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Featured Review
| Robert D. Crews. For Prophet and Tsar: Islam and Empire in Russia and Central Asia. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. 2006. Pp. viii, 463. $29.95.
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| In early twentieth-century Russia, over twenty million, or fifteen percent, of the tsar's subjects were Muslim. Only the British rulers could boast of more Muslim subjects, most of them across the seas in India, a safe distance from the metropole. By contrast, Russia's Muslims resided within the empire's immediate boundaries adjacent to the neighboring Islamic polities: the Ottoman and Persian empires, Afghanistan, and the Chinese Xinjiang. |
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With the exception of the Volga Tatars, whose former homeland was soon transformed into another province of central Russia, most of Russia's Muslim population stretched across the Eurasian plain in a virtually uninterrupted chain. From the Crimea and the Caucasus in the west to the deserts and steppe of Central Asia and Siberia in the east, they formed the empire's southern rim. |
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The specter of the hostile and united Islamic front always loomed large in the minds of Russian officials. How to rule and keep Russia's Muslims and other non-Russians loyal was no small imperial challenge. Arguably, the non-Russian dimension of the Russian Empire may in many ways account for Russia's distinct historical blend of geopolitical insecurity, ideological schizophrenia and denial, internal colonialism, and the ineffective authoritarianism that set Russia apart from the contemporary European empires. |
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In his well-written and informative book, Robert D. Crews tells a story of Islam and Muslims under Russian rule from the toleration policies initiated by Catherine the Great in the 1780s to the demise of imperial Russia in 1917. It is a laudable attempt to draw a comprehensive picture of Islam in Russia, both chronologically and territorially, but it falls short on both counts. |
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The chapters examine the plight of
the Tatars and Bashkirs in the Volga-Ural region, the Kazakhs in
the steppe, and Muslims of Central Asia, while leaving out the regions
of the Crimea and Caucasus with the population of over three million
Muslims. An examination of Russian rule in the North Caucasus where
the Sufi orders exercised significant influence, and in Azerbaijan
with its Shiˁa Islam would have provided a broader spectrum of the
colonial dynamics.
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Moreover, Crews gives short shrift to the previous centuries of Russian conquests accompanied by violence, legal and administrative mistreatment, immense corruption, coerced conversion to Christianity, discrimination, enslaving of the natives, and forced resettlements. By ignoring the history of the massive rebellions and simmering discontent among the indigenous population, Crews presents an overly positive picture of Russia's management of Islam. |
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In fact, Crews claims that the Russian administration of Muslims was mostly misunderstood and that the Russians were far more tolerant and successful in governing their Muslims than traditionally assumed. But what constituted tolerance in nineteenth-century Russia, and how does one measure success? Before the April 17, 1905, Toleration Law, Russia's tolerance, which Crews emphasizes frequently, was of a distinctly premodern type, offering protection from massacre and expulsion but not against official and popular discrimination against its second-class subjects, who, most of the time, remained a target of one or another assimilating agenda. |
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