The Union of the Muslims of Russia (Ittifaq, short for , Ittifaq âl-Möslimin and , Ittifaq al-Muslimin) was a political organisation and party of Muslims in the late Russian Empire. The organisation was founded during the 1905 Revolution and came to an end after the February Revolution. Its political agenda was liberal-constitutional, closely aligned to that of the Kadet Party; the Islamic reform movement of Jadidism was an important influence. The Ittifaq was dominated by Volga Tatar intellectuals, but also included Muslim representatives of other ethnicities such as Azerbaijanis, Crimean Tatars, Caucasians and Central Asians.
Background Islam in Russia before 1905
According to official statistics, the Russian Empire had 14 million Muslim subjects around 1900;Bobrovnikov, Vladimir: Islam in the Russian Empire, in: Lieven, Domic (ed.): The Cambridge History of Russia. Vol. 2, Imperial Russia, 1689–1917, Cambridge, 2006, p. 202. Muslim Duma representatives even claimed a number as high as 30 million.Bospflug, Elizabeth: The Muslim „Federalist Debate“ in Revolutionary Russia, in: Ab Imperio (2017), Nr.1, p. 131. The core of the Muslim population was located around Kazan, which had been conquered by Ivan the Terrible in the 16th century. Other areas with significant Muslim populations were the Crimea, Azerbaijan, Caucasus and Central Asia.
Periods of toleration and repression alternated. Under Ivan, noble Muslims were allowed to keep their titles and their Russian serfs, while the middle part of the 18th century saw the destruction of 418 of Kazan's 536 mosques. Catherine II followed the different strategy of promoting a new Muslim clerical structure, especially the Orenburg Muslim Spiritual Assembly, to strengthen Russian rule over Kazakhstan and other Muslim communities.Kappeler, Andreas: Czarist Policy toward the Muslims of the Russian Empire, in: Dave, Bhavna (ed.): Politics of Modern Central Asia. Vol. 1, Encounters with Modernity. Routledge 2010, p. 29.
The conquest of Central Asia in the latter half of the 19th century had seen Muslim leaders call for Jihads against the Russian soldiers. Together with imperialist and social darwinist influences from Western Europe, this created a new picture of Central Asian Muslims as "fanatics" beyond rational discourse; this also reflected on Russian attitude towards "older" Muslim populations, for example in Kazan. Islam became an object of study in the new subject of Orientalism (Vostokovediene). Under Nikolay Ilminsky, the Russian administration started opening schools in Kazan in which the Tatar language was only taught in the first four years, while Russian was taught all through the curriculum. The desired effect was for "backwards" Muslim culture to "die out" over time without provoking a "fanatical" answer.Noack, Christian: Muslimischer Nationalismus im Russischen Reich. Nationsbildung und Nationalbewegung bei Tataren und Baschkiren, 1861-1917, Stuttgart 2000, p. 111.
Jadidism
On April 22, 1883, the newspaper Terciman ("Interpreter") was published for the first time in the Crimean town of Bakhchysarai.Noack, Christian: Muslimischer Nationalismus, p. 149. Its publisher, Ismail Gaspirali, became the ideological forerunner of the Jadid movement. This movement was more than a response to the expansion of Russian rule into the cultural life of its Muslim subjects. It was a genuinely Muslim reform movement, the goal of which was a modernisation of all of society. The superiority of orthodox Russia was seen as a menace to an "authentic" Muslim way of life, but this menace was also seen as self-caused by backwardness and conservatism.Khalid, Adeeb: The Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform. Jadidism in Central Asia; Berkeley & Los Angeles 1998, p. 81.
The main part of the Jadid reform program was the introduction of the phonetic "new method" (usul al-jadid) of teaching Arabic in Maktabs.Yemelianova, Galina M.: Volga Tatars, Russians and the Russian State at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century. Relationships and Perceptions, in: The Slavonic and East European Review (July 1999), p. 450. Until then, the instruction had consisted out of memorizing Surahs from the Quran without translation.Kaleed: Jadidism in Central Asia, p. 22 The Jadids also demanded the introduction of worldly topics of education. However, the Jadids were not secularizers, but religious reformers. Additionally, they promoted the cultural unification and "awakening" of Russian muslims through the adoption of a single language, Ottoman. The Jadids did not oppose Russian rule itself, but Russian attempts at forced assimilation as well as cultural and religious patronization. Especially the Orenburg Muslim Spiritual Assembly was seen in a critical light.
The Jadid medium of choice was the press. The founding of Terciman marked the beginning of an extremely lively Muslim newspaper milieu, especially after the Russian administration ended its opposition to Tatar language newspapers in 1905/06. In Central Asia, where printing had only been introduced after the Russian invasion, the Jadids founded Kutubkhana, combined bookstores and publishing houses. From 1905 to 1917, the total number of Tatar newspapers and magazines founded was 166,Usmanova, Dilara M.: Die tatarische Presse 1905-1918: Quellen, Entwicklungsetappen und quantitative Analyse, in: Kemper, Michael; von Kügelgen, Anke; Yermakov, Dmitriy (ed.): Muslim Culture in Russia and Central Asia from the 18th to the Early 20th Centuries, Berlin 1996, p. 239. though most of them were short-lived. According to M. Pinegin, an Kazan official tasked with censorship, their ideological alignment was rather clear: "The ideals and aims of nearly all Muslim newspapers and journals are the same, and their orientation can only be described as Nationalist-Progressive".Usmanova: Die tatarische Presse, p. 250.
However, this did not mean the Jadids did not face Muslim opposition: Their reform program was not accepted by the majority of the Ulama. These Kadimists (Adherents of the "old method", usul i-qadim)Kaleed: Jadidism in Central Asia, p. 93. were especially opposed to the theological reinterpretations of Jadidism and the attempts at rationalization of traditions and branded the Jadids heretics or youthful hotheads.Noack: Muslimischer Nationalismus im Russischen Reich, p. 213.
The Jadids were a very heterogenous movement. Among Volga Tatars, most reformers were young Ulama, who had often gone to Russian schools.Noack: Muslimischer Nationalismus im Russischen Reich, p. 339. In a survey of Volga Tatar participants of the three Muslim congresses and Duma representatives, Noack finds that 36% went to Russian schools. The number increases to 52% when only including participants who enjoyed middle or higher education. Central Asian Jadids were influenced by Tatar ideas, but consisted out of a bourgeois middle class created by a cotton boom.Adeeb: Jadidism in Central Asia, p. 90. Kazakh reformers even defined themselves through their resistance against Tatar patronization.Zenkovsky: Pan-Turkism and Islam in Russia, p. 59. In 1830, the Kazakh leaders sent a petition to Tzar Nicholas I., asking him "to cease introducing mosques and schools, and to appoint no more [Tatar] clerics." This Tatar patronization of the Khazakh steppes was a result of Catherine's politics of securing her rule. Meanwhile, the most important factors in Azerbaijan were a cultural "de-Iranization" and hostility against non-Turkic ethnicities.Zenkovsky: Pan-Turkism and Islam in Russia, p. 59.
Still, Jadidism remained a project for the elites up until 1917, with the Kadimists traditionalism prevailing among the majority of the Muslim population.Zenkovsky: Pan-Turkism and Islam in Russia, p. 214. The reason for Jadid dominance can instead be found in the fact that the introduction of a rational, public discourse about necessary reforms of society was itself an integral part of their program, while the Kadimists accepted the new ways of communication only grudgingly.Zenkovsky: Pan-Turkism and Islam in Russia, p. 344. This should also have an effect during and after the 1905 Revolution, when the conflict between Jadids and Kadimists took a back seat to all-Russian Muslim organization.
History First congress Between 1904 and 1907, old problems of the Russian Empire (rising politicisation, economic crisis and agrarian question) met with short-term causes, especially the St. Petersburg Bloody Sunday. Together, they resulted in the 1905 Russian Revolution. During the next years, a decay of autocratic power allowed opposition groups to discuss the foundations of the Russian state in a never-before seen scope.Neutatz, Dietmar: Träume und Alpträume. Eine Geschichte Russlands im 20. Jahrhundert, München 2013, p. 111. The Muslims of Russia also took part in this discussion.
The main figure was Abdurasid Ibragimov. He was a Tatar Ulama who had emigrated to Istanbul in 1893 as protest against the Russian policy regarding Islam. In 1904, he was deported to Odessa on demand of the Russian government. He was soon let go there and minister of the interior Pyotr Sviatopolk-Mirsky even encouraged him to write a petition to the Tsar in the name of Russia's Muslims. With this petition, Ibragimov succeeded in starting a large-scale campaign of Muslims, especially of Jadids.Noack: Muslimischer Nationalismus im Russischen Reich, p. 220.
On January 23, 1905, leading members of Muslim Kazan first met, including not only Ulama but also intellectuals and merchants. They sent letters to Gaspirali and other Muslims in the Crimea and the Caucasus in which they invited them to a meeting in St. Petersburg. At a second meeting, they adopted a draft resolution in which they connected specifically Muslim demands (inclusion of Muslims in the process of drafting laws that concerned them, autonomy of the spiritual administration) with general liberal demands.Noack: Muslimischer Nationalismus im Russischen Reich, p. 222.
During the summer, Muslim delegations from the whole empire met in St. Petersburg. For the first time able to lead an encompassing discussion, a base consensus of Jadid reform interests soon became apparent. On April 8, the delegations arranged an All-Russian Muslim Congress in Nizhny Novgorod. In order to cover it from the authorities, it was scheduled to take part at the same time as the Nizhny Novgorod Fair in August 1905.Noack: Muslimischer Nationalismus im Russischen Reich, p. 227.
The participants of the first Muslim congress were not chosen by any formal criteria. They consisted out of the merchants who were present anyway as well as Ulama and intellectuals who had come specifically for the congress. After authorities had denied a formal permission for a meeting due to a "improper choice of place and time", the congress was moved to the river steamer Gustav Struve. The congress organisers tried to hinder some younger participants from joining by giving them a wrong start time. However, these participants rented a boat, chased the steamer and were let on board after a warning.Noack: Muslimischer Nationalismus im Russischen Reich, p. 229.
After a ten hour meeting, the delegates in a final statement pledged themselves to the founding of a Union of the Muslims of Russia. The question of whether this Ittifaq should be a party or some kind of big-tent organisation was tabled. A second congress was scheduled that should debate this and further questions. The debate between national Muslim unity and concrete political programme was to be a feature of the Russian Muslim movement until 1917.
Second congress