This article examines the ‘global life’ of a teacher school that Russian imperial officials opene... more This article examines the ‘global life’ of a teacher school that Russian imperial officials opened in 1876 to Russify the tsarist empire’s Turkic-speaking Muslim subjects in the Volga-Ural region. Interventions and transformations at the local, imperial and transregional scales over the next several decades altered the context in which this imperial institution the Kazan Tatar Teacher School operated. The school’s effectiveness in achieving its pedagogical goals turned into a political problem for the tsarist center as a result. A Berlin-born German Turkologist in Russian government service designed the school’s curriculum to offer European-inspired secular knowledge. He called it ‘Russian knowledge’ and introduced it to his superiors as a gateway to Russification. He also incorporated Islamic studies and some Muslim daily practices into the school programme to avoid a backlash from the local Muslim population. Over time, a small but vocal cohort of progressivist Muslims took advantage of this programme to acquire conversance in the language and culture of the empire’s evolving cosmopolitan public. As Eurocentric transregional movements from socialism to nationalism permeated that culture, however, the Kazan Tatar Teacher School served as an incubator for politicization among Russia’s Muslims to the ire of the tsarist regime’s centrist advocates and agents.
После российского завоевания Волго-Уральского региона в XVI веке местная мусульманская элита бы... more После российского завоевания Волго-Уральского региона в XVI веке местная мусульманская элита была практически уничтожена. В условиях отсутствия политически активной элиты исламские ученые стали фактором, объединяющим мусульманское население региона. В отличие от крестьян и сезонных кочевников, редко выходивших за пределы собственных деревень или торговых городов, ученые в поисках знаний много путешествовали. Во время своих путешествий они устанавливали прочные связи с другими студентами и учеными. Расселившись после окончания учебы по региону и занимая должности деревенских имамов, они поддерживали сложившиеся контакты благодаря родственным узам, переписке, суфийским братствам и богословским дискуссиям. Некоторые ученые также участвовали в более масштабных мусульманских ученых сетях, как правило, охватывавших территорию от Мавераннахра до Османской империи. Таким образом, исламские ученые стали социальным слоем, связующим между собой волго-уральских мусульман на уровне регионально...
This article analyzes the causes and consequences of Islamophobia in the Russian Federation follo... more This article analyzes the causes and consequences of Islamophobia in the Russian Federation following the story of the Russian ban on the works of a scholar of Islam from Turkey, Bediuzzaman Said Nursi (1878–1960), despite the overall positive reception of his ideas and followers by Russia's Muslims. It positions Russia's existing domestic anti-Muslim prejudices, which evolved in the contexts of the Chechen conflict and the influx of migrant workers from culturally Muslim former Soviet republics to cosmopolitan Russian cities, against the background of the post-9/11 global fear narrative about Muslims. These Islamophobic attitudes in turn informed and justified anti-Muslim policies in Russia, as the Russian state, following broader trends of centralization and illiberalization in the country, abandoned the pluralist policies toward religion of the early post-Soviet years and reverted to the late-Soviet model of regulation and containment in the past two decades.
The Kemalist leadership of early Republican Turkey attempted to transform the country's Musli... more The Kemalist leadership of early Republican Turkey attempted to transform the country's Muslim populace with a heavy emphasis on secularism, scientific rationalism, and nationalism. Several studies have examined the effects of this effort, or the “Turkish Revolution,” at the central and more recently provincial levels. This article uses first-hand accounts and statistical data to carry the analysis to the village level. It argues that the Kemalist reforms failed to reach rural Turkey, where more than 80 percent of the population lived. A comparison with sedentary Soviet Central Asia's rural transformation in the same period reveals ideology and the availability of resources as the underlying causes of this failure. Informed by a Marxist–Leninist emphasis on the necessity of transforming the “substructure” for revolutionary change, the Soviet state undermined existing authority structures in Central Asia's villages to facilitate the introduction of communist ideals among ...
This article examines the ‘global life’ of a teacher school that Russian imperial officials opene... more This article examines the ‘global life’ of a teacher school that Russian imperial officials opened in 1876 to Russify the tsarist empire’s Turkic-speaking Muslim subjects in the Volga-Ural region. Interventions and transformations at the local, imperial and transregional scales over the next several decades altered the context in which this imperial institution the Kazan Tatar Teacher School operated. The school’s effectiveness in achieving its pedagogical goals turned into a political problem for the tsarist center as a result. A Berlin-born German Turkologist in Russian government service designed the school’s curriculum to offer European-inspired secular knowledge. He called it ‘Russian knowledge’ and introduced it to his superiors as a gateway to Russification. He also incorporated Islamic studies and some Muslim daily practices into the school programme to avoid a backlash from the local Muslim population. Over time, a small but vocal cohort of progressivist Muslims took advantage of this programme to acquire conversance in the language and culture of the empire’s evolving cosmopolitan public. As Eurocentric transregional movements from socialism to nationalism permeated that culture, however, the Kazan Tatar Teacher School served as an incubator for politicization among Russia’s Muslims to the ire of the tsarist regime’s centrist advocates and agents.
После российского завоевания Волго-Уральского региона в XVI веке местная мусульманская элита бы... more После российского завоевания Волго-Уральского региона в XVI веке местная мусульманская элита была практически уничтожена. В условиях отсутствия политически активной элиты исламские ученые стали фактором, объединяющим мусульманское население региона. В отличие от крестьян и сезонных кочевников, редко выходивших за пределы собственных деревень или торговых городов, ученые в поисках знаний много путешествовали. Во время своих путешествий они устанавливали прочные связи с другими студентами и учеными. Расселившись после окончания учебы по региону и занимая должности деревенских имамов, они поддерживали сложившиеся контакты благодаря родственным узам, переписке, суфийским братствам и богословским дискуссиям. Некоторые ученые также участвовали в более масштабных мусульманских ученых сетях, как правило, охватывавших территорию от Мавераннахра до Османской империи. Таким образом, исламские ученые стали социальным слоем, связующим между собой волго-уральских мусульман на уровне регионально...
This article analyzes the causes and consequences of Islamophobia in the Russian Federation follo... more This article analyzes the causes and consequences of Islamophobia in the Russian Federation following the story of the Russian ban on the works of a scholar of Islam from Turkey, Bediuzzaman Said Nursi (1878–1960), despite the overall positive reception of his ideas and followers by Russia's Muslims. It positions Russia's existing domestic anti-Muslim prejudices, which evolved in the contexts of the Chechen conflict and the influx of migrant workers from culturally Muslim former Soviet republics to cosmopolitan Russian cities, against the background of the post-9/11 global fear narrative about Muslims. These Islamophobic attitudes in turn informed and justified anti-Muslim policies in Russia, as the Russian state, following broader trends of centralization and illiberalization in the country, abandoned the pluralist policies toward religion of the early post-Soviet years and reverted to the late-Soviet model of regulation and containment in the past two decades.
The Kemalist leadership of early Republican Turkey attempted to transform the country's Musli... more The Kemalist leadership of early Republican Turkey attempted to transform the country's Muslim populace with a heavy emphasis on secularism, scientific rationalism, and nationalism. Several studies have examined the effects of this effort, or the “Turkish Revolution,” at the central and more recently provincial levels. This article uses first-hand accounts and statistical data to carry the analysis to the village level. It argues that the Kemalist reforms failed to reach rural Turkey, where more than 80 percent of the population lived. A comparison with sedentary Soviet Central Asia's rural transformation in the same period reveals ideology and the availability of resources as the underlying causes of this failure. Informed by a Marxist–Leninist emphasis on the necessity of transforming the “substructure” for revolutionary change, the Soviet state undermined existing authority structures in Central Asia's villages to facilitate the introduction of communist ideals among ...
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