practices of namaz (prayer), attire, circulation of hadiths , da‘wa (proselytizing) and narration of their religious experiences (e.g., conversion narratives), encounters, and emotions. Religious and other daily practices become intertwined in peculiar ways. For example, Ekaterina frequently used non-Islamic concepts (e.g., karma, nirvana ) in her everyday language and belief system, thus making her practice of Islam syncretic and fluid. She also used religious concepts like rahma (mercy) in her psychotherapeutic sessions, while adopting neuro-linguistic programming for her religious daily life. 245 Nikolas Rose, Inventing Our Selves: Psychology, Power, and Personhood . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 156. For example, mindfulness movement or the neoliberal adaptation of yoga and meditative technologies.

121 “I Don’t Want to Work like a Dog”

Ekaterina opened the door of a small travel company’s office where she was working as a travel agent. “Come on in, don’t mind the mess,” she said smiling.

Segways 246 were piled up in the dark hallway, and random papers were scattered all over the cramped office where we sat down. She served coffee and turned on the heater – her honey-colored eyes were flickering from the cold outside, and she continued to smile at me with her beautiful gap-toothed smile: “So now I will tell you how a girl from

Kazakhstan was getting to know ( pokoryala ) Saint Petersburg.”

Ekaterina was 21 when she arrived in Saint Petersburg in 2009 to study at the

Lesgaft National State University of Physical Education, Sport, and Health. Despite a hard life in Temirtau, she did not want to move to Saint Petersburg, which never became

“her city.” As a professional athlete, she was invited to join the Russian female Olympic team to participate in the try-outs for rowing. She would recount intense training sessions and the oppressive atmosphere of the city, its rain, and long distances. She did not feel well at the time, because the training regiments were physically demanding and required from all team members to synchronize their movements and thoughts to enhance performance. Ekaterina was on the verge of burning out:

When my team members and I went to Egypt for a short vacation, I had an episode ( psihoz ). I had a vision: a bright light entered my heart. I felt it was my meeting with God. I immediately believed in Allah (uverovala v Allaha ) and upon my return to Russia I became Muslim ( prinyala Islam ). My visions continued and brought me a lot of pain, as I saw myself being born and dying over and over. After I went to a psychotherapist, I was diagnosed with bi- polar disorder.

246 Segway is a two-wheeled motorized vehicle with a driver standing on a platform and holding onto the handles, which are attached to the platform by an axle. Tourists often use segways for city tours.

122 I remember how moved I was by Ekaterina’s visions and the accounts of her conversion to Islam in 2012. It was a response to physical and emotional discipline and surveillance inscribed in training regiments, migration experience, and citizenship that was eventually granted to her. In Being German, Becoming Muslim , Esra Ozyurek illustrates how for some of her interlocutors conversion to Islam was a reaction to the rapidly changing political and economic situation in East Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Her interlocutors describe the feelings of shame, disappointment, and loss. 247 Ekaterina also recalls exercise-inflicted bodily aches, mental exhaustion, and loneliness that she experienced before converting to Islam. In the economy where the body is a dispensable commodity, value is continuously extracted from precarious populations causing psychological distress, alienation, and exhaustion. “Eventually I burnt out and had to quit,” – Ekaterina told me – “but for my professional career I received money that went toward purchasing my own one-bedroom apartment in Saint Petersburg.” After her official sports career was over, she worked a series of odd jobs, which was a constant reminder about lingering economic insecurity and instability in Russia.

Although post-socialist states took different paths to capitalism, the transition from communism to a market economy was painful for all of them.248 “Social-health and mental health problems like depression and suicide escalated in China” after its turn to capitalism. 249 In Russia between 1990 and 2000 the number of individuals registered as

247 Esra Ozyurek, Being German, Becoming Muslim: Race, Religion, and Conversion in the New Europe . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015. 248 Ivan Szelenyi, “Capitalism after Communism,” New Left Review 96, 2015. See also Kristen Ghodsee, Red Hangover: Legacies of Twentieth-Century Communism . Durham: Duke University Press, 2017. 249 Joao Biehl, Byron Good, and Arthur Klenman (eds.), Subjectivity: Ethnographic Investigations . Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007, pp. 2-3.

123 disabled because of mental illness increased by 17.4 per cent. 250 Coupled with unemployment and poverty, 251 these figures reveal the vulnerability of population to economic crises and political instability. Profound socio-economic transformations that engulfed post-socialist countries, 252 like the privatization of vital social services, especially affected religious and ethnic minorities, women, and the urban and rural poor. 253 The feelings of loss, 254 boredom, 255 and fatigue afflicted and continue to haunt those who were marginalized by these rapid changes. Like many from the last Soviet generation, Ekaterina was caught up in these painful transitions, referring in our conversations to anxieties, worsening material conditions, and the push to emigrate from

Kazakhstan. However, life in Russia brought about new difficulties, especially after her conversion to Islam. Embracing Islam soured Ekaterina’s relationships with her family members, who subjected her to psychiatric investigations and security screening. Later she befriended a FSB 256 agent who participated in the Chechen war, was trained as a spy, and allegedly knew Quran by heart. As it turned out, the man was also suffering from malaise, and in a way their friendship helped both of them to heal. “Just in case”

250 http://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/85/11/06-039156/en/ Accessed on May 7, 2018. 251 According to sociological research organization Levada, price increase, poverty, and unemployment are the most pressing issues in today’s Russia https://www.levada.ru/2016/03/28/naibolee-trevozhashhie-problemy/ Accessed on May 20, 2018. 252 See Nicolette Markovich (ed.), Neoliberalism, Personhood, and Postsocialism: Enterprising Selves in Changing Economies . Burlington: Ashgate, 2014. 253 See Kristen Ghodsee, Muslim Lives in Eastern Europe. Gender, Ethnicity, & the Transformation of Islam in Postsocialist Bulgaria . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010, pp. 86-108. 254 Loss of prosperity, meaningful employment, leisure, security, and social cohesion. See Joma Nazpary, Post-Soviet Chaos: Violence and Dispossession in Kazakhstan . London: Pluto Press, 2002, pp. 49-58. 255 See also Bruce O’Neil, “Cast Aside: Boredom, Downward Mobility, and Homelessness in Post-Communist Bucharest.” Cultural Anthropology 29/1, 2014: 8-31, https://culanth.org/articles/724-cast-aside-boredom-downward-mobility-and 256 Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation, former KGB.

124 Ekaterina wrote down his personal information to ask him for help if issues with security services were to arise.

After Ekaterina donned the hijab , her male colleagues began to harass her by inquiring whether she experienced sexual pleasure or heard about the Big Bang theory.

Fumbling with the corner of her headscarf, Ekaterina told me during one of our conversations: “Digesting all that took enormous amount of my time and energy, so eventually I quit that job and started looking for a new one. But nobody wanted to hire me, even as a shelf stocker. I remember when I was unemployed for a while, my stepfather would yell at me, pointing at my hijab : ‘Take this off already and go work like a normal person.’ For him a normal person is first and foremost a working person.” Her coworkers and family members medicalized her conversion to Islam 257 thus rendering her newly acquired embodiment incapacitating. Queer studies scholars have illustrated how ableism is interwoven with dominant identities like heterosexuality, hyper-masculinity, and whiteness. 258 Ekaterina’s story shows how ableism is also inscribed in the dominant ideology of work as a force of individuation and a measure of one’s social contribution, productivity, and value. Her hijab was often read as a bodily defect and a sign of madness or inability to experience certain emotions. Moreover, it was perceived as preventing her from performing work-related tasks. The words of her stepfather not only revealed this

257 Medicalization and securitization of converts to Islam ( neophytes ) is quite wide spread in Russia. Conversion usually leads to social demotion, exposure to racism and Islamophobia, and is viewed as a decision that could not occur “naturally.” Hence, it is believed that a terrorist organization has recruited and potentially radicalized a convert or she has fallen prey to her foreign suitor. An infamous case of 19-year-old philosophy student Varvara Karaulova, who converted to Islam and attempted to join her ISIS-member husband in Syria in 2015, epitomized government-sponsored securitization of coverts to Islam. For some time discourses about Karaulova’s conversion revolved around her mental illness. 258 See Robert McRuer, Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability . New York: New York University Press, 2006.

125 imposed incapacitation, but also betrayed the sedimented Soviet labor ideology, where work was seen as a sign of a person’s overall normality and social worth. 259

After Ekaterina became Muslim and faced sexism, Islamophobia, and the violence of what Arthur Frank calls medical colonization, 260 she developed critiques of the societal pressure to work, no matter how meaningless the job was and how much dissatisfaction it brought. Reflecting on her frustration, she called exploitation ( yuzerstvo ) her work at a small travel company:

In the office I am responsible for the meaningless tasks that range from cleaning toilets to managerial work. My male colleagues shift stupid work onto me, but I am paid much less than they are for doing my and their work. In Russia men always exploit ( ezdyat na ) women. It wasn’t until I cried in my boss’ office that I got a pay raise. You know, I work unofficially ( ne po trudovoi knizhke ), which means I am not entitled to benefits like maternity leave or pension. I understand that it is difficult for a small business like this to hire me officially, but this is wrong. What if I get pregnant? I work to buy shoes so I can go to work. To me this is nonsense, but my mother says I should be grateful for getting hired in a hijab .

Ekaterina attributed injustices at work not only to loss in social status that occurred as a result of her conversion to Islam, but also to her being a woman. In our conversations she critiqued patriarchy and the dysfunctional economic system in Russia, where women often had to put up with precarious labor conditions (e.g., unofficial employment) and work multiple jobs to make ends meet. However, she refused to see her critiques in feminist terms and instead suggested that Islam (and psychoanalysis) offered tools for

259 Consider, for instance, a law against “social parasites” enacted in 1961, labor-based honorary titles (e.g., veteran of labor was a formal title awarded to persons with a long service record), friendly competition at work (e.g., a Stakhanovite or a Soviet worker honored and rewarded for exceptional diligence in increasing production) and a famous moral precept that “he who does not work shall not eat.” See Bobo Lo, Soviet Labour Ideology and the Collapse of the State . London: Macmillan Press, 2000. 260 Arthur Frank, The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013, p. 10.

126 social analysis. According to her, hadiths teach believers empathy and give insight into a difficult situation, while psychotherapy 261 prompts self-reflection that helps notice, understand, and deal with injustice.

Ekaterina clearly knew what she wanted to do instead of working to “buy shoes to go to work.” Over dinner at a downtown sushi restaurant she told me “I want to do therapy, read more about Islam, write, and meditate ( sidet v poze lotosa ).” Eventually she quit her job at the travel company and devoted full time to these activities, while living off of her meager savings. She eagerly shared with me her insights from religious texts, told me about her psychotherapeutic sessions, showed me her paintings, and read entries from her diary. By embracing self-care she refused to perform meaningless work in the exploitative service sector and the emotional labor of “making Islam right” for her family members and colleagues. Her refusal to undertake wage labor was not only a response to the extractive logic of late capitalism, but also a critique of the intersecting systems of oppression. As we were strolling along Nevsky Prospect, Ekaterina told me:

You know, I have always lived in totalitarian systems. Sport was the first one, then family, then work. I think many problems in Russia come from our parents’ anger and fears. My mother, for example, is afraid of poverty, despite having money in her bank account. Because of her fears, she pushes me to work. I want to be free from her Soviet traumas, from the degrading work of an office drone ( ofisnyi plankton ) and a belief that a woman in Russia has to work like a dog ( dolzhna rabotat kak loshad ).

I heard similar critiques from my other interlocutors who believed that women would remain underpaid and overworked until they allowed men to be in charge. For example,

Zuhra decided to leave her job as a successful pastry chef and let her husband take care of her needs, while she devoted her time to reading and volunteering. Drawing from Islamic

261 Ekaterina mainly read existential therapists like Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl.

127 teachings, Roza also argued that a woman who works several jobs is an aberration. 262

Interestingly enough, while religious affect prompted Ekaterina to critique capitalist work culture and different forms of injustice she encountered, it also opened up space for a conservative emphasis on a woman’s “primary duty,” that is, motherhood. As my fieldwork progressed, Ekaterina became increasingly concerned with ageing and expressed desire to start a family and have a child. In spring 2016 she married a wealthy

Muslim man from Sri Lanka and had a child with him. In Sri Lanka she continued to suffer from occasional depressions, complained about domestic duties, spousal abuse, and the “shallow Islam” 263 of her wealthy in-laws. Yet she cited hadiths and practiced

Chinese meditation to satisfactory perform the duties that were expected from a married

Muslim woman. What has become of her self-care?

Battling cancer, black feminist Audre Lorde wrote that caring “for [one] self is not self-indulgence, [but] a self-preservation and [an] act of political warfare” 264 in the world that makes it difficult for precarious populations to exist. Initially for Ekaterina self-care constituted self-preservation, because by refusing to do wage labor she focused on the activities that were physically and emotionally necessary for her. She resorted to spirituality and psychotherapy not to become more resilient in order to take more

262 The women’s critiques not only went in line with anti-feminist sentiments in Russia, but also reflected a larger patriarchal turn under the presidency of Vladimir Putin. This turn is underpinned by a series of laws that criminalize “propaganda of homosexuality” (2013), decriminalize domestic violence (2017), and threaten to exclude abortion from the compulsory medical insurance coverage, along with other traditional values enshrined in the 2014 Family Policy Vision. See http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/gender/2018/01/15/traditional-values-for-the-99-the- new-gender-ideology-in-russia/ Accessed on February 17, 2018. 263 In our correspondence she critiqued their “obsession” with social status and material goods. 264 Audre Lorde, A Burst of Light: Essays . New York: Ithaca, 1988, p. 131.

128 oppression, pressure, and work.265 She attended these sessions and practiced Qigong to lead what she envisioned a more conscious and meaningful life. However, Ekaterina’s self-care was not what Lorde called “political warfare,” because it was not tied to a broader political struggle or inspired by political consciousness.266 She oscillated between the desire for personal happiness and the poignant social critiques grounded in her own class position and vulnerability as a female convert to Islam. With time, her spirituality and therapy became a “privatized and personalized solution to problems that are ultimately social and collective.” 267 The following section will demonstrate how religious affect directed Munira away from social critiques and toward normalizing precarity.

“Nobody Cleaned Staircases Better than I Did”

I reached the 8 th floor of a 12-story apartment building at Prospekt Bolshevikov metro station to visit aunt Munira and her daughter Gulnara. Located in a so-called

“bedroom suburb” ( spalniy rayon ) of Saint Petersburg, 268 their rented one-bedroom 269 apartment hosted seven people: aunt Munira and her 4 grandchildren occupied the bedroom, while Gulnara and her husband slept in the kitchen. “ As-salyamu aleikum

Tanechka, come on in” – the women were greeting me by the door. I hugged them,

265 See Sara Ahmed’s critical discussion of self-care in Sara Ahmed, Living a Feminist Life. Durham: Duke University Press, 2017, pp. 235-250. 266 Here I am not suggesting that political act or agency are synonymous with resistance and have liberation as its ultimate goal. Saba Mahmood’s theoretical challenge to “the normative subject of feminist theory as desirous of freedom from domination” has problematized that. However, I still posit that political warfare that Lorde discusses implies intentionality and political consciousness. Saba Mahmood, “Feminist Theory, Embodiment, and the Docile Agent: Some Reflections on the Egyptian Islamic Revival,” Cultural Anthropology 16/2, 2001, p. 203. 267 Anne Cvetkovich, Mixed Feelings: Feminism, Mass Culture, and Victorian Sensationalism. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1992, p. 2. 268 These are suburbs on the outskirts of the city, where people live while commuting to work. 269 In Russia a “one-bedroom” apartment literally means an apartment with one room, a kitchen, and a bathroom.

129 handed them fruits that I bought along the way, and complemented aunt Munira’s new haircut: “Thank you my dear! I cut my own hair. Why would I go to a hair salon? I better save that money to buy my grandkids some fruit,” – she responded. Although we never openly discussed financial matters, I knew there were money issues in the family. The women often talked about money-saving strategies, 270 exchanged used clothes, and dreamed about a larger apartment of their own. For religious reasons they were reluctant to take out (and perhaps may not have been qualified for) a housing loan, so they were hoping to receive subsidy from the state, either through maternity capital 271 or as a family with multiple children ( mnogodetnaya semya ). However the prospects of obtaining government assistance were uncertain. 272

On the day of my visit, aunt Munira did not have her usual headache, was lively, and shared her story about coming to Saint Petersburg. Her family came from

Turkmenistan to Russia in the early 2000s, as professional life was becoming more difficult for non-Turkmens. As a Russian language speaker, 273 aunt Munira was unable to use Turkmen as a lingua franca in her nursing practice, so she soon was pushed out of the state-run hospital, where she had worked for 28 years. She remembered her last years in

Dashoguz: “We were told that the conditions would soon become unbearable for us to stay. During Soviet times we never cared what ethnicity or religion one was, but after the

270 They often connected money and energy saving to the Islamic idea of Israf or wasteful spending rather than to their material need. 271 “All Russian women who give birth to a second child (and currently even first child) receive maternity capital, a ten-thousand-dollar voucher that they can apply toward housing.” See Jane Zavisca, Housing the New Russia. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012, p. 130. 272 This is due to the long line of applicants who also applied to receive housing subsidy from the state. By the time Gulnara’s turn came, her third child turned 18 and hence they were no longer considered a family eligible for state support. As of August 2018, her family took out a loan to purchase an apartment. 273 Aunt Munira was of Tatar descent, spoke Russian and Tatar, and was a “cultural” Muslim before she became a devout Muslim. However, in Turkmenistan she was read as “Russian,”

130 collapse of the Union, all of a sudden, everybody discovered who they were. It was painful to watch these changes.” A high school teacher, her daughter Gulnara was also reluctant to endorse Turkmen nationalism, which made her unwelcome in the education system. During our conversation she remembered: “I felt uncomfortable kissing the national flag before entering the classroom or venerating Turkmenbashi’s book

Ruhnama. Do you know they consider it the second book after the Holy Quran, astaghfirullah !” To live in Saint Petersburg was Gulnara’s dream, so the decision to leave

Turkmenistan for good was not a difficult one. Despite their expectations, life in Russia proved to be challenging. First in Moscow and then in Saint Petersburg aunt Munira tried to get hired as a nurse, but all her attempts to do so were unsuccessful, as her training and work history in Turkmenistan was not valid in Russia. 274

A woman in her mid-fifties, aunt Munira also had difficulties finding a job, as age-based discrimination is widespread in Russia. Not having the necessary paperwork, at least initially, delayed her employment. She spent much time in government offices trying to obtain work permit and the necessary documents to get Russian citizenship. Her struggles were accompanied by racist encounters, 275 when she was often read as a

“gypsy” (i.e., dark-skinned) and hence suspect.

Everywhere I went, be it a hospital or a government office in Russia, I was called an interloper ( ponaehavshaya ) or a black ass ( chernozhopaya ). Seeing how much I cried, my daughter who had already embraced Islam, advised me that I start praying and wearing the hijab . My situation improved dramatically after I donned the hijab and became a devout Muslim. Allah helps, my dear, even if you make a small step toward Him. Now if someone hurts me I always remember how Prophet Muhammad responded to mistreatment by his

274 She had to be up to date on all federal and regional rules and regulations regarding nursing practice and administrative matters. 275 Different forms of racism are common in Russia and can transpire in daily interactions, on television, in popular culture, and other facets of life. See Nikolay Zakharov, Race and Racism in Russia . Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

131 enemies. One hadith says that the Prophet, peace be upon him, continued to pray even after non-believers put animal feces on his back! I learn so much from his patience, humbleness, and wisdom.

These stories from the Prophet’s life gave aunt Munira relief and offered resources to deal with pain. Nevertheless, she often felt out of place in Russia as a dark-skinned

Muslim woman, whose family experienced financial hardships. With tears in her eyes she told me how embarrassed she felt when her grandson turned out to be the only child in his class without a computer and could not submit his homework, which had to be typed.

The consciousness of the family’s material needs pushed her to work harder. After several short-term jobs, she and Gulnara were hired as janitors. In Russia, migrants from

Central Asia usually undertake grueling and degrading janitor’s work. As in other parts of the world, 276 collecting trash, mopping courtyards, and cleaning staircases is generally seen as a sign of marginality and is stigmatized along class and gender lines. However aunt Munira tried to derive meaning from this low-status and poorly paid work.

Commenting on her performance, she told me with pride:

Nobody cleaned the staircases like my Gulnarochka and I. People may think this work is not important, but let me tell you a hadith . There was an old dark- skinned woman who always cleaned the mosque. One day the Prophet noticed that she was absent. He got worried and asked about her. His companions responded that last night she passed away and they buried her. “ Subhan Allah !” – exclaimed Muhammad – “why didn’t you wake me up? Show me her grave.” At her grave the Prophet read janaza namaz (funeral prayer) and made a dua so that nur Allah (God’s light) would accompany her in the grave. After that he scolded his companions “Oh, Abu Bakr! Oh, Omar, Othman and Ali! Shame on you! You thought her work was unimportant for Islam and the ummah !?” What this hadith shows is that there are different forms of worship (poklonenie ) and it is important to do good deeds ( blagie dela ). Every person

276 Kathleen M. Millar, “Trash Ties: Urban Politics, Economic Crisis and Rio de Janeiro’s Garbage Dump” in Catherine Alexander and Joshua Reno (eds.), Economies of Recycling: The Global Transformation of Materials, Values and Social Relations . London: Zed Books, 2012, pp. 164.

132 has to do what he can do today, no matter how small it may seem. In the eyes of God it may be very important.

Despite arthritis, migraines, and meager salary, cleaning staircases for aunt Munira was a meaningful act that was entangled with worshiping God and Islamic concerns for cleanliness. Every time I visited her and Gulnara, she told me about health issues that resulted from traffic fumes, poisoned soil, animal feces, and garbage in the streets of

Saint Petersburg. She also instructed me about the importance of personal hygiene, citing the appropriate hadiths. In her work on waste infrastructure in Senegal, Rosalind

Fredericks also shows how trash collectors of Dakar consider cleaning the city as a pious act derived from Islam’s emphasis on cleanliness. Similar to aunt Munira, the workers understand “trash-work as God’s work where the[y] were like a “priesthood” who were gaining credit in the eyes of God for the sweat they poured into this work.” 277 Fredericks demonstrates how the workers’ appeals to Islamic morality urged them to unionize and critique the state for its role in the “flexibilization of labor” and the degradation of waste management infrastructure. 278 However, aunt Munira did not criticize the state for outsourcing the precarious and onerous work of cleaning apartment blocks, collecting trash, and taking care of urban infrastructure mainly to migrant workers. She never complained that the hard work of cleaning staircases made her age and develop severe pain. For her working as a janitor was an opportunity to do good deeds and belong to the broader society. In our conversations she often talked about the importance of discarding trash in appropriate ways and saving water and electricity, which for her were the signs of

277 Rosalind Fredericks, “Vital Infrastructures of Trash in Dakar,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 34/3, 2014, p. 543. 278 Ibid.

133 proper upbringing, belonging, and avoiding israf . She was especially disappointed when

Muslims displayed “inappropriate” behavior:

We litter and do bad things ( plohie postupki ), and then we wonder why Muslims are treated badly. President Putin, Allah grant him health, distinguishes between Muslims and terrorists. Those who rape and kill are, of course, not Muslims. I always teach my grandchildren to be good Muslims, to be kind, polite, and study well at school because I do not want to be ashamed of my hijab (ne hochu krasnet za svoy hijab ) if teachers ask me to come to school.

Being a productive, contributing, and law-abiding Muslim who followed the example of the Prophet in daily interactions was important for aunt Munira. It seemed that through

“good behavior” she could earn “membership” in the society, where her status was always precarious, and misrecognition could happen any time. During one of our meetings, she told me a story that precisely illustrated her liminal status. After leaving her janitor job, she ran into a resident of the apartment block she used to clean. When the woman saw aunt Munira at the store, she turned pale. As the woman reported, the residents thought aunt Munira had passed away and they even organized commemoration for her in the courtyard. “They buried me alive,” – she told me – “but I told the women that there I was, safe and sound ( zhiva-zdorova )!”

This encounter demonstrates what Elysee Nouvet calls the “affective corporealities of structural violence,” where bodies of marginalized populations are weakened by unequally distributed violence in neoliberal economies. 279 The story of aunt

Munira reveals how these bodies do not only wither away performing invisible and grueling work of urban infrastructure upkeep, but also can be “buried alive” as ceasing to exist or matter. To offset acutely felt precarity she harnessed emotions that circulated

279 Elysee Nouvet, “Some Carry On, Some Stay in Bed: (In)convenient Affects and Agency in Neoliberal Nicaragua,” Cultural Anthropology 29/1, 20114, pp. 80-102.

134 through hadiths and provided relief to her physical pain and premature ageing. It allowed her to make sense of her present condition and persevere, without challenging or transforming broader power relations. Moreover, she sought to be a part of the larger socio-economic system through hard work, obedience, and social contribution. She also claimed belonging to the Russian society through the shared Soviet past that ambivalently manifested itself in her life. It was “stamped” in her passport, reflected in the name of the street she lived on (i.e., Bolshevik Prospect ), and became palpable through discrimination and post-Soviet racism.

Aunt Munira also did not articulate any gendered critiques of her work, the way

Ekaterina did, for example. As an elderly Muslim woman who could be “freed” from work, she nevertheless chose to work, because she was brought up in the Soviet system, where worker’s identity was strongly cultivated and guaranteed access to rights and privileges. Despite the erosion of that order since the 1990s, she still found work meaningful, but now as a devout Muslim and a migrant worker who hoped for social belonging and inclusion. Moreover, her class position in neoliberalizing Russia did not allow her not to work: in the family with acute material needs everybody had to work, no matter how hard the work was. In addition to her cleaning job, she was also in charge of cooking and helping her daughter Gulnara take care of children. While my other interlocutors cited hadiths to emphasize domesticity as a Muslim woman’s primary duty, aunt Munira asked Allah for bodily strength and energy to continue working outside of home. She spent her money on her grandchildren, especially their recreation and nutrition. For her and Gulnara it was important that the children went to the seaside during summer or spent summer vacations “productively” ( s polzoy ). The women would

135 save money to travel to Turkey where Gulnara would teach their host family Arabic language and tajweed , while aunt Munira would take care of the children. She would also save money to send her grandchildren to Islamic summer camp in Lithuania, where families could not only enjoy outdoor activities, but also study Quran and hadith , among other religious disciplines. Because aunt Munira’s son-in-law only provided for the basics, both women had to work more to ensure a better life for the children. Therefore for her the emotions she experienced from reciting the Quran or retelling hadiths served as a way to alleviate economic hardships, soothe health issues, and respond to discrimination.

Religious Affect, Gendered Labor, and Health

Following the invitation from medical anthropologists and scholars of affect to

“examine the historical and cultural dimensions of clinical diagnoses” 280 and ageing, I have shown how migration experiences and structural violence in Russia have impacted the lives of two migrant women from Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan. While Ekaterina was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder, Munira’s physical health deteriorated over a short period of time. Shaped by economic pressures, financial need, and the affective afterlife of communism, the women’s embodied experiences should be also read in light of their class position, age, and ethnicity. A 28-year-old former athlete, Ekaterina obtained

Russian citizenship thanks to her “corporeal service” to the Russian state, while Munira had to go through trials to receive Russian passport and face many issues along the way.

In her decision to leave her office job Ekaterina could count on her savings and prospects

280 Ann Cvetkovich, “Depression is Ordinary: Public Feelings and Saidiya Hartman’s Lose Your Mother ,” Feminist Theory 13/2, 2012.

136 of marriage, while Munira had grandchildren to support and had no choice but continue working.

Yet, despite multiple differences between them, both women experienced racism and social exclusion upon converting to Islam. Medicalization of Ekaterina’s conversion and her discursive incapacitation betray what scholars have called racialization of religion, which is “informed [not only] by the biological body, what it looks like and what it can do,” but also by such material factors as one’s country of birth, clothing (e.g., hijab ), accent, and “other non-assimilative behavior.” 281 For both women to embrace

Islam meant to lose social status and to endure different forms of abjection.

To respond to economic demands on the women’s time, bodies, and health, and to address social exclusions, Ekaterina and aunt Munira drew on religious affect or emotions they felt while engaging with religious texts and recounting memories of their religious experiences. In the chapter I traced what kind of work religious affect does, showing that it outlined different trajectories for the women. For Ekaterina it opened

(however small) window to critique her present condition that was shaped by multiple forms of subjection. It gave her an opportunity to embrace activities that were at the time necessary for her wellbeing. It also allowed her to leave the national community to join a larger Muslim ummah both through conversion to Islam and marriage. Affect took aunt

Munira into a different direction. Although it allowed for self-possession and perseverance in spite of racism and backbreaking labor, it also molded her into a disciplined subject that craves belonging, recognition, and respectability in Russia. I suggest that bringing together (religious) affect and materiality can shed light on the

281 Jasbir K. Puar, Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007.

137 complex ways in which disadvantaged minority women experience late capitalism and negotiate with it, while becoming folded into it over and over again.

138 Chapter V

Building Intimate Solidarities in Precarious Times

As I was learning more about the different ways in which pious Muslim women in

Saint Petersburg worked against precarity, I wondered about the personal relationships that sustained and wore them out, gave them hope and made them despair. I was not looking for titillating details of their intimate lives, 282 but was interested in how care and love structured the relationships between them and the world. In addition to negotiating their heterosexual relationships with their husbands, three aspects of their lives appeared meaningful: the women valued friendships and religious sisterhood; they derived pride from the relationships with their children; and they challenged the boundaries of their community and the norms within it. In this chapter I show how the women cultivated and relied on these affective bonds to survive on the margins of socio-economic and political life in Russia. I also demonstrate how these relationships were constantly under strain due to the various forms of community policing and patriarchy. As the chapter illustrates, in difficult times the women were primarily investing their energy and resources in their community, families, and themselves. However these investments both challenged and reproduced patriarchal logics and values, which made their precarious lives even more difficult.

For the women religious sisterhood served as a lifeline: they helped each other financially, emotionally, and spiritually by collecting money for single mothers, standing up against abusive husbands, and advising those who allegedly “went off the straight

282 The women would not have opened up their sexual lives to me, as they considered me too young and inexperienced.

139 path.” 283 In the Islamicate world female socialities often revolve around the idea of sisterhood that has materialized in Quranic study circles, 284 advocacy groups, 285 and political movements. 286 This fictive kinship symbolizes the power of Islam to create bonds that transcend blood ties and geographic boundaries, and implies mutual responsibility, accountability, mentorship, and shared aspirations for piety. Explaining to me the importance of sisterhood, the women often referred to hadiths by Muslim and

Abu Huraira, where the Prophet instructs Muslims to love one another for Allah (radi

Allaha ) and admonishes them against anger, envy, slander, and other negative feelings that can cause chaos ( fitna ) within the community. By urging women to be attentive to the needs of others and exhibit kindness and consideration, sisterhood becomes a self- disciplining tool 287 and a policing mechanism within the community. Despite kindness that the women showed toward each other, their occasional remarks, silences, and glances revealed tensions along ethnic, sectarian, generational, and class lines that put the idea of sisterhood under test. Embarrassed to “air the dirty laundry” ( vinosit sor iz izbi ) of the ummah in front of me, one of my interlocutors reluctantly admitted that trashing, bullying, and policing were a real problem that endangered solidarity among Muslim

283 On friendships among Muslim women see, for example, Soraya Altorki, Women in Saudi Arabia: Ideology and Behavior Among the Elite . New York: Columbia University Press, 1986, pp. 99-122. 284 See, for example, Sarah Islam, “The Qubaysiyyat: The Growth of an International Muslim Women’s Revivalist Movement from Syria (1960-2008),” in Hilary Kalmbach and Masooda Bano, Women, Leadership, and Mosques: Changes in Contemporary Islamic Authority . Leiden: Brill, 2011. For comparison, for non-Western contexts, see Chia Longman, “Women’s Circles and the Rise of New Feminine: Reclaiming Sisterhood, Spirituality, and Wellbeing,” Religions 9/9, 2018. 285 Azza Basarudin, Humanizing the Sacred: Sisters in Islam and the Struggle for Gender Justice in Malaysia. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2016. 286 Lara Deeb, An Enchanted Modern: Gender and Public Piety in Shi‘i Lebanon . Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. 287 For example, a smile is equivalent to almsgiving or sadaqa , while advice or nasiha is considered a form of worship.

140 women. Feminists of color have repeatedly questioned and problematized the idea of sisterhood, 288 pointing out the intersectional disparities that prevail among women.

Despite the desire for companionship and emphasis on equality within Islam, my interlocutors competed over men, religious authority, and respectability, exacerbating the tensions between “ethnic” Muslims and Slavic converts ( neofiti ), Sunnis and Shi‘ites, and the wealthy and the less fortunate.

Along with Islamic sisterhood that was fraught with disappointments and hopes, the women placed great value on relationships with husbands and especially children.

Although I often heard stories about cheating, lazy, and greedy husbands, they still held on to these relationships, as being single or divorced was socially undesirable. 289 Being a mother was especially valorized in the community: women cited Quran to emphasize a special place mothers hold and the multiple rewards Allah grants to women in labor, breastfeeding mothers, and mothers of several children. Reflecting the broader patriarchal discourses and pro-natalist state policies in Russia (see Appendix I), they saw mothering not only as a religious duty and a woman’s primary mission in life, but also as an investment in the future and a shield from insecurities of the present. For example, bearing children would position a convert to Islam as a pious and suitable wife for her husband, whose family from the Caucasus did not accept the marriage. Infertility produced much anxiety and uncomfortable conversations that women both participated in and bitterly resented. As I show below, through mothering the women provided poignant

288 For example, see Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua, This Bridge Called My Back , Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands , Audre Lorder, Sister Outsider , and Chandra Talpade Mohandty, Feminism Without Borders (especially pp. 108-123). 289 On the undesirability of being single see, for example, Michael Cobb, Single: Arguments for the Uncoupled. NYC: NY University Press, 2012. Also, Dina’s project (Chapter III) catered to single Muslims and helped them create families, which is seen as a duty in Islam.

141 social commentary, which elicited their position in the broader society. Entangled with austerity and economic hardships, their aspirations were morphing through the practices of childrearing, which were marked by the women’s class position and ethnicity.

For some women the search for solidarity and the relationships of care extended beyond the family and the ummah. For example, in Chapter II I demonstrate how Hafsa volunteered with charities, funds, and NGOs in Saint Petersburg to help the poor, political prisoners, and abandoned animals. Although the women attempted to reach out to the homeless, the elderly, and orphans through the emerging religious organizations like Muhtasibat (Chapter III), they had ambivalent relationships with such marginalized groups as feminists and LGBTQ+. With the emphasis on traditional values and the spread of political campaigns that targeted non-conforming individuals, 290 Muslims in Russia generally gravitated toward the centers of political power instead of building alliances with marginalized groups. 291 However, despite aspirations for social inclusion and an outward rejection of non-normative sexualities, some willful women were curious about feminist ideas, shared friendships with queer communities, and questioned patriarchal discourses and practices within the ummah .

290 For example, campaigns against political dissidents like Alexei Navalny and members of the Anti-Corruption Foundation. 291 We cannot see Muslims in Russia as a homogeneous group and there are multiple factions that do not side with each other and the mainstream. Thus, from my interlocutors I learned that there are rehabilitation centers in Chechnya that seek to reintegrate female ISIS supporters who were returned to Russia from Iraq and Syria. As I was told, the center has been working for a year now, but has achieved very limited success. The existence of such centers demonstrates the multiplicity of political allegiances within the Islamic ummah in Russia. However, the official line of Muslim clerics has been pro-Putin. More on the topic see Dominic Rubin, Russia’s Muslim Heartlands: Islam in the Putin Era . London: Hurst, 2018.

142 Strained Sisterhood

In her work Feminist Theory: From Margins to Center , bell hooks critiques the version of sisterhood where women are instructed to “unconditionally love one another, avoid conflict, minimize disagreement, and not to criticize one another, especially in public.” 292 Such mandates, she argues, mask the existing tensions, do not allow for political solidarities among women to emerge, and prevent them from collectively fighting against racism, sexism, and classism. Hooks believes that bonding should not be based on women’s “common victimhood,” but on political awareness and desire to protect, affirm, and support each other in the struggle against different forms of oppression. 293 Similarly, Chandra Mohanty calls for an ethical and political goal of feminist solidarity and warns against the “assumptions of sisterhood” and the “images of complete identification with the other.” 294 In the community that I studied, pious Muslim women often strove for the “unconditional love” bell hooks criticizes, because it entailed acceptance and mutual support that minorities crave in a generally unwelcoming environment. They would evoke community romantically, praise new converts, and celebrate diversity within it by emphasizing the differences among Prophet Muhammad’s companions.

Despite the desire for romanticized unity, the ummah often served as a conservative, disciplining, and exclusionary mechanism, 295 where diversity was seen as a source of potential conflict. Moreover, feminist solidarity and political consciousness that

292 bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center . NYC: South End Press, 2000. 293 Audre Lorder wrote and talked a lot about difference and the productive tensions difference engenders, specifically difference among women. 294 Mohanty, p. 3. 295 Miranda Joseph, Against the Romance of Community . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002.

143 Mohanty refers to were frequently overshadowed by arguments and competition for limited resources. On multiple occasions I noticed eyes rolling when women were discussing a sister’s decision to take off hijab or another sister’s art that was labeled risqué and ultimately “un-Islamic.” In conversations one’s sectarian affiliation, class, and ethnicity were often brought up as an explanation for “inappropriate” behavior. Thus, poor Muslim women from the Caucasus were criticized for having “too many children” and not raising them “properly,” while Slavic converts were often seen as either morally suspect (i.e., “stealing” Caucasian men) or dangerously zealous in their beliefs and practices, giving Muslims as a whole a bad reputation. Frequently women did not miss an opportunity to critique their Muslim sisters, thus reifying fault lines within the community and exerting power and hierarchies among each other. For example, this is how Roza, a convert to Islam, described to me her encounters with Salafi sisters:

Fitna is everywhere. When I embraced Islam, I accidentally became involved with Salafi women, who only followed “their” scholars and fatwas and regularly accused others, including myself, of hypocrisy and lack of knowledge about Islam. At a gathering I recently attended, women got into a fight over ISIS ( IGIL ), because some of them supported and even joined the organization. If Salafi women disagree with how you dress or what you believe in, they “get on your back” ( syadut na ushi ) or excommunicate you (takfiryat ). This is why in conversations I eschew serious topics, choose safe themes, and only speak in generalities. Sometimes I pretend that I agree with them. Have you seen the catfight ( kuryatnik ) that broke out over Fatima’s lectures?

Here Roza refers to the debate that unfolded on a Russian social media service VKontakte over Fatima’s lecture about the family of the Prophet. A Shi‘a Muslim from Azerbaijan and Farida’s (Chapter I) friend, Fatima worked as a Persian language translator and a

Turkish language instructor, while pursuing her Master’s degree in Middle Eastern

Studies. She often delivered lectures on a variety of topics at female gatherings that took

144 place at the atelier. On Farida’s VKontakte page women, whose names indicated that they are converts to Islam, cited Saudi shaykh Salih al-Fawzan and a long list of medieval scholars to accuse Fatima and her audience of being non-Muslim ( rawafida and khawarij ). They presented their attacks as a duty ( fard ‘ayn ) to admonish Muslims against idolatry ( shirk ): “You all should study Islam before you decide to spend time

(chay raspivat ) with those gone astray. Who are you anyway to voice your opinions about religion? You reject scholars, support non-Muslims, and twaddle over tea about hijabs or nonsense like this.” In response to their malicious comments, Farida called to sisterhood and the need to discipline one’s nafs 296 by being kind and loving to others.

Often relying on male authority (i.e., conservative shaykhs and controlling husbands) and the rhetoric of exclusion (i.e., takfir ), Salafi women sought to dominate and subjugate other women, while their sisters in Islam appealed to kind, considerate, and protective “female nature” to avoid conflict. In her study of Greek fraternities on university campuses, Peggy Reeves Sanday shows how the bonds of brotherhood are formed through ritualistic violence against new pledges and the “other” (i.e., women and queer folks), thus cultivating abusive and sexist subjectivities. 297 Similarly, in the name of sisterhood and a “true” Muslim community, some sisters eagerly engaged in bullying, policing, and badmouthing those who were perceived to have “weaker” faith, knowledge, or personality. For the reasons unclear to herself, Roza occasionally visited Salafi circles and told me that those women stuck together and openly practiced “friendships against”

296 Self, ego, or soul. 297 Peggy Reeves Sanday, Fraternity Gang Rape: Sex, Brotherhood, and Privilege on Campus . New York: New York University Press, 2007, p. 47

145 (drujat protiv ) others, portraying them as a threat to their religious beliefs, Islamic ummah , and views on strictly defined gender roles in society. 298

Non-Salafi women also used their authority (e.g., age and religious knowledge) to discipline other women through intimacy, thus producing what Alison Winch calls

“affective domination” or “loving meanness.” 299 They gave unsolicited advice and warnings, thereby intruding into personal lives, imposing patriarchal values, and policing embodiment (e.g., proper attire and behavior). For example, I witnessed how women whose husbands took second wives received “friendly advice” to be patient and understanding, while married women who desired other men were shamed and disciplined. Some women followed such recommendations, but others distanced themselves from the community or stopped practicing Islam altogether.

As women were suffering from Islamophobia, material need, and patriarchy within the community, they were reluctant to see class, ethnic, and gender oppression as a reason for collective pushback. On the contrary, some sought to “outbid” their sisters and took advantage of available resources (e.g., sexuality or social capital) to ensure patriarchal protection and higher social status. Such choices shed light on why feminist collaborative efforts are often undermined, when women feel they have more to gain by bargaining with patriarchy and siding with the system. 300 As I observed, “sisterly solidarity” was often traded for personal advancement in the larger arena of fierce competition for limited resources. This especially transpired in the context of polygamous

298 More on Salafi women’s religious beliefs and social practices see Anabel Inge, The Making of a Salafi Muslim Woman: Paths to Conversion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. 299 Alison Winch, Girlfriends and Postfeminist Sisterhood . London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, p. 14. 300 On the concept of patriarchal bargain see Deniz Kandiyoti, “Islam and Patriarchy: A Comparative Perspective,” in Nikki Keddie and Beth Barron (eds.), Women in Middle Eastern History . New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991.

146 marriages and complicated relationships between co-wives. For example, a convert to

Islam, Marwa became a second wife of a Tajik man, whose first wife and children lived in Tajikistan. She was content with the arrangement and cited its multiple benefits, despite her bitter experience of a polygamous marriage with her first husband.

Marwa and I met at a café where she was working as a manager. It was our second meeting, but we immediately hit it off. An attractive woman, she was vivacious, playful, and radiated energy that drew me to her. Although I was initially curious about her work at an American multi-level marketing company Mary Kay, we found ourselves talking about her first marriage. She was married to a Palestinian-Egyptian man from the

UAE, who came to Russia in the 1990s to study. An athlete, he was handsome and unfaithful ( gulyashyi ). Marwa learned about his multiple love affairs through her vivid dreams: one time she was putting on a rusty wedding band, another time she was chasing a woman with long black hair, who turned out to be her husband’s lover from the

Caribbean Islands. The more Marwa was tormented by her spouse’s double life, the more she was reading into Islam, which she embraced in 1996. Nervously playing with her wedding ring, she told me:

I found out that he had secretly married another woman. I hated Irina so much that she became sick – blisters covered her entire body. One day she came to me to apologize, and I was relieved. However things between us were not working out ( ne kleyalis ), because she was not a practicing Muslim and my religion is a big deal for me ( ne igrushka ). Once Irina invited me to a hotel room. I remember getting scared - what if she harms me? She explained that she was going to do the ghosl and pronounce the shahada , and she wanted me to witness her conversion. Until the last moment I did not think that her feelings were sincere, but she was weeping, so I believed her. After that we became friends. We would fight and make up, and were strangely dependent on each other. We would travel together, go skiing, and go to restaurants. We were also managing ( tashili ) family business together, while our 301 husband

301 Legally, polygamy is not recognized in Russia. While marriage between Marwa and her first husband was official, the relationships between him and Irina were not.

147 was cheating on both of us. You know, in life there is no such thing as “you and I meet, get married, and die on the same day.” This is a social construct, and it does not happen in real life. This is why Islam allows polygyny.

Marwa’s story illustrates how the co-wives competed over their husband, incurring stress and insecurities. Yet the precarities of polygamous marriage in Russia prompted women to make alliances with their sister-wives, find bittersweet comfort in these relationships, and bargain with patriarchy. Janet Bennion made similar observations in her study of women’s relationships in a Mormon community in Harker, where women rely on their networks (including co-wives), “because their husbands do not provide the emotional and economic support needed.” 302 Marwa and Irina found a way to experience the desired intimacy, although not with their husband but with each other. Their ability to navigate male-centric polygamous arrangements partially explains why the women did not challenge the institution as a whole. Marwa is currently in a polygamous marriage and insists on its benefits, but this time she is the “favorite” wife, whose husband visits his old and sick first wife in Tajikistan only when the opportunity arises.

Sima’s experience of being in a polygamous marriage exemplifies how sisterhood and friendship between co-wives serve as an instrument of patriarchal control and pressure. She loathed her sister-wife, as the marriage was concluded without her prior knowledge or agreement to it. Moreover, Sima saw her husband’s second wife as an opportunist, who caused a rift in the family. A convert to Islam, the second wife was a single mother and economically underprivileged, and needed patriarchal protection,

302 Janet Bennion, Women of Principle: Female Networking in Contemporary Mormon Polygyny . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 130. In her study of polygamy in Indonesia, Nina Nurmila also shows how economically underprivileged women agreed to share a husband and endure unjust treatment in order to maintain social status and reputation. See Nina Nurmila, Women, Islam, and Everyday Life: Renegotiating Polygamy in Indonesia. London: Routledge, 2009.

148 financial support, and social capital to join the ummah and survive in crisis-stricken

Russia. Despite threatening to divorce her husband, refusing him intimacy, and resenting the co-wife’s attempts to be a part of the family, Sima remained with her husband, who was unable to fulfill his material and emotional obligations to both women. Moreover, he insisted on friendship and sisterhood between them:

I don’t understand why a 28-year old woman would want to marry a 54-year- old man! He and I have been married longer than she has walked this earth?! I would understand if he was rich or had lots of love to give, but he has nothing. I consulted Islamic scholars who say it is haram to take a second wife if a man does not intend to have children with her. We already have three children, one of whom is a male heir. His second wife often messages me thanking me and checks in with me every Friday. How absurd! I don’t want to talk to her, but my husband shames me by saying “she is your sister in Islam! You have to do sadaqa to her.” To that I ask him, “Maybe I should also adopt her?” He has the audacity to tell me that if they have a child together I will be responsible for raising it. What hurts me the most though is that my daughters take care of him ( uhazhivaut za nim ), because he is their father, but he takes advantage of it.

As Sima’s situation demonstrates, by imposing or restricting friendships, 303 men seek to keep their women “in check” and normalize the disadvantaged conditions women find themselves in. To justify and preserve their privilege, men often resort to Islamic teachings, twisting and bending them to their advantage. Thus, Sima’s husband cynically manipulated the concept of charity ( sadaqa ) to explain away his actions 304 and shame

Sima into helping her co-wife. From our conversations I noticed that women recognized and resented different forms of patriarchal control. They bonded over their shared

303 Suspicious and moody, Sima’s husband tried to police her surroundings and sarcastically commented on her independently built networks. I also provoked much distrust and suspicion in him, although we never met or talked in person. 304 By marrying his second wife, Sima’s husband claimed he showed mercy and care, because the co-wife was a refugee from war-torn Ukraine and a recent convert to Islam, who had not community and no one to look after her in Russia.

149 experiences of injustice, criticized and poked fun of men, 305 and sometimes went as far as suggesting that life without them would be better. Yet, many women did not question the system of male oppression in the ummah and the country as a whole, and vigorously attacked feminism.

Although Islamic sisterhood and friendship offered a safety net and a lifeline for many pious Muslim women, they often served as a mechanism through which patriarchal control and power were channeled and exerted. Women competed for “paternal patriarchy” (i.e., interpretations of Islamic texts or the state largesse) and “husband-based patriarchy” (i.e., sexuality, fertility, or financial resources). Through the discourses and practices of friendship, sectarian, ethnic, age, and class-related biases transpired and were reinforced. These fault lines frequently prevented women from making alliances with each other, based on solidarity and politicized consciousness.

Mothering in the Times of Crisis

When Muslim sisters gathered together, they often talked about their children, whose achievements and struggles indicated how well the women were doing their job as mothers. Critiquing mothering practices was a way to attack a sister, so phrases like “I heard her children cursing - what kind of a mother is she?” or “She didn’t even raise her children – her mother did all the work” were meant to question one’s competence and

305 In her study of Awlad ‘Ali Bedouin women in Egypt, Lila Abu-Lughod shows how their irreverence towards the marks of masculinity serves as a form of resistance to male privilege and control. I see my interlocutors’ jokes and sarcastic comments about men’s behavior and toxic masculinity not as resistance, but rather as a cathartic release from and an acknowledgement of male domination. See Lila Abu-Lughod, “The Romance of Resistance: Tracing Transformations of Power Through Bedouin Women,” American Ethnologist 17/1, 1990, pp. 41-55.

150 commitment. 306 Having “too many” children was embarrassing as it revealed “excessive” sexuality and financial irresponsibility, while not having children was a subject of

“sisterly concern.” For example, Nadia would become annoyed when her Muslim sisters saw Nadia’s paid employment as the reason why she and her husband did not have children. Reflecting on their unsolicited comments, she told me: “I don’t have children not because I work and I work not because I don’t have children!” Similarly, Anya became upset when women kept asking when she and her husband were planning to have children and interfered with advice on appropriate treatment. Thus, like sisterhood, motherhood offers a window into the dynamic within the Muslim community and the relationships and ethical orientations that became important in the times of economic insecurity and personal precarity.

Most pious Muslim women I talked to wanted to become mothers in spite of the difficulties their families were facing. When I was visiting Polina and her newborn daughter, she told me that she and her husband were planning to have another child.

Looking around their tiny apartment, I asked how they were going to manage with her husband’s meager salary of a facility guard. She smiled and responded “with Allah’s help.” For economically deprived minority families, reliance on God and the Russian state was one of the few available options, as the economic crisis persisted and social services became less accessible. As many families in need, pious Muslim women took advantage of state support that came in the form of “maternity capital” or a sum of money

306 Backbiting and competition among mothers has been explored in sociological literature on “mommy wars.” See, for example, Kim Akass, “Motherhood and Myth-Making: Dispatches form the Frontline of the US Mommy Wars,” Feminist Media Studies 12/1, 2012: 137-141. Kate Orton-Johnson, “Mummy Blogs and Representations of Motherhood: ‘Bad Mummies’ and Their Readers,” Social Media + Society , 2017, 1-10. Leslie Morgan Seiner, Stay-at-Home and Career Moms Face Off on Their Choices, Their Lives, Their Families. New York: Random House, 2007.

151 (approximately $ 12,000) that the state offered to compensate women for the second and every subsequent child. These measures, however, coexisted with the general “state’s neglect in the development of social services for families with children,” 307 women’s relegation to the “private” sphere 308 and masculinization of the “public” sphere. 309 Not only were public daycare centers inaccessible and private ones expensive, they did not correspond to the needs of Muslim women and their children. Now a mother of two,

Polina rejected public kindergartens: “Nobody there will make sure my children say bismillah before they eat, serve them halal food, or notice what hand they use. I am not even talking about instilling values and religious upbringing.”

The valorization of motherhood within the Muslim community, as well as in

Russia as a whole, 310 is fraught with contradictions. On the one hand, the women derived pride and self-worth from mothering by referencing religious texts, 311 emphasizing that

Allah bestows thawab (rewards) on mothers, and insisting that children bring their own rizq (literally, bread). On the other hand, stay-at-home Muslim mothers became the sole caretakers of their children, financially dependent on their husbands, and marginalized on

307 Ekaterina Borozdina, Anna Rotkirch, Anna Temkina, and Elena Zdravomyslova, “Using Maternity Capital: Citizen Distrust of Russian Family Policy,” European Journal of Women’s Studies July 2014, p. 2. 308 Here the Russian state departs from the earlier Soviet model of a working mother and no longer guarantees the work-life balance for women. 309 See Valierie Sperling, Sex, Politics, and Putin: Political Legitimacy in Russia . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. 310 E.g., pro-natalist state policies, church-sponsored anti-abortion campaigns, and the booming maternity industry. See Anna Temkina, “Gender Question in Contemporary Russia,” Global Dialogue 3/1, 2012, http://globaldialogue.isa-sociology.org/the-gender-question-in- contemporary-russia/ See also: https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/2343306 Accessed on June 17, 2018 311 For example, the Prophetic hadith that heaven lies at the feet of mothers. More on the religious construction of motherhood, see Gail Murphy-Geiss, “Muslim Motherhood: Traditions in Changing Context,” in Andrea O’Reilly (ed.), 21 st Century Motherhood: Experience, Identity, Policy, Agency. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010.

152 the already inhospitable labor market. Moreover, as minority women, they were socially disciplined for having “too many” children, while not being able to provide for them materially. A mother of one, Kamila complained how her neighbors often commented on her precarious living conditions, unstable income, and limited social capital as a veiled

Muslim woman and a wife of a Tajik man. To that she would respond: “I always assure them that we are planning to have more kids once our son grows up a bit.”

Stay-at-home Muslim mothers and Muslim mothers engaged in paid employment tried to reconcile different forms of mothering and become mothers who are cool, self- sacrificing, and capable of making some money on the side. Thus, inspired by hip

Instagram accounts, a mother of two, Nura started her own fashion blog, where she shares food stories and glossy photos of halal cosmetics, self-care promotions, and fun recreation locations. Her Muslim Mommy ( Musulmamochka ) Instagram page amasses

3,500 followers and translates the image of a comfortable, dreamy, and blissful life. As I was scrolling through Nura’s Instagram feed, I saw photos of her daughter who just lost her first tooth and her infant son’s first trip to the Crimea. They were mixed with pictures of body scrubs and sheet masques, new pastel colored outfits, and orange cakes that Nura ironically labeled “how should I explain to my dad the importance of content and likes?!”

Run in the style of Muslim Magazine and glamorous London-based Russian Muslim designer Alexandra Golovkova, 312 it, however, conceals Nura’s precarious housing arrangements, small family income, and health issues in the family.

Other Muslim mothers I talked to considered providing beauty services at their houses, became involved in multi-level marketing schemes and petty trading, and

312 More on Muslim Magazine and the lifestyle it promotes see Tatiana Rabinovich, “Living the Good Life: Muslim Women’s Magazines in Contemporary Russia,” European Journal of Cultural Studies 20/2, 2016, pp. 199-214.

153 explored coaching around the issues of time-management and multi-tasking. Popular fads like doulas, new-age maternal self-care, and maternity-centered therapeutic practices were also popular among some of my interlocutors. For example, when pregnant with her daughter, Ekaterina (Chapter IV) was researching opportunities of home birth with a doula and launching fitness programs for pregnant women. By embracing entrepreneurial spirit, flexibility, and work on the side, these mothers often channeled their energy “into the very systems that guarantee neoliberal precarity.” 313 Engagements with these trends seemingly allowed them to reconcile the roles of hip and self-sacrificing mothers and what Melinda Vandenbelt Giles calls “neoliberal self-optimizing agents.” 314 However, in reality, none of these opportunities resulted in a stable income, professional development, or personal fulfillment.

As the women had to conform to societal and communal expectations to be

“ideal” mothers and simultaneously address the financial needs of their families, mothering philosophy and practice became a form of social commentary and a reflection of minority mothers’ class, gendered, and ethnic position. In our conversations, they often commented on the popular parenting trends like intensive mothering. 315 Reflecting on her part-time babysitting gig, 26-year-old convert Roza told me:

These days I am accompanying an Azeri boy to school. His parents work all the time and hired me to instill the basics of Islam in him. After school the poor boy attends several extra curricular activities and does his homework with tutors. You see, this is wrong. Children need their mothers, and not the

313 Julie Ann Wilson and Emilty Chivers Yochim, “Mothering Through Precarity: Becoming Mamapreneurial,” Cultural Studies 29, 2015, p. 5. 314 Melinda Vandenbeld Giles (ed.), Mothering in the Age of Neoliberalism . Ontario: Demeter Press, 2014, p. 3. 315 Intensive parenting is expressed “through an explicit child-focused orientation and the input of extensive amount of time, emotional, and monetary resources” into childrearing. See Joanne Baker, “The Contemporary Intensification and Embodiment of Mothering,” in Mothering in the Age of Neoliberalism , p. 176.

154 money they are trying to make. Today’s parents are not parents, but sponsors or investors. I blame female emancipation: what are these feminists trying to prove? First, a woman should become a decent mother and wife to her husband. Women today work more in order to consume more. What kind of children will they raise?! Be happy with what you already have.

35-year-old Polina similarly critiqued intensive parenting and outsourcing motherwork to other caretakers like grandparents, babysitters, and tutors:

I don’t think it is necessary to engage ( otdavat ) children in expensive extra curricular activities. Everything can be done at home and it will be much cheaper. Mothers can read to and play with their children, teach them important skills As for my daughter’s upbringing, we have a good instruction, the Quran, and it will suffice. Our only wish is that she becomes a pediatrician or a teacher, because my husband believes that these professions will come handy when she has her own children. I completely agree with my husband that our daughter has no business in the “big world” ( na bolshoy szene ). First and foremost, she should make her husband happy and be a good mother. Hence, there is no need for her to become a businesswoman.

Roza’s and Polina’s comments show their refusal to define a “good mother” through her ability to financially invest in her child, which has become a hallmark of proper parenting in Russia. Unwilling and unable to see their children as a form of capital that will advance their social position, the women resorted to motherly affect and embodiment as a key guarantor of their children’s wellbeing and success. They tapped into maternal love and bodily resources, 316 which constituted them as worthy mothers capable of raising strong, smart, and healthy children. In the society where parenting is considered a job that requires skills and expertise, 317 the women’s cultivation of interpersonal bonds based solely on love and care is usually seen as “not good enough” parenting.

316 “Natural” birth (i.e., without epidural anesthetic) and breastfeeding. On constituting positive identities through nursing see, for example, Alanna E. F. Rudzik, “Breastfeeding and the ‘Good Mother’ Ideal: Breastfeeding Practices among Low-Income Women in Sao Paulo, Brazil,” in Michelle Walks and Naomi McPherson (eds.), An Anthropology of Mothering . Bradford: Demeter Press, 2011. 317 There is proliferation of parenting workshops, art classes for pregnant women, and different kinds of experts from psychologists to lactation specialists and certified sling consultants.

155 Medical experts 318 and Islamic texts 319 also mobilized motherly affect and bodies in translating discourses about proper motherhood. However, I see the women’s class position as instrumental in shaping the meanings and values around appropriate childrearing. Historically, entangled with race and gender, class belonging has been used to create images of “unworthy” and “morally irresponsible” mothers who have to be educated and disciplined in order to maintain social order. 320 Class is expressed not only through the women’s everyday material reality, but also through their appearance, behavior, 321 and childrearing practices.322 Although Polina’s dual US-Russian citizenship,

Roza’s hip clothing style, and both women’s Slavic background could pass for a form of capital in today’s Russia, their overall social position 323 keeps them in their class-defined, racialized, and gendered place. Precisely because the women’s glossy Instagram blogs, consumption patterns, and self-care practices did not amass capital and translate it into power, control and influence, they often resorted to the patriarchal deployments of motherhood and valorization of ethnic difference as signs of “proper” parenting. For

318 See appendix II on breastfeeding from a local OBGYN clinic. 319 For example, in Surat al-Baqarah and Surat al-Luqman women are encouraged to suckle their children for two whole years. 320 Consider, for examples, the discourses of black welfare queens and Mexican mothers of “anchor babies,” whose parenting practices are held responsible for crime, violence, unemployment, and other social “ills” in the United States. In Russia Muslim women are viewed as essentially maternal, with mothering being the only thing they know, yet somehow they do not do it right. Soviet Orientalism, as well as Russian racism, have contributed to such stereotype. On the topic see, for example, Douglas Northrop, Veiled Empire: Gender and Power in Stalinist Central Asia . Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003. 321 For Bourdieuan (rather than Marxist) definitions of class see Suvi Salmenniemi, Rethinking Class in Russia , London: Routledge, 2012. 322 For the ways how minority women are portrayed as “bad” mothers and how these representations are intertwined with class, see Ange-Marie Hancock, The Politics of Disgust: The Public Identity of a Welfare Queen. NYC: New York University Press, 2004, Gilles Val, Marginalized Mothers: Exploring Working-class Experiences of Parenting. London: Routlegde, 2007 and Beverley Skeggs, Class, Self, Culture. London: Routledge, 2004. See also the work of Patricia Hill Collins on Black women and motherhood. 323 Part-time employment, lack of sophisticated leisure, precarious living conditions, marriage to minority men, visibility as veiled Muslim women, among other things.

156 example, Bella wanted her son to become “a true Chechen man,” who is defiant, trustworthy, and brace. Polina sought to mold her daughter into “a true Ingush woman,” who will know how to take care of her husband and children. Such reasoning revealed how patriarchal norms trickle through mothering philosophies and practices: a “good” mother is the one who instills dominant gender norms, religious values, and ethnic traditions in her children.

In the times of economic insecurity, pious Muslim women nurtured their relationships with children. Mothering offered them an opportunity to temporarily escape financial pressures by retreating into traditional gender roles or to resolve some of these issues by relying on maternity capital. Motherhood also allowed the women to launch personal projects like knitting, baking, or blogging, yet it did not result in significant financial gains. Pondering on widespread childrearing practices, they provided poignant critiques of neoliberal expertise-driven and money-centered parenthood. Rejecting these models, they sought to cultivate intimate bonds based on maternal love and care as sufficient for raising successful children. They also resorted to Islamic injunctions and traditional cultural expectations to uphold self-worth as mothers and the self-esteem of their children, regardless of the patriarchal values embedded in them.

However, some women questioned patriarchal views on childrearing. When I was visiting Instagram blogger Nura at her rented apartment on the outskirts of Saint

Petersburg, she told me: “My husband said he would disown our daughter if she was not a practicing Muslim. Would I do the same? Definitely no. I was not always a pious

Muslim woman myself. I was wild. My best friends were gay men, we lived together, smoked, went to nightclubs. I have a very questionable past.”

157 Unruly Women

As I was drinking tea in a small kitchen of Nura’s rundown 324 apartment on the outskirts of Saint Petersburg, she was kneading the dough and telling me about her childhood in a Siberian town. Now an observing Muslim, she used to be “wild:” in high school she participated in a girl gang, associated with skinheads, experimented with drugs, and moved to Saint Petersburg, where she was a fixture of a nightlife scene. Her life dramatically changed, when she married a former rapper and had two children with him. However, as her Muslim sisters would say, despite her attempts to “discipline her nafs ,325 ” she stayed willful. What does it mean for a pious Muslim woman to be willful?

Several women I became friends with often pushed back against the rules, values, and beliefs that other women earnestly invested in and valorized. Thus, after bitter experiences of divorce or domestic violence, some would reject marriage in favor of a single life. A 20-year-old single mother, Lena was jokingly disparaged as a “feminist,” when she openly said that life “would be better without men.” Farida and Salihat

(Chapter I) also critiqued marriage as an institution and rejected awkward marriage proposals after experiencing thwarted betrothals and injustice from their male relatives.

Others would advocate for their right to pursue the vocation they deemed important and meaningful regardless of how “transgressive” their Muslim sisters considered it to be.

Thus, Samira’s photography was frowned upon and misunderstood, especially after she shared with her Muslim sisters the photos of women bathing in a public bathhouse. After

324 The apartment needed repair: wallpaper was coming off the walls, revealing concrete, the furniture was malfunctioning, lighting was poor, and bathtub was old and cracked. 325 In the Quran nafs refers to the soul, the human self, or person. It is associated with human physicality and must be restrained and made patient. This is why the greatest struggle ( jihad ) is the one against the self. Unruly and willful women are the ones with undisciplined nafs , which casts doubt on their piety and femininity. See Oliver Leaman, The Qur’an: An Encyclopedia. London: Routledge, 2008, pp. 436-441.

158 they tried to put her “on the right path,” Samira distanced herself from the community and devoted more time to photography and filmmaking. Similar happened to Aliya

(Chapter II) who was estranged from and marginalized within the ummah after her volunteer work with stray animals became more than just a “strange hobby.”

A willful Muslim woman has to navigate the overlapping systems of patriarchy within the Islamic community and the state. As encounters between the Russian state and

LGBTQ+ activist Masha Gessen, 326 punk band Pussy Riot , performance artist Petr

Pavlensky, and ISIS supporter Varvara Karaulova 327 have shown, dissent (especially, dissenting femininity) is delegitimized, pathologized, and pushed out of the moral and physical boundaries of proper nationhood. 328 The regime of Vladimir Putin heavily relies on conservative women, who eagerly promote the status quo by advocating for

“traditional values” (e.g., patriotism, religiosity, modesty, and patriarchal nuclear family).

For example, female MPs are at the forefront of anti-abortion laws, de-criminalization of domestic battery, and ban on surrogate motherhood (e.g., Yelena Mizulina), as well as the draconian surveillance laws that “require from telecommunication companies to assist the government in breaking into encrypted messages” of citizens (e.g., Irina Yarovaya). 329

326 See, for example, Masha Gessen, “My Life as an Out Gay Person in Russia,” The Guardian , November 15, 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/15/life-as-out-gay-russia Accessed on May 31, 2018. During her lecture at the University of Arizona on February 2, 2015, Masha Gessen resentfully recalled how Vladimir Putin inquired whether she had fulfilled her “woman’s duty” to her country, insinuating that she, as a lesbian, does not have biological children. 327 In the media, Varvara was initially represented as an adult woman who was driven by malevolent intentions and conspired with ISIS members. However, when the trial began, she was portrayed as a teenager, who fell victim to her passions and deceived by her foreign lover. Both of these representations betray gender-based prejudice. The harsh prison sentence that she received serves as a reminder to all women to keep their passions in check. 328 Almost all of the abovementioned activists and dissidents were forced to leave Russia due to persecution and fear for their life. 329 Ekaterina Sokirianskaia, “Vladimir Putin has One Reliable Set of Allies: Russia’s Iron Ladies,” The Guardian , March 22, 2017,

159 These women are also willful, assertive, and, in some ways, unruly. Yet they call upon

Russian women to become “tradwives,” submit to male leadership, and be agreeable. 330

Capitalizing on both Orthodox and Islamic piety, the regime also draws support from patriotic Muslim women. For example, designer and owner of Zuhra Fashion , Zuhra

Abushaeva released several collections titled Love Russia , Peace in Syria, and Victory

Day , which feature modest clothing with Putin’s portraits, the Soviet cycle and hammer, and military fatigue. 331 The regime coopts both Orthodox and Islamic female piety by carving out space for devout women to “challenge” it. Thus, the head of Russia’s largest media holding Islam.ru and the wife of the mufti of Dagestan Aina Gamzatova ran against Putin during the 2018 presidential elections. However, as she announced in one of her speeches, “My candidacy should not be seen … as an attempt of Muslims to create a competitor to Vladimir Putin…It is a desire to publicly announce and support on the federal level a harsh anti -Wahhabism stance.” 332 As these examples illustrate, some pious

Orthodox and Muslim women translate their willfulness into patriarchal order, thus reinforcing patriarchal discipline.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/22/vladimir-allies-russias-iron-ladies- useful-anti-feminists Accessed on May 31, 2018. See also Nadieszda Kizenko, “Feminized Patriarchy? Orthodoxy and Gender in Post-Soviet Russia,” Journal of Women in Culture and Society 38/3, 2018. 330 Annie Kelly, “The Housewives of White Supremacy,” The New York Times, June 1, 2018, https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/06/01/opinion/sunday/tradwives-women-alt- right.html?smid=tw-nytopinion&smtyp=cur Accessed June 2, 2018. 331 http://zuhr.ru/content/love-russia Accessed on June 7, 2018. 332 Mansur Mirovalev, “Aina Gamzatova: A Muslim Woman Challenging Putin,” Al-Jazeera , 31 December, 2017, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/12/aina-gamzatova-muslim-woman- challenging-putin-171230123254169.html Accessed on June 7, 2018.

160 In the Islamic community willful women also provoke ambivalent feelings and are tolerated as long as they promote the mainstream religious agenda and invite women to discipline themselves first. 333 Influential men usually stand behind such outspoken and opinionated women. Commenting on an academic conference devoted to Mukhlisa Bubi , the first female qadi (a Muslim judge) in revolutionary Russia, 334 Svetlana (Chapter III) told me: “Muslim men in the audience spoke so highly of her, but would they support a female Muslim qadi today? Would our imams and male believers follow a woman like

Amina Wadud and stand behind her during Friday prayers? I seriously doubt this.”

Although historically some women in Muslim communities in Russia were influential, 335 the decision-making power has always belonged to men. When I was observing interactions between Muslim men and women in public spaces, the overall disregard for female religious or academic authority frequently became evident. Thus, during a lecture by a prominent Muslim psychologist Olga Pavlova at Muhtasibat in Fall 2016, most men were waiting for their wives in the courtyard, while those who were initially present left the room after she began to talk about spousal abuse, male refusal to participate in child rearing, and conflict in multi-ethnic marriages.

333 A prominent example within the larger Islamic community in Russia is Shia Muslim Fatima Anastasia Ezhova, an outspoken advocate for the Palestinian cause, pro-Iranian policy, and anti- imperialism. Fatima is a student of late Haydar Dzhemal, a Russian Islamic revolutionist, philosopher, and political analyst. 334 For more details, see Rozaliya Garipova, “Muslim Female Religious Authority in Russia: How Mukhlisa Bubi Became the First Female Qadi in the Modern Muslim World,” Die Welt des Islams 57/2, 2017. 335 For example, female teachers and the wives of mullahs (abistays ) among Tatar Muslims. See Allen J. Frank, Muslim Religious Institutions in Imperial Russia . Leiden: Brill, 2001. Also, Agnes Nilufer Kefeli, Becoming Muslim in Imperial Russia: Conversion, Apostasy, and Literacy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014.

161 To be a willful woman does not always mean to be “confident and almost castrating in [her] refusal to bend to the demands of patriarchy.” 336 Pious Muslim women

I became acquainted with did not openly resist or vocally challenge patriarchal norms, and sometimes they (seemingly) submitted to them. Yet they were chipping at them through silence where support had to be voiced, agreement to be further marginalized, and persistence in their vocation and convictions. As Sara Ahmed writes in Willful

Subjects , “mere persistence can be an act of disobedience. Perhaps, there is nothing

“mere” about persistence. Persistence can be a deviation from a trajectory, what stops the hurtling forward of fate, what prevents a fatality.” 337

Willfulness also implies refusing to discipline one’s nafs and channel it into the patriarchal order, while embracing the potentiality to be led “astray.” Nura’s feelings toward her “problematic” past and unfulfilling present reveal the kind of work willfulness does. As she was showing me her photos from the folder called “Before” ( Do ), she commented:

These are my homosexual and transsexual friends, sex workers, and porn stars. I miss them so much. Although I disapprove of their lifestyle, I know that if Allah created them, then He made it possible (my emphasis). This is Said and I at a nightclub. We were dancing, drinking, and talking about Islam. Thanks to those conversations I became Muslim. You know, I always thought I was special and something special had to happen to me. Perhaps, embracing Islam was that “something special.” At the same time, I feel that [with Islam] a “New I” ( novaya ya ) hasn’t been born. I feel that my husband has absorbed me. He stopped rapping, but he still hangs out with his friends. I, on the other hand, had to give up spending time with mine.

As Nura was striving to become a pious Muslim, she was also pushing back against the rules her husband tried to set. She shaved her head when he asked her to don hijab and

336 Anne Helen Petersen, Too Fat, Too Slutty, Too Loud: The Rise and Reign of the Unruly Woman . New York: Plume, 2017, p.25. 337 Sara Ahmed, Willful Subjects . Durham: Duke University Press, 2014, p. 6.

162 for a while moved in with her queer friends when he tried to limit her social contacts.

Although today she seemingly invests her nafs and energy into supporting the norms expected of a pious Muslim woman, she is not fully satisfied with her life. Thus, willfulness strives to question the good life narrative articulated through patriarchal discipline.

At a time of anxiety, economic precarity, and political uncertainty willful Muslim women also chose to nurture relationships outside of the ummah and cultivate their professional and personal interests, even at the risk of being misunderstood, judged, and alienated. Building alliances outside of the community’s boundaries was important for them, because it allowed them to serve Islam in a way they found meaningful and to assert their political stance. Thus, Aliya (Chapter II) is working mostly with non-Muslim women outside of Russia, who share her commitment to rescuing abandoned animals. As she told me, several of her current partners initially refused to work with her, because she was Muslim. Some of them were Jews, so for her collaborating with them was a crucial step toward interfaith solidarity built around their value of life. For Hafsa (Chapter II) volunteering with non-Muslim human rights activists was to impart to the Islamic ummah of Saint Petersburg the need for a vocal political stance. For Samira making a documentary about Orthodox priests who take care of the mentally ill was an attempt to voice her commitment to marginality, vulnerability, and the broader forms of solidarity.

For Khadija to put on her hijab after she was forcefully unveiled on the subway meant to trust non-Muslims again and claim her embodiment. I view these women’s willfulness as a response to what others may judge as “being not,”338 that is, not meeting the criteria for being pious, knowledgeable, agreeable, or feminine enough. To wander away and refuse

338 Ahmed, p. 16.

163 to take the straight path is a willful act that minority women undertake in the context of foreclosing opportunities, growing precarity and discrimination, and the visible and latent forms of patriarchy. For some people within and outside the Islamic community, these women’s nafs leads them astray, but for them it brings about new claims to the political, critiques of the present, new alliances and solidarities, and hopes for the future.

This chapter reveals how pious Muslim women responded to the economic crisis, pervasive patriarchy, and political uncertainty in Russia through the cultivation of ties between sisters in Islam and mothering practices. These embodied responses to personal, communal, and broader economic pressures show how the women simultaneously invested in, depended on, and questioned the patriarchal aspects of these relationships.

This illuminates the contradictory and potentially promising iterations of embracing as a way of dealing with precarity, austerity, and fragility of their everyday existence. In the epilogue I will discuss what became of these relationships, as I met with some of my interlocutors a year and a half after I had completed my fieldwork.

164 Epilogue

It was an unusually hot afternoon on July 27, 2018 when I was planning to visit

Farida, Ayna, and Salihat at their atelier in downtown Saint Petersburg. The weekend promised to be busy: on Saturday the country would celebrate 1030-year anniversary since it became Orthodox Christian, while Sunday would be the day of the Russian

Navy. 339 On my way to the atelier I stopped at the nearby church to light a candle in the commemoration of my great grandfather, who was a captain of a submarine. Near the church, migrant workers were doing construction work and playing nasheeds . 340

Thoughts about the supremacy of the church, the legacies of the Soviet Union, Muslim piety, and the hard labor of invisible migrants were rushing through my head, as my steps synchronized with the hammering of their tools.

The atelier felt more like a storage unit – racks, hangers, and boxes have eaten up all the space, and there were feathers, crystals, lace, and brocade scattered around the room. I looked around and remembered the brown couch, the wooden table, and neatly fixed shelves with Ayna’s knitted scarves and handbags. It used to be a guest room, but now it is a crammed and inhospitable storage unit. When Farida opened one of the dress cases, I saw a transparent dress adorned with emerald-colored crystals and pearls. “All is handmade,” – said Farida and handed me the dress, while Ayna rolled her eyes and sighed prosti Gospodi. Literally meaning “god forgives,” the phrase usually refers to women of ill repute, cheap tastes, and inappropriate behavior. Ayna implied the tastes of up and coming fashion designer Kristina, for whom the women have been working since

339 There are many military-related holidays in Russia, celebrating the victories of the Red Army and the Revolution. 340 These are religious “chants” that Muslims sing without any instruments or using percussions. Nasheeds refer to Prophet Muhammad and Islamic history and beliefs.

165 2017. A former event organizer and a wife of a FSB agent, Kristina discovered her passion for design and recruited Ayna and Farida, whom she called “professionals” (or rather cheap labor), to make her dreams come true. Her flashy dresses with deep cleavages and transparent fabrics differed tremendously from Farida’s outfits that promoted Islamic piety, modestly, and sophistication. “What about your own projects?!

Last time I remember we were discussing Farida’s ideas for the new collection…” – I asked in disbelief looking around the small windowless room. Pale and thin, Ayna explained:

What could we do? The mass market has conquered the world. Because of the crisis, there were almost no orders…Working for Kristina has allowed us to pay the bills and purchase new equipment for our own projects. Now Farida is working on a new collection for Wandi Bazar 341 in Moscow, but Kristina’s dresses take up all the time. She has never acknowledged our work or invited us to her shows. Most of them usually take place in the Maldives, the United States, or Dubai. But all this is not important, compared to other things…Salihat has taken off her hijab and left the store.

Ayna’s voice trembled and tears came to her eyes. I knew she was not concerned with what others would say about her daughter’s decision, but was upset that Salihat had lost something, whether it was faith, hope, or trust. Now Salihat is taking photography classes, selling sewing machines at a store, and rarely comes to the atelier. “What is she dreaming about now?” – I wondered to myself. I turned around to see if the small computer table was still there – Salihat used to sit there and talk about her daycare project. The computer table was gone.

After a while Farida’s friend and client joined us. A former boxer and a mother of four daughters, Bella came from Chechnya. Her black hijab accentuated her glowing blue

341 This 3-day event takes place in Moscow and Grozny, where Muslim companies from Russia and abroad present their fashion and makeup brands and food products. An important networking opportunity for halal Muslim businesses, it is also a pricy one. Farida will have to pay two months worth of rent for participating in it.

166 eyes and pale skin: “I may have seen you at Istochnik (Islamic cultural center) many years ago, because you look very familiar and I have good memory,” – she told me, smiling. The women began to reminisce about the center, but soon the conversation moved to Muhtasibat , which was now well established in its new location on Vasilievsky

Island and still a topic of heated discussions among the women. The critiques I heard before were confirmed once more: Muhtasibat was perceived as a Tatar space with Tatar language, Tatar Islam, and Tatar gatekeepers dominating the scene. Ayna told me how they were recruited to make clothes for male employees of Muhtasibat . The project failed, but Ayna remembered men’s insistence on wearing ties in combination with religious garb. That “tie-centrism” (galstukozentrirovanie , as Ayna called it) 342 eviscerated affection, spirituality ( dushevnost ) and diversity 343 within the community.

“Although Svetlana is trying very hard, Muhtasibat will never be like Istochnik, because it doesn’t have people like Aliya.”

I thought of Aliya, who continued to volunteer with stray dogs and had recently translated another book by Tariq Ramadan. 344 She became a grandmother and won the battle with cancer that her husband was suffering from. With her family of humans and dogs she was spending the summer in a village near Pskov and could not meet with me.

As I was scrolling through her recent Facebook feed in search of updates about her volunteer work, I came across this post:

342 For some women these ties reflected “secular” concerns and business-related aspirations (materialnaya sostavlaushaya ) of the employees and visitors of Muhtasibat. 343 Bella, who came from a religiously and ethnically diverse family of Caucasian Cossacks, Adygs, and old believers, pointed out that the founders of Istochnik could cultivate and sustain vibrant diversity that was full of potential. Muhtasibat , on the other hand, represented a sanitized version of Islam and the community. 344 A disciple and supporter of Ramadan, Aliya has translated several of his works into Russian.

167 It has been a year since my [dog] Marley passed away (ubezhal za radugu ), my closest and dearest soul mate ( samaya blizkaya i rodnaya moya dusha ). My darling, you are still with me wherever I go, and no one can take your place. I believe that we will meet, over there [in paradise]. This is why it won’t be scary to die. I know you are waiting [for me]. This photo shows Marley 4 days before he died. Your grave is in such a good spot, by the path we used to take and where you were so happy. I really hope that my children will keep their promise and bury me near you and not at a stinky public cemetery…[When he died] I did not post right away, but 3 days afterwards. I just couldn’t [do it]. Everybody thought I was writing about [the passing of] my husband….but why?

I remember Marley who was with us on that memorable Ramadan night which could have been laylat al-qadar . I also recall reading Aliya’s original post when Marley died a year ago, and other women’s words of disapproval: “How can one write something like this? This is irresponsible!” I could see why Aliya did not “fit” Muhtasibat.

In late July Svetlana and I met over lunch at a Sushi restaurant. Beaming and full of ideas, she just returned from a large congress of female Muslim organizations in

Moscow, where women from different regions of Russia exchanged experiences about the organizational life of Muslims. As Muhtasibat in Saint Petersburg was solidifying and becoming more “professional,” Svetlana continued to navigate the male-dominated web of bureaucracy. Amidst mundane office work and volunteer work she tried to spearhead, she was pondering issues that Muslim women face in Russia. At the congress she delivered a talk about Islamic feminism 345 and the importance of women’s voices in the interpretation of the Quran and hadith literature. Sipping her yam-yam soup, Svetlana told me: “We keep hearing how Islam liberated women and how wonderful the wives of the Prophet were. This is great, alhamdulillah ! But we at Muhtasibat receive tons of emails from Muslim women that imam s alone cannot address. Here we need lawyers,

345 She refrains from using the word “feminism” and is thinking about a familiar language to talk about Muslim women’s issues in Russia.

168 psychologists, and other specialists who can assist in complicated matters like domestic abuse, for example. Patriarchy remains a serious problem within the community.” Her presentation at the congress provoked interest among the participants, who later approached her and shared some of their thoughts and stories.

While Svetlana was pondering the meanings and practices of Islamic feminism with tacit agreement from the top, in Sri Lanka Ekaterina was taking psychotherapy and was preparing to become a mother for the second time. From our correspondence over the phone I learned that she was having issues with her husband: “He is quick tempered and is trying to make me into a different person. When I suggest counseling, he refuses and calls it a “drug.” He resembles my mother very much, so I want to work with this.

My counselors and I have used generational therapy to heal the traumas of my parents and grandparents. Working with this brings understanding, forgiveness, and empathy.”

As I was meeting some of the women and receiving updates about others over the phone, I was observing austerity’s ebb and flow: prices of gas and utilities have climbed, sales taxes have increased from 18 to 20 per cent, and strikes continued in small towns throughout Russia, where workers protested unpaid wages and the infamous pension reform. 346 From random conversations at grocery stores I noticed that people counted every ruble, as food prices continued to rise. Several of my acquaintances were laid off, could not find jobs, and were living off of their meager savings. What do the changes in my interlocutors’ lives reveal about precarity, potentiality, and embracing as a way of responding to austerity?

346 Unpaid Wages Driving Miners to Go on Hunger Strikes in Russia’s Trans-Baikal Region, TASS News Agency , July 25, 2018, http://tass.com/society/1014761 Accessed on August 8, 2018.

169 This dissertation illustrates how pious Muslim women embrace precarity through the different forms of labor they undertake. As I have shown, embracing does not imply resisting, “leaning in”347 or fatalistically accepting. Rather, it involves “sinking in” or giving into something that is comforting, but suffocating, and yet promising. Various ways of embracing precarity, vulnerability, and the unfair facts of life or economics illuminate bargains the women make with everything from family to market without celebrating the sacrifices or compromises. The story of Farida and Ayna shows that embracing has its own temporality and materiality. Once the women’s material conditions deteriorated, there was no more room for tenuous dreams and meaningful socialities. Their time, labor, and imagination became captured by someone else’s project that did not seem to have a larger purpose: after being exhibited, the dresses were stored at the atelier, thus taking up already limited space. This “capture” has class, ethnic, and gender dimensions and is made possible through the material and symbolic capital the atelier’s biggest client.

As changes in Salihat’s life reveal, dreaming is delicate and fragile. It can easily become coopted, put on hold, or transformed beyond recognition due to neglect, material need, and deprivation. Salihat’s dreaming was also possible through the affective (e.g., sisterhood, friendships, and vocation). Now that the affective energy has dissipated and ties frayed, she moved on and became a seller of sewing machines. The changes in the lives of the atelier’s owners show that one cannot embrace indefinitely. When embracing becomes a habit, it transforms into navigating, compromising, acquiescing, settling for, and loses its potentiality.

347 In her book, CEO of Facebook Sheryl Sandberg invites women to lean in or step up and take leadership roles to break out of discrimination and barriers that women are facing in their lives.

170 Aliya’s grieving over Marley illustrates the vitality of care work. For her, embracing precarity has resulted in new kinships, feelings, and meanings. The relationships with non-human animals, as well as her translation work, generate abundance, multiplicity, and horizontal ties, which are necessary in the times of man- made scarcity. Social reproduction that Aliya participates in is essential, because it

“supplies the social glue that underpins social cooperation.” 348 In precarious times more social cooperation and solidarity-based collectives will allow us to survive through crises.

However, as Nancy Fraser reminds us, energies and resources available for social reproduction (and embracing) are finite and “can be stretched to the breaking point.” 349

Aliya replenishes these energies through religious devotion, tactile relationships she develops with dogs, and the process of translation. As we were exchanging messages over the phone, she told me about her experiences of reading and translating the works of

Tariq Ramadan on biography of Muhammad and the essentials of Islam. The Prophet’s searing love (perhaps, a form of embracing) and the important questions of ethics were the themes she thought were important to bring to the surface in these volatile times.

Svetlana’s interest in Islamic feminisms interlaces with Aliya’s translation work.

Knowing that her project is circumscribed, carefully managed, and filtered through

Muhtasibat ’s official approval channels, Svetlana nevertheless continues to work “within the system” and search for opportunities to raise consciousness among local women about ummah’s issues and mentor the new generation of Muslims. While her critiques disapprove of her tactics, she choses to seize the moment (e.g., use available space, take

348 Sarah Leonard and Nancy Fraser, “Capitalism’s Crisis of Care,” Dissent Magazine , Fall 2016, https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/nancy-fraser-interview-capitalism-crisis-of-care Accessed on August 8, 2017. 349 Ibid.

171 advantage of male support, utilize financial resources, etc.) to potentially change the system from within. She is not only becoming an important figure who through her administrative work greases the wheels of Muhtasibat, but also a religious authority who mentors, leads, and guides the new generation of Muslim women. Working on multiple projects, she looks forward to her upcoming trip to Germany in Spring 2019, where she will meet with and learn from female prayers leaders and imams. She understands the risks of embracing: the Russian state may withdraw funding from Muslim organizations and powerful men may disagree with the course she has taken. And yet she takes her chances and seeks to promote and in her own way empower women. Her own translation work (e.g., translating experiences of Muslim women in Europe and different regions of

Russia) seeks to carve out collective solutions to rippling effects of precarity.

Some women, however, opt for individual solutions in their embracing of precarious present. Perhaps, Ekaterina’s return to psychotherapy is indicative of that. 350

From our haphazard exchange of messages over the phone, I realized that her use of psychotherapeutic resources is not only about becoming a mindful, coherent, and successful subject, as it looked to me before she left Saint Petersburg for Sri Lanka. It is also about coming to terms with painful experiences of multiple dislocations, personal transitions, and trans-generational traumas. In his new study on psychotherapeutic practices in Saint Petersburg, Tomas Matza invites us to complicate the analytic of neoliberal governmentality when we talk about a psychotherapeutic boom of the 90s and the 2000s in Russia. He suggests unraveling the “contradictions and ambivalences of

350 It is worth noting that there is a burgeoning movement of Muslim psychologists in Russia. Svetlana informed me about the association that has been recently created, where psychologists work with battered women, orphans, and, interestingly, female members of ISIS who were returned to Russia from Iraq and Syria. The latter program exists only in Chechnya, as other regions rejected the initiative.

172 people’s attempts to figure out how to live decently in precarious times.” 351 Through uncovering personal stories, he shows how during psychotherapeutic sessions

“practitioners and clients asked vital questions about the meanings of love and labor, a good life, and future. Similarly, through consultations with psychotherapists Ekaterina is looking for resources to deal not only with uneasy adjustment to her new life in Sri

Lanka, but with the unfinished past in Russia.

Embracing precarity is a painful and laborious process, which offers women a temporary relief, but may lead to further exhaustion, marginalization, and burnout.

Embracing is hopeful, as new alliances, solidarities, socialities, and ways of being human emerge out of it. As I continue to reflect on my interlocutors’ and my own work against precarity, I see embracing as a survival tactic that may lead to the collective ways of addressing our shared condition.

351 Tomas Matza, Shock Therapy: Psychology, Precarity, and Wellbeing in Postsocialist Russia. Durham: Duke University Press, 2018, p. 11

173 Appendices

Introduction

Appendix I: Posters in the Streets of Saint Petersburg

“ISIS is a threat to society”; Photo taken by the Author

“Extremism is not a joke. Even if it is done online, one can get behind bars. Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, articles 282, 280”; Photo taken by the Author

174

Sex ads: “Relaxation,” “Dilyara,” “Katya”; Photo taken by the Author

175 Appendix II: Pro-Government Demonstrations

“USA! Hands Off Kievan Rus! Motherland! Freedom! Putin!”; Photo taken by the Author

Appendix III: Anti-Government Sentiments

“Putin and Medvedev are two Assholes”; Photo taken by the Author

176 Chapter I

Appendix I: In the atelier

Ayna’s threads; Photo taken by the Author

Atelier; Photo taken by the Author

177 Appendix II: Graffiti on City Buildings

“To crush food in the city that experienced the siege is shameful”; Photo taken by the Author

“Where are the people, when there are only fuckers around?”; Photo taken by the Author

178 Chapter II

Appendix I: Stables

Photo taken by the Author

Appendix II: Incitement to Volunteerism

“Help a mother survive: make her child happy” Photo taken by the Author

179

“Children who need your help. Send SMS with the word SKY and cash amount to 3443”; Photo taken by the Author

“Adopt and help stray animals. Supported by Entrepreneur Lapinn, Pink Rabbit (sex shop) and kind people.” Photo taken by the Author

180 Chapter III

Appendix I: Celebrating Diversity and Tolerance in Saint Petersburg

“To live in Saint Petersburg is to be a part of culture!” Photo taken by the Author

181 Chapter V

Appendix I: Pronatalists Policies of the Russian State

“The more children there are, the happier we are. Do not postpone having children.” Photo taken by the Author

Appendix II: Information billboard at a local OBGYN clinic

“Breastfeeding: Following all nursing recommendations is a priceless gift to your baby.” Photo taken by the Author

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