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Islamic Studies in Post-Soviet Russia

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Islamic Studies in Post-Soviet Russia 3 2 Research I S I M NEWSLETTER 4 / 9 9 State of the art VLADIMIR BOBROVNIKOV Islamic Studies in Research on pre-modern and modern Islam conduct- ed in post-Soviet Russia, has been, and still is, very poorly known to scholars from abroad Ð both in the West and in the Muslim world. Despite the fall of the Post-Soviet Russia: ‘iron curtain’ after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there is still an informational barrier separating post- Soviet and non-Soviet researchers. Many questions arise concerning what has happened in Islamic stud- ies after the cease of religious persecution during the in Search of ‘perestroika’ years: What was the impact of the so- called ‘Islamic revival’ on research on Islam? Which academic schools training specialists in Islamic stud- ies have survived since the pre-Soviet and Soviet times? To what extent do post-Soviet scholars know N e w A p p r o a c h e s and share modern Western approaches and concepts in Islamic studies? Kazan and Tashkent editions of the Arabic his publications (Islamkundliche Untersu- It is difficult to know how Islamic studies will text of the Qur’an and its Russian translation c h u n g e n, 1996, 1998, Bd. 200, 216), resulting develop in post-Soviet Russia in the future. prepared in the 1920s by the prominent So- from comparative research of more than But it is clear that a new era has begun, Islamic studies have benefited from the fall viet scholar I.Yu. Krachkovsky (1883Ð1951) 200 private collections of Arabic manu- which is characterized by the expansion of of the Soviet rule, which saw the return of Is- as well as another one published in 1878 by scripts revealed in highland Dagestan by a the existing work and the development of lam to the public sphere. Islam was recog- the Orthodox missionary G.S. Sablukov joint expedition of the DRC and the Oriental new interdisciplinary programmes. New re- nized by Yeltsin’s government as the sec- (1804Ð1880) were reproduced by the mil- Department of the Dagestani State Univer- search bodies such as the Centre for Arabic ond main religion in Russia. The state does lions. They were best sellers and regularly sity (OD DSU) from 1996Ð1999. studies (CAS), headed by Prof. V.V. Naumkin, not suppress research on Islam. Re-estab- appeared even in such periodicals as P h y s i c- In the 1990s, many social and political sci- and the Centre for Civilizational and Region- lished mosque collections and even the se- al Culture and Sport. In 1995 in St. Peters- entists, in whose research Islam is not cen- al Studies (CCRS), under the direction of Dr cret archives of the CPSU and KGB were burg the first Russian translation of the tral, turned to the study of modern Muslim I.V. Sledzevski, were founded within the opened for scholars from Russia and abroad. Qur’an by General D.N. Boguslavsky, com- societies and communities in the post-Sovi- Academy of Sciences in Moscow. While the On the other hand, the already negative pleted in 1871, was prepared for printing by et regions. Their work, however, is not al- CCRS concentrates on political studies in view of Islam in the Russian public opinion Dr E.A. Rezvan (IOS). In the same year, Prof. ways accurate from the methodological modern post-Soviet areas, the CAS has further deteriorated from 1994Ð1999. Esca- M.G. Osmanov (DRC) published in Moscow a point of view. Many of them share corrupt- three main purposes: publication and trans- lating violence prevents researchers from new Russian translation based on the Mus- ed positivist and orientalist concepts and re- lation of Arabic manuscripts, research on carrying out archival research and fieldwork lim tradition. From 1989-1991 the Qur’an search methods which need to be criticized. pre-modern Islam and Sufism, and studies in some regions of the Caucasus and Central was translated into Azeri (by I. Agaev) and Post-Soviet Islam is often interpreted as a in urgent political issues in the other post- Asia. Large collections of Muslim manu- Kazakh (by Zh.M. Istaev), and later into oth- ‘revival’ of unchanged ‘local traditions’, able Soviet Muslim areas. The CAS cooperates in scripts in Chechnya and Abkhazia were er Turkic and Caucasian languages. Dr Rez- to resist any Soviet innovation. The most its research missions with colleagues in St. burnt due to shelling during civil wars. Fur- van is currently preparing a database of eminent advocates of this concept include: Petersburg and Moscow. Its recent works, thermore, the state funding of universities Qur’anic manuscripts kept in St. Petersburg. Prof. Alexander Bennigsen (deceased), spe- such as a case study by Dr D. Makarov on the and academic institutes was considerably In the field of history there was a blossom- cialist in Soviet studies; his daughter Dr M. introduction of Sharia court in a Dagestani r e d u c e d . ing of Islamic studies at the turn of the Bennigsen-Broxup; and Prof. S.P. Polyakov Wahhabi community (see: ISIM Newsletter, The all-Union network of research insti- 1980s and 1990s. This mostly dealt with the (DH MSU), the author of Traditionalism in the 1/1998), contribute significantly to a deeper tutes affiliated to the Academy of Sciences earlier periods of Islam, for instance, Prof. Modern Central Asian Society, published in understanding of the various forms of post- was dissolved as soon as the USSR broke O.G. Bolshakov’s (IOS) History of the Khalifat Russian in 1989 and soon published in Eng- Soviet Islam. ♦ down. But centres of Islamic studies estab- in 6 volumes (three of which were published lish in the USA. Some authors ignore prima- lished under the Soviet or pre-Soviet rule in Moscow between 1989Ð1995). These ry sources including numerous field and ar- have survived in St. Petersburg, Moscow, works were informed by an enormous range chival data, while basing themselves on in- This article is an adopted version of a paper given at Kazan, Makhachkala and Ufa. They still con- of scholarship. His work is the best Russian correct official materials. Both of these the Summer Academy of the Working Group centrate on traditional scholarship of Islam study available on the early Muslim state in faults can be found even in accurate writ- Modernity and Islam. (See page 4). including Arabic and Iranian philology, Arabia and the subsequent Arabic con- ings of contemporary political scientists studies of the Qur’an, h a d i t h and other Mus- quests. Russian Muslims bought up almost such as Islam in the History of Russia, by Prof. lim texts. They, however, also include re- all available copies of the first volume with R.G. Landa (IOS, 1995) and the Muslim World search on Sufism, history and social anthro- Muhammad’s biography, thus making it a of the CIS Countries by Dr A.V. Malashenko pology of Muslim societies and communi- rarity. Mention should also be made of the (the Moscow branch of Carnegie Endow- ties. Outside Russia, similar centres exist in History of Dagestan, edited in Makhachkala ment, 1996). Tashkent, other capitals of the former Soviet in 1996, in which Prof. A.R. Shixsaidov (DRC) Much more fruitful seem to be the ap- Central Asia and Baku as well. The best Is- re-thought the Islamization that lasted in proaches of Russian historians and anthro- lamicists still graduate from the Oriental De- the North Caucasus from the 7t h to the late pologists exploring the fate of Muslim socie- partment of the St. Petersburg State Univer- 1 5t h century. ties and communities under Russian and So- sity (OD SPSU). The most qualified anthro- viet reforms. For instance, Dr S.N. Abashin pologists are trained at the Department of The study of ’Russian’ Islam (IEA) studies forms of popular Islam in Soviet History of the Moscow State University (DH In the last years, Russian scholars have be- and modern Central Asia by proposing to MSU) and the Institute of Ethnology and An- gun to turn their attention to ‘Russian’ Is- look not so much at Muslim traditions sur- thropology (IEA). Recently, departments of lam, as it emerged from close ties and the viving under the state, but at those consti- sociology have been established in the MSU intense relationship between Russia and the tuted through state reforms. Dr A.A.Yarlyka- and the SPSU and at the universities of Ka- Muslim peoples of the Volga River region, pov from the school of the late Prof. V.N. Bas- zan and Ufa. They train specialists in mod- Siberia, the Caucasus and Central Asia. Is- ilov (IEA) argued in his doctoral dissertation ern political and social developments of the lamic studies become more interdisciplinary on ‘Islam among the Steppe Nogays in the post-Soviet Muslim regions. The main re- in their approaches. In addition to written 2 0t h century’, defended in June 1999, that search centres are the St. Petersburg and sources, Islamicists examine current insti- the Soviet reforms caused the formation of Moscow branches of the IOS, the IOS of Uz- tutes and practices of post-Soviet Muslims. opposed ethno-religious groups including bekistan in Tashkent and the Dagestani Re- Within this context, the world of modern so-called ‘Wahhabis’. Works on ‘Russian Is- search Centre (DRC) in Makhachkala. All of holy men and Sufi sheikhs has been studied lam’ presented by the above-mentioned them house large collections of Muslim by Dr B.M. Babadzhanov and Dr A.K. Mumi- scholars were integrated with the Islamicists’ manuscripts and rare printed material in Ar- nov from Tashkent (IOS).
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