Encyclopedia of Russian History

by James Millar

  Muslim unity was threatened by regional and ethnic solidarities. The discovery of romantic notions of identity by the Jadids led them to articulate the identity of their community along ethnona-tional lines. Here too, visions of a broad Turkic unity coexisted with narrower forms of identity, such as Tatar or Kazakh. The appeal of local ethnic identities proved too strong for broader Islamic or Turkic identities to surmount. This was the case in 1917, when the All-Russian Muslim movement was briefly resurrected and Tatar leaders organized a conference in Moscow to discuss a common political strategy for Muslims. Divisions between representatives from different regions quickly appeared, and the various groups of Muslims went their separate ways.

  Although Muslim activists continually professed their loyalty to the state, their activity aroused suspicion both in the state and among the Russian public, which construed it as pan-Islamism and connected it with alleged Ottoman intrigues to destabilize the Russian state. The rise of ethnic self-awareness was likewise seen as pan-Turkism and also connected to outside influences. Russian administrators had hoped that enlightenment would be the antidote to fanaticism. Now the fear of pan-Islamism and pan-Turkism, both articulated by modern-educated Muslims, led to a reappraisal. The fanaticism of modernist Islam was deemed much more dangerous than that of the traditional Islam, since it led to political demands. This perception led the state to intensify its support for traditional Islam.

  THE SOVIET PERIOD

  The Russian revolution utterly transformed the political and social landscape in which Islam existed in the Russian empire. The new regime was radically different from its predecessor in that it actively sought to intervene in society and to reshape not just the economy, but also the cultures of its citizens. It was hostile to religion, perceiving it as both an alternate source of loyalty and a form of cultural backwardness. As policies regarding Soviet nationalities emerged in the 1920s, the struggle for progress acquired a prominent role, especially among nationalities deemed backward (and all Muslim groups were so classified). Campaigns for cultural revolution began with the reform of education, language, and the position of women, but quickly extended to religion. The antireligious campaign eventually led to the closure of large numbers of mosques (many were destroyed, others given over to “more socially productive” uses, such as youth clubs, museums of atheism, or warehouses). Waqf properties were confiscated, madrasas closed, and large numbers of ulama arrested and deported to labor camps or executed. The only Muslim institution to survive was the spiritual assembly, now stationed in Ufa.

  The campaign was effective in its destruc-tiveness. Islam did not disappear, but the infrastructure which reproduced Islamic religious and

  ISLAM

  cultural knowledge was badly damaged and links with the outside Muslim world cut off. Islam was forced into isolation. The most important consequence of this isolation was that “Islam” was rendered synonymous with “tradition”. Official channels of socialization, such as the school system and the army, which reached very deep into society, were not just secular, but atheistic. With maktabs and madrasas abolished, the ranks of the carriers of Islamic knowledge denuded, and continuity with the past made difficult by changes in script, religious knowledge was vastly circumscribed and the site of its reproduction pushed into private or covert realms. The public sphere were stripped of all references to Islam.

  During World War II, as the state’s hostility to religion abated briefly, it sought to permit limited practice of religion under close supervision. To this end, it created three new Muslim spiritual administrations in addition to the one at Ufa to oversee the practice of Islam. Of the four, the one based in Tashkent and responsible for Central Asia soon emerged as the most significant. The spiritual assemblies had to tread a thin line between satisfying the requirements of the state and ensuring a space in which Islamic institutions could exist officially. A great deal of religious activity existed beyond the control of the assemblies, but it was at home in a specifically Soviet context. Islam in the postwar decades was subordinated to powerful national identities formed for the most part in the Soviet period. Islam and its rituals were celebrated as part of one’s national heritage even as Islamic knowledge shrunk greatly.

  Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Islam has become more prominent in public life as Muslims have engaged in a recovery of their national and cultural heritage. Mosques have been reopened or rebuilt and contacts with Muslims abroad established, and a there has been a general increase in personal piety. Nevertheless, the Soviet-era connections between Islam and national heritage remain intact, and as post-Soviet regimes undertake nation-building, Islam retains its strong cultural definitions. See also: CENTRAL ASIA; GASPIRALI, ISMAIL BEY; GOLDEN HORDE; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, TSARIST; RELIGION

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Bennigsen, Alexandre, and S. Enders Wimbush. (1979). Muslim National Communism: a Revolutionary Strategy for the Colonial World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Carr?re d’Encausse, H?l?ne. (1988). Islam and the Russian Empire: Reform and Revolution in Central Asia, tr. Quintin Hoare. Berkeley: University of California Press. DeWeese, Devin. (1995). Islamization and Native Religion in the Golden Horde: Baba T?kles and Conversion to Islam in Historical and Epic Tradition. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Frank, Alan J. (1998). Islamic Historiography and “Bul-ghar” Identity among the Tatars and Bashkirs of Russia. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill. Frank, Alan J. (2001). Muslim Institutions in Imperial Russia: The Islamic World of Novouznesensk District and the Kazakh Inner Horde, 1780-1920. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill. Gammer, Moshe. (1994). Muslim Resistance to the Tsar: Shamil and the Conquest of Chechnia and Daghestan. London: Frank Cass. Geraci, Robert. (2001). Window on the East: National and Imperial Identities in Late Imperial Russia. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Kamp, Marianne R. (1998). “Unveiling Uzbek Women: Liberation, Representation, and Discourse, 1906-1929.” Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago. Kappeler, Andreas. (1992). “Czarist Policy Toward the Muslims of the Russian Empire.” In Muslim Communities Reemerge: Historical Perspectives on Nationality, Politics, and Opposition in the Former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, ed. Andreas Kappeler et al. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Keller, Shoshana. (2000). To Moscow, not Mecca: Soviet Campaigns against Islam in Central Asia, 1917-1941. Westport, CT: Praeger. Khalid, Adeeb. (1998). The Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform: Jadidism in Central Asia. Berkeley: University of California Press. Khalid, Adeeb. (2000). “Society and Politics in Bukhara, 1868-1920.” Central Asian Survey 19: 367-396. Ro’i, Yaacov. (2000). Islam in the Soviet Union: From the Second World War to Gorbachev. New York: Columbia University Press. Steinwedel, Charles. (1999). “Invisible Threads of Empire: State, Religion, and Ethnicity in Tsarist Bashkiria, 1773-1917.” Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, New York. Swietochowski, Tadeusz. (1995). Russia and Azerbaijan: A Borderland in Transition. New York: Columbia University Press.

  ADEEB KHALID

  ISRAEL, RELATIONS WITH

  ISRAEL, RELATIONS WITH

  During most of the Soviet period, Soviet-Israeli relations were strained if not broken. Although Moscow gave diplomatic and even military support (via Czechoslovakia) to Israel during its war of independence (1948-1949), by 1953 it had shifted to a pro-Arab position and it broke diplomatic relations with Israel during the June 1967 Six-Day War. From the mid-1960s until Mikhail Gorbachev came to power, the USSR, seeking to align the Arab world against the United States, called Israel the “lynchpin of U.S. imperialism in the region.” Under Gorbachev, however, the USSR made a major shift in policy, taking an even-handed position in the Arab-Israeli conflict, and by 1991 had reestablished full diplomatic relations with Israel.

  In the period since the collapse of the Soviet Union, relations between Moscow and Jerusalem, already warming in the final years of the Soviet Union when Gorbachev was in power, continued to improve. Trade between the two countries rose to a billion dollars per year, Jews were free to emigrate from
Russia to Israel, and the two countries even cooperated in the production of military equipment such as helicopters and airborne com-mand-and-control aircraft (AWACS). On the diplomatic front, under both Yeltsin and Putin, Russia took a balanced position, unlike the pre-Gorbachev Soviet government, which consistently took a pro-Arab, anti-Israeli stand. However, during the period when Yevgeny Primakov was Russia’s Foreign Minister and Prime Minister (1996-1999), there was a marked tilt toward the Arab position. Following Primakov’s ouster and the renewed Russian involvement in a war against Islamic rebels in Chechnya (where Israel supported Russia diplomatically), Russia under Putin’s leadership switched back to a balanced position. Some Russian leaders even compared the Islamic-based terrorism Israel faced, from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, to the Islamic-based opposition Russia was battling in Chechnya.

  The major problem in the Russian-Israeli relationship was the supply of Russian arms and military technology-including missile technology-to Iran. Given the fact that the clerical leadership of Iran called for Israel’s destruction and supplied weapons to both Hezbollah and to the Palestinian Authority to fight Israel, Israel bitterly opposed the Russian sales. However, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Iran became Russia’s number one ally in the Middle East, and Russia continued to supply Iran with arms.

  One of the dynamic aspects of the Russian-Israeli relationship after 1991 was the role of the million-plus Jews from the former Soviet Union (FSU) who emigrated to Israel. They formed the largest Russian-speaking diaspora outside the FSU and constituted a major cultural bond between Israel and Russia. As the Russian vote became increasingly important in Israeli elections, candidates for the post of Israeli Prime Minister sought to cultivate this electorate by announcing their wish to improve ties with Russia. For its part, Moscow, especially under Putin, developed a special relationship with the Russian community in Israel and saw that community as a tool to enhance Russian-Israeli trade and hence improve the Russian economy. Below the level of official relations, the Russian mafia created ties (including money-laundering ties) with its Russian counterparts in Israel, and this led to joint efforts by the Russian and Israeli governments to fight crime, occasioning frequent mutual visits of the Ministers of the Interior of both countries to deal with this problem.

  Another major change from Soviet times was Russia’s willingness to follow the U.S. lead in seeking to end the Israeli-Arab conflict. Thus Russia supported the OSLO I and OSLO II peace agreements in tandem with U.S. efforts to end the Al-Aksa intifada through the U.S.-backed Mitchell Report. Such action was facilitated in part by the decreasing importance to Russia of the Arab-Israeli conflict, which was pivotal to Moscow’s policy in the Middle East during Soviet times, and in part by Russia’s desire, especially under Putin, to demonstrate cooperation with the United States. See also: JEWS; IRAN, RELATIONS WITH; IRAQ, RELATIONS WITH; REFUSENIKS; UNITED STATES, RELATIONS WITH

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Freedman, Robert O. (2001). Russian Policy Toward the Middle East Since the Collapse of the Soviet Union: The Yeltsin Legacy and the Challenge for Putin (The Donald W. Treadgold Papers in Russian, East European, and Central Asian Studies, no. 33). Seattle: Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington. Nizamedden, Talal. (1999). Russia and the Middle East. New York: St. Martin’s. Rumer, Eugene. (2000). Dangerous Drift: Russia’s Middle East Policy. Washington, DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

  ITALY, RELATIONS WITH

  Shaffer, Brenda. (2001). Partners in Need: The Strategic Relationship of Russia and Iran. Washington, DC: Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Vassiliev, Alexei. (1993). Russian Policy in the Middle East: From Messiasism to Pragmatism. Reading, UK: Ithaca Press.

  ROBERT O. FREEDMAN

  ITALY, RELATIONS WITH

  From the time of Italy’s unification in the mid-nineteenth century through the post-Soviet era, schizophrenic collaboration and competition in the Balkans and Danubian Europe has marked Italo-Russian relations, with national interests consistently trumping shifting ideologies in both countries.

  The schizophrenia was there from the beginning. Although Tsar Alexander II, for example, objected to Italy’s unification, the wars fought to that end could not have been arranged and contained without the Tsar’s complicity. By the late 1870s liberal Italy was becoming enmeshed in the Triple Alliance with Austria and Germany. Although it was primarily directed against France, the Italians hoped the alliance would also blunt autocratic Russia’s penetration of the Balkans. Later, Russia’s defeat at Japanese hands in 1905 removed the counterbalance to Austria’s influence in the Balkans, and Italy became every bit as aggrieved as Russia by Austria’s conduct during the First Bosnian Crisis (1908-1909). The result was the Italo-Russian Racconigi Agreement (1909). Of the European powers, only Italy supported Russia on the Straits Question. Although Rome promised several times to stand by its obligations taken at Racconigi, Russia proved unable to use the Italo-Turkish War (1911-1912) as an excuse to reexamine the Straits Question.

  During World War I, both Rome and Petrograd feared Austro-German advances into the Balkans. Rome, however, was no more eager to see Germanic dominance replaced by Russian-led Panslavism than Russia was to see it replaced by Italian influence. The complex, multilateral negotiations that brought Italy into the war (1915) required the uneasy compromise of Russian and Italian ambitions in the Balkans. These compromises seriously eroded Russia’s political situation and betrayed Serbia, Russia’s ally and caucasus belli. After the war, Italy generally refrained from supporting the anti-Bolshevik White armies during Russia’s civil war, although Rome did provide small contingents to the Allied intervention in Vladivostok and briefly planned to intervene in Georgia.

  Thereafter, Italo-Soviet relations fell into the old grooves of Realpolitik. Even Benito Mussolini’s rise to power (1922) had little effect on diplomatic directions. Despite the presumed ideological antipathies dividing communist Russia and fascist Italy, the Duce exploited Italy’s position between the Allies and the Soviets to reintroduce Russia into Europe and to arbitrate among the great powers. Although commercial aspirations motivated Italy’s recognition of the Soviets (1924), the fascists and soviets also drew together in common hostility to responsible parliamentary systems of government. By 1930, the Soviet Union, Italy, and Germany were tending to ally against France and its allies.

  With Hitler’s rise to power (1933), Moscow and Rome sought ways to contain the threat of a resurgent Germany. Through extensive cooperation, both began to support the status quo to block German expansion, especially in the Balkans. Russia’s nonaggression pact with Italy (1933) marked a significant step in its Collective Security policy directed against Germany. Italy’s successful defense of Austria (1934)-the one successful example of Collective Security before World War II-seemed to vindicate Soviet policy.

  Good relations, despite Moscow’s extraordinary efforts at appeasement, collapsed during the Italo-Ethiopian War (1935-1936) and the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). Afterward the Italo-Soviet economic agreements (February 1939) began a rapprochement and presaged the Nazi-Soviet Pact of August. Even after World War II began, Moscow continued to hope to split the Italo-German alliance and to use Italy to block German penetration into the Balkans: for example, by encouraging Italy’s plan for a bloc of Balkan neutrals in the Fall and Winter of 1939. These plans came to naught when Germany and then Italy attacked Russia in June 1941. The Italian expeditionary army on the Eastern Front met horrific disaster in 1943.

  The Allies signed an armistice with Italy in 1943, and the following year the USSR recognized the new Italy. In 1947, the two signed a peace treaty. Italo-Russian relations were again subsumed in the struggles between larger alliance systems, this time with Italy playing a crucial role in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which stood against the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact. Particularly interesting

  IVAN I

  was the rise of the Italian Communist Party (PCI). After the brutal crushing of
the Hungarian Revolt (1956), however, the PCI began to distance itself from the USSR and to promote an “Italian Road to Socialism.” In March 1978, the PCI entered a governmental majority for the first time. Stung by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the PCI increasingly promoted Eurocommunism, which ultimately played a large role in delegitimizing Soviet Russia’s imperial satellite system in Eastern Europe. After the collapse of Communism in Russia in the early 1990s, the main point of cooperation and conflict between Russia and Italy remained focused in the Balkans and Danubian regions. See also: BALKAN WARS; WORLD WAR I; WORLD WAR II

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Clarke, J. Calvitt. (1991). Russia and Italy against Hitler: The Bolshevik-Fascist Rapprochement of the 1930s. New York: Greenwood Press. Corti, Eugenio. (1997). Few Returned: Twenty-Eight Days on the Russian Front, Winter 1942-1943, tr. Peter Edward Levy. Columbia: University of Missouri Press. Nobile, Umberto. (1987). My Five Years with Soviet Airships, tr. Frances Fleetwood. Akron, OH: Lighter-Than-Air Society. Toscano, Mario. (1970). Designs in Diplomacy: Pages from European Diplomatic History in the Twentieth Century. Translated and edited by George A. Carbone. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press. Urban, Joan Barth. (1986). Moscow and the Italian Communist Party: From Togliatti to Berlinguer. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.