The Soviet Regime's Interaction with Domestic Islam
By Yaacov Ro'i
An overview
The Bolshevik regime that came to power in Russia in November 1917 inherited several regions whose indigenous populations were predominantly Muslim. The most important of these were Central Asia, in what became in the course of the 1920s and 1930s the Uzbek, Tajik, Turkmen, Kazakh and Kirgiz union republics; the Volga region – the Tatar and Bashkir autonomous republics; and the Caucasus – the Azerbaijan union republic and the Dagestan, Chechen-Ingush, Kabardino-Balkar and Karachai-Cherkess autonomous republics.
As a Marxist (or Marxist-Leninist) body politic, the Soviet Union was an avowedly atheist state. The 1920s saw major campaigns to eradicate religion throughout the vast Soviet empire. In the early years, the new regime made the Russian Orthodox Church the principal object of this onslaught and demonstrated considerable tolerance of Islam, but this changed toward the end of the decade when Moscow initiated a major offensive designed to "modernize" the Muslim woman. As in the case of other religions, the anti-Islam offensive involved closing houses of worship, persecuting clergy and other religious figures, prohibiting religious education, curtailing publication of religious literature and seeking to impose secular rites of passage and secular "happenings" to replace the religious festivals. State organizations became responsible for registering births, marriages and deaths, a vast atheistic propaganda campaign was initiated and a body under the auspices of the government was formed to enforce the relevant prohibitions and laws. Although Muslims registered the highest percentage of observance in the 1937 population census - the sole one to register religious observance – retention of the precepts of Islam was becoming increasingly difficult and risky.
During the Great Patriotic War following the Nazi German invasion of Soviet territory in June 1941, Moscow realized it had to do all in its power to enlist the population on behalf of the Soviet war effort. It consequently changed tack in its approach to religion at the expense of its avowed ideology. This was especially important since in face of the tribulations the war entailed and given the lack of any alternative remedy, people turned to religion. Such houses of worship as remained filled up once more and many that had been closed down and transferred to other uses, reverted to their pristine designation.
In order to ensure that Islam stay within the bounds assigned it by the regime and actually mobilize to contribute to the war effort, Moscow set up four Muslim Spiritual Directorates for believers in the country's various regions – in Ufa, Tashkent, Baku and Buinaksk (TsDUM, SADUM, DUMZ and DUMSK)[1]. They came under the jurisdiction of the Council for the Affairs of Religious Cults that was attached to the Soviet government, similarly set up during the war to control religious practice of the country's recognized faiths or denominations (apart from the Russian Orthodox Church which was supervised by a separate Council). In the years 1943 – 1947, dozens of mosques were opened or re-opened throughout the country and believers entertained hopes that the relative liberalization would persist.
However, beginning 1948, the tables were turned again, and the lid was clamped down once more – until 1954, when another period of leniency toward religion, Islam included, began. It continued for less than four years, and in 1958 what became known as Khrushchev's anti-religious campaign set in, and lasted until his ouster in late 1964. While enhanced persecution ceased, the following decade and a half witnessed implementation of the traditional hard line.
Throughout most of the postwar years, Islam was perceived and treated by the regime very much as were the other recognized faiths, especially those that could be considered an integral part of the ethnic culture of the nationalities concerned. It was only in the 1980s following the Iranian revolution and an Islamic revival that began in the 1970s in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, that Islam was singled out for manifestly special treatment, "Islamic extremism" coming to be identified with a threat to the stability of the country's Muslim regions.
The documentation
This then is the story documented by my collection of archival material taken from three archives, two in Moscow and one in Tashkent. The great majority of the documents come from the files of the Council for the Affairs of Religious Cults - SDRK (that in 1965 became the Council for Religious Affairs - SDR). The Council's archive is preserved in GARF – the State Archive of the Russian Federation, but since the Council corresponded regularly with its representatives throughout the country and not all the documentation can be found in Moscow, I also worked in TsGARUz, the Central Archive of Uzbekistan, the most populous of the "Muslim" union republics. A few documents were also taken from the Party archive (now Russian State Archive of Social and Political History, RGASPI) for, although officially attached to the Soviet government, the Council of Ministers, the Council had periodically to update the Party Central Committee regarding certain events or developments and it would consult with, and get directives from the CC departments for propaganda (Agitprop) and "administrative organs." Most of the material is from the period 1944 – 1975.
Whoever has resort to Soviet documentation must be permanently aware of a persistent in-built defect of the Soviet system, namely total disregard of the truth, faulty information, not infrequently intentional misinformation.[2] Misinformation might well emanate from sheer laziness or from a desire to cover up lacunae in the reporter's inefficiency: a representative (upolnomochennyi) would write about events in a distant outlying part of his area of jurisdiction without taking the trouble of visiting there. He would often base his reports on pure hearsay without for the most part trying to verify the data he was given or bothering to ascertain the credibility of his source who often had an interest in not disclosing the true or ull picture. Sometimes, clearly the person reporting from the field knew what his superior wanted to hear and reported accordingly. Alternatively, the upolnomochennyi might visit one mosque and from the data relevant to it, extrapolate for all the mosques in his region. SDRK was constantly checking up on the reporting of its upolnomochennye.[3] Sometimes, too, the misinformation was the consequence of an upolnomochennyi's basic, perhaps tribal, loyalty being given to the local organs of government rather than to his republican upolnomochennyi or the body he formally represented. One local upolnomochennyi in Ferghana who digressed from this obligation and reported facts regarding religiosity was duly hauled over the coals and threatened with dismissal from his post by the obkom third secretary for erring regarding where his true loyalty laid.[4]
I started working in the archives in 1991 and spent three to four weeks every summer from 1991 to 1997 - and twice in other seasons as well – hunting down as much material as I could. Although I was no novice in reading Soviet material and was well aware that everything that was published was politically and ideologically oriented with all the concomitant terminology, I naively believed at first that official documentation designed for people within the system relayed facts and developments as they indeed took place. When, however, I began to read the feedback to some of the material – at all levels of the hierarchy – I realized that this was far from being the case and that truth was simply not a criterion that needed to be adhered to. This behooved me to understand and take into account before reading a document the background of its author and the essence of the post he held so as to be able to see what he was likely to aim at in composing this particular report. Wherever possible, I also sought to compare different sources relating to the same or similar events and trends, and eventually felt that I was able to reap important information from the material. In other words, researching Soviet documentation demands awareness of the inherent features of the system, keeping that awareness constantly in mind and drawing the requisite inferences and conclusion therefrom. Once the researcher is persuaded that he answers these requirements, he can feel satisfied that he is able to make appropriate and effective use of the documentation.
Basically, the documents are either materials emanating from the offices of SDRK and the SDR or those received in Moscow from their representatives throughout the country. These officials were stationed in every republican capital and every oblast center and they all conducted a rather intensive correspondence with Moscow – in the case of those in oblasts, usually via the upolnomchennyi in the republican capital. It was incumbent upon them to dispatch regular reports to the Center, which in turn would send its delegates instructions and guidelines for behavior, in addition to responding to the materials received.
The reports tell of the dimensions of observance – of Muslim festivals, of the fast of Ramadan, of life cycle rites – and of mosque attendance. In particular, not unexpectedly, they dwell on violations of the legislation on religion: payment of charity, which was strictly prohibited in a state that by definition could not have needy citizens; attempts to provide religious education; the presence of children in mosques – attendance being limited to those above the age of eighteen; conduct of public prayer outside the registered mosques; any manifestation that could possibly be interpreted as religious propaganda; visitation of Muslim shrines and holy places, especially when – as was invariably the case – it was accompanied by financial transactions of one sort or another; and indications of religious belief and practice among party members.
As of the mid-1950s, when the Iron Curtain was partially lifted (or cracked), there is quite a lot of material pertinent to foreign policy: visits to the Soviet Union of religious delegations from Muslim countries, for whom a fixed route was laid down in order to limit their contact with Soviet citizens; performance of the hajj by a handful of carefully picked and closely supervised Soviet Muslims; the study in foreign Islamic institutions of just a very few potential clergy – throughout most of the period, the Soviet Union boasted a single Muslim seminary – in Bukhara, until a second was finally authorized in Tashkent, and study there was not on a particularly advanced level.
Careful perusal of the material over a number of years enables the researcher to register the tergiversations of Soviet religious policy as applied toward Islam, differences in the line adopted toward Muslims in different parts of the country, both those where the majority of the population came from traditionally Muslim nationalities, and those where Muslims had always been and remained a minority, for instance in many urban centers in Russia itself. Similarly, we can discern and study variations in religious practice and, more particularly, in the dimensions of observance not only in different places but also in different periods of Soviet rule. This makes this collection unique – as far as I know, there is no analogous collection of Islam-related material anywhere in the West. True, even in documents intended for internal official use, Soviet dignitaries and bureaucrats were not known for their veracity, always being aware of what the addressee wanted to hear, especially when he was his hierarchical superior. In addition, directives were often transmitted by word of mouth, so that no documentation exists for all levels of decision-making, particularly apparently for Party instructions to SDRK.[5] Nonetheless, these reservations notwithstanding, the collection at my disposal provides a unique, real-time detailed picture of Muslim life in the Soviet Union in the post-World War II period as perceived by the regime and its representatives. (Nor, again to the best of my knowledge, is there any similar documentation to tell us how the Muslims saw themselves in these years - nor could there be in light of the all-pervasive fear that was always a factor among believers and even more so among religious activists and officials.)
Did the Soviet Union have a Muslim policy?
Marxism-Leninism, as the Soviet Union's ruling ideology was called, saw all religion as inherently misguided and iniquitous in that it contradicted the fundamental tenets of the materialism that permeated Marxist thinking. Religion as such was a "relic of the past" that, according to Marxist theory would die out of itself as the state modernized. Insofar as this did not occur without assistance from the state, since its eradication was a prerequisite for the building of a socialist society, the state's enforcement agencies had no alternative but to precipitate the process. As long as the ideology was seen as the weathervane of policy-making, there could be no compromise with either religious belief or religious practice.
It soon became manifest even to the most ideologically-oriented and -motivated within the Bolshevik leadership that a dynamic state could not function or be administered strictly according to ideology. The contact with a living population necessitated accommodation on the level of practice. This applied first and foremost to the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) and its adherents who comprised the largest faith and, moreover, one that was identified with the old – tsarist – regime. The Bolsheviks found they had to address the ROC specifically if they aspired to embark on "socialist construction." As a result, a differentiation evolved between the line taken vis-à-vis different denominations.
The turn of Islam came in the face of resistance to Bolshevik policy in the form of "Muslim national communism" on the one hand and the Basmachi revolt in Central Asia on the other hand. Islam was the subject of both direct and indirect onslaught that entailed, among others, the abandonment of the Arabic script throughout the country, that cut Soviet Muslims off from their religious literature and thought, including even the Qur'an. It also entailed bringing education to the female population and renouncing women's traditional dress – both measures that would not only encourage them to enter the work force, but simultaneously expose them to Communist propaganda and doctrine.
Against the backdrop of the patriotic stance of Muslim clergy during World War II, SDRK and its chairman called for a "positive" stance toward the country's Muslim inhabitants and sought to promote the registration of mosques wherever it might be considered politically expedient.[6] The reasoning behind this pressure was that increased registration would facilitate the control and supervision of Islam. When in mid-1947 the Soviet leadership was contemplating curtailing the registration of prayer-houses, SDRK Chairman Ivan Polianskii wrote Foreign minister Molotov that the registration of mosques should continue in order to bring the "Muslim movement" as far as possible under the direction of the four spiritual directorates.[7]
SDRK's considerations, however, were unavailing in face of the general religious policy of the government in the atmosphere of repression of Stalin's last years. Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers Kliment Voroshilov responsible for giving SDRK its directives opposed Polianskii's proposal in early 1949 to continue opening and registering mosques on the grounds that this would not eliminate the "underground, unofficial Muslim movement" but would encourage unofficial groups to intensify their demands to open mosques, kindling a flame that was currently merely smoldering.[8] At the same time, SDRK opposed prohibiting rites that it believed Muslims would continue conducting even if they were prohibited while seeking to restrict Islamic tenets it considered believers might be prepared to give up. This compromise position led for instance to permitting the collection of the fitr (charity) during Ramadan, but confining it to the precincts of the mosque and insisting that payment be solely voluntary and that the money not go to charity.[9]
When Khrushchev's anti-religious campaign gathered momentum, SDRK again stood in the breach. While intent on cutting the "Muslim movement," that had gained momentum in the years of liberalization (1954 – 1957) down to size, it took pains to avoid giving believers opportunities to complain that the authorities were interfering in the performance of religious rites and opposed the wholesale, indiscriminate closure of mosques and shrines (mazars): it was unthinkable to commit a folly and embitter believers against the regime.[10]
It was, however, only in 1968 that a first conference took place of representatives of all organizations involved in policy implementation in the Muslim sector: all SDR officials and upolnomochennye who dealt with Islam, officials of the party agitprop apparatus at the center and in the Muslim regions and representatives of the executive branch. The resolutions it passed served as guidelines for work among Muslims in subsequent years[11] - until the early 1980s when the CPSU Central Committee passed several resolutions relating specifically to domestic Islam. Two of these were entitled "Measures to counteract attempts by the adversary to use the 'Islamic factor' for ends hostile to the Soviet Union" and "Measures for the ideological isolation of the reactionary sector of the Muslim clergy."[12]
Islam as a potential security threat
Prior to the 1980s, the general inclination of the Soviet regime was not to consider Islam a genuine political, social or security threat. Nevertheless, the security and enforcement organs were implicated in certain aspects of the treatment of Muslim religious organizations and associations, as they were of that of other religions. They both received SDRK's annual reports on the situation within the country's various faiths and had special agents and collaborators to take part in the ongoing struggle with the "reactionary" section among the Muslim clergy. They intimidated believers into retracting applications to register their religious societies and informed the authorities of violations of the law on religion, such as instances of collective circumcision.[13] The security organs also provided SDRK's upolnomochennye with lists of itinerant and other unregistered clergy, a task that required both means and acquaintanceship with all settlements and localities in the area under their jurisdiction.[14]
In 1947 Minister of State Security (MGB) Viktor Abakumov himself informed Voroshilov – and CPSU CC Secretary Andrei Zhdanov - of an MGB report from Uzbekistan detailing how the Muslim clergy had allegedly incited religious and anti-Soviet activity.[15] He was clearly suggesting that an Islamic revival was taking place in Central Asia as a result of Moscow's relative leniency in this period that was perceived by the indigenous population as emanating from the regime's weakness. This in turn was likely to induce meaningful political discontent that might threaten Soviet rule in the area. The inference was that to preempt such an occurrence steps had to be taken to "restore law and order."
Contacts between Muslim officials and foreign delegations were reported regularly to the security organs.[16] This necessarily included the selection of believers allowed to perform the hajj. Every time the pilgrimage to Mecca was to take place, there would be candidates the KGB did not approve, as a result of which they were barred from participating in the hajj.[17] Likewise, when the hajjis returned to the Soviet Union, the security organs heard of their doings and meetings and received their reports.[18] The connection created with Muslim clergy who traveled abroad in whatever capacity created a group of people on whom the KGB had detailed information and so – in Soviet circumstances - a certain leverage. A 1985 report stated that "a subsidiary card index has been created on representatives of the Muslim clergy in the USSR who have been abroad at some time, which will facilitate the conducting of better directed counter-intelligence in this milieu."[19]
The KGB was also involved in appointments to, or dismissals from, senior posts in the Muslim hierarchy, notably in the Muslim directorates, whose leading officials met with foreign guests, and even to the post of imam or imam-khatib in some of the more sensitive locations or in mosques visited by foreigners.[20] SDRK officials touring the Muslim periphery would meet with KGB officials even when their mission was not connected to questions of personnel. The KGB briefed a SDRK inspector who visited the Chechen-Ingush ASSR shortly after the return of the deportees on the level of religiosity in the republic.[21] A SDR official visiting Bukhara Oblast in 1968 to look into the situation of Islam there discussed her findings with the deputy head of the KGB oblast administration and with the head of its 5th department, recently created to combat political dissent.[22]
During Khrushchev's anti-religious campaign, when society "organized" to disband unregistered religious association, the KGB would prepare lists of the members of these associations which would then be sent via local government to the relevant workplaces.[23] Apart from its activity in repressing "illegal" religious activity, the KGB was manifestly concerned about Islamic threats to local security in border regions. In Tajikistan, as of the early 1960s, SDRK upolnomochennye reported regularly to the KGB chiefs on trends and developments within the Muslim community.[24] In the Nakhichevan ASSR too the KGB was concerned about the infiltration of Islamic influences from Iran, at least as of the early 1970s,[25] a concern that was necessarily enhanced by the Iranian revolution of early 1979.
Foreign policy considerations
From its earliest stages the Soviet leadership had been conscious of foreign criticism leveled against it on account of its treatment of religion and of Islam specifically. From the time of the establishment of the Muslim directorates calls were coming from the highest levels to demonstrate to potential well-wishers in the Muslim world that the freedom of worship guaranteed in the Soviet constitution was being implemented in the Muslim regions.[26] The official Muslim Establishment was "not to be obstructed in extending and strengthening links" with co-religionists abroad with the purpose of propagating the existence of freedom of religion in the Soviet Union and fulfilling other assignments given it by SDRK.[27] A critical report on SDRK's attitude toward Islam in 1946 emphasized that a correct relationship between the Soviet government and domestic Islam would help it in its policy toward "the countries of the East."[28] A decade later the SDRK department responsible for Islam asserted that Islam in the Ajar ASSR should be considered more important than in the Tatar ASS as it was a border area and given the presence of a Turkish consul in Batumi, its capital.[29]
The importance of fruitful contacts with Muslims from other countries and transmission to them of the message that Soviet Muslims were able to practice their faith was a main consideration behind the re-institution of the hajj in the mid-1940s after a hiatus of a decade and a half,[30] and for its retention in later years although it was agreed that the pilgrimage had a deleterious impact at home.[31] From the outset the Soviet authorities dwelt on the significance of a Soviet delegation participating in the hajj in order to demonstrate to foreign Muslims "the freedom of religion" prevalent in the Soviet Union.[32] In the mid-50s the head of SDRK reminded the CPSU Central Committee that the hajj of Soviet citizens was politically beneficial, most importantly in undermining "mendacious propaganda about the liquidation of Islam and the persecution of Muslim clergy in the Soviet Union."[33]
Indeed, the hajjis had a full time-table propagandizing freedom of religion in the Soviet Union both in Mecca and Medina and in the countries they visited en route, especially in Egypt where they would meet with government officials and functionaries of al-Azhar and even held press conferences.[34] The pilgrims also met with relatives and acquaintances who had emigrated from the Soviet Union in earlier years. One of the forms they had to fill in prior to departure addressed this issue and the prospective pilgrim had to spell out the names of people he knew in the countries the pilgrims would be visiting on the way and in Mecca. One candidate identified thirteen such people in Afghanistan and a further four in Mecca, whom - he emphasized – he would tell about the happy life in the Soviet Union, the increasing availability of goods and the prosperity of its citizenry.[35] In 1962 SADUM Deputy Chairman Ismail Sattiev headed the Soviet delegation which had the opportunity to meet with Head Muftis, ulema and other dignitaries in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Lebanon and to "exchange views" with other pilgrims from a host of countries. "Especially numerous were the meetings and cordial conversations with representatives of our compatriots domiciled abroad." In most of these talks the Soviet pilgrims felt "the influence of imperialist propaganda and the total ignorance of Soviet reality. The people with whom we spoke, especially those who read the Saudi press, believed in the lies about the material and spiritual situation of Soviet Muslims. The Soviet pilgrims invited them to visit the Soviet Union and see the reality with their own eyes.[36]
Polianskii informed the CPSU CC and the Soviet government that the annual pilgrimage of Soviet Muslims attracted the attention of run-of-the-mill Muslims in Egypt as well as of clergy and public and government figures and disadvantaged those circles which systematically put out mendacious propaganda regarding the elimination of Islam and the persecution of religious figures in the Soviet Union. The appearance of Soviet Muslim clergy at a press conference where they talk of the freedom of religion in the Soviet Union justified itself. In order to continue dispelling slanderous propaganda about the lack as it were of freedom of religion for Soviet Muslims, it would be expedient to continue holding similar press conferences where Muslim dignitaries participated and to have Soviet pilgrims appear in the foreign press and on the radio.[37]
As of the mid-1950s delegations from Muslim countries visited the Soviet Union regularly. Polianskii suggested they were a reason – or perhaps a pretext – for adopting measures to improve the situation of Islam at home. One such letter proposed returning to Leningrad Muslims use of their mosque.[38] His deputy too wrote to SDRK's upolnomochennyi in Tashkent that his blueprints for future work must bear in mind the broadening international ties with the countries of the East. He asked for his thoughts regarding measures it might be expedient to adopt in order to dispel perceptions prevalent in their countries that Soviet Muslims were being denied freedom of worship.[39] Polianskii also pointed out that now that foreign delegations were visiting the Soviet Union, propaganda directed at them could achieve their purpose only if they were based on fact. He therefore suggested opening mosques in areas visited by foreign delegations, improving the medrese, even enabling believers to teach their children the basics of the faith.[40]
In other words, SDRK – and other organizations within the Muslim Establishment, especially SADUM – sensed that their contact with foreign delegations gave them leverage and enhanced their status. It stressed that the "versatile ties" Soviet Muslims maintained with the Muslim population of several neighboring countries were a potential trump card for use in the conduct of Soviet foreign policy and that the Muslim religious Establishment brought only benefit to the Soviet state in the international arena.[41] This was given endorsement with the creation in 1963 of the Department of Foreign Ties of the USSR's Muslim Organizations.[42]
Unquestionably, despite the monolithic nature of the Soviet regime, different organizations within the Establishment had different interests. Usually those concerned with domestic security and propagating and implementing party policy inside the country would have the upper hand. The fifteen to twenty years between the mid-late 1950s and the early-mid 1970s were probably an exception to the rule. In its eagerness to win allies in the Third World in this period, the regime apparently convinced itself that it could create an effective divide between its attitude to Islam at home and abroad and could afford to credit Islam with a positive social role in countries of a less "progressive" character without producing any boomerang effect at home. One sanguine upolnomochennyi, however, expressed doubts regarding this dichotomous approach already in 1957 noting that international events and the evolving mutual relations with the countries of the East in fact encouraged religious activity at home.[43]
Policy implementation
The documentation demonstrates that the authorities' treatment of Islam was manifestly inadequate and that some people at least within the Establishment were well aware of this. In part, the lacunae were the inevitable consequence of the contradictions inherent in SDRK's terms of reference. As its chairman spelt out, it had at one and the same time to act as protagonist of the Soviet state's interests and to secure for believers the requisite practice of their religion.[44] In part, the criticism leveled at those responsible for policy implementation was an integral component of the political discourse of the Soviet period, especially in the late Stalin years, when criticism could be directed solely at those who carried out instructions and under no circumstances at those who laid down policy.
Another major drawback that hindered effective policy implementations was recurrent misinformation (see above). The systematic lack of compunction about distorting facts leads one to conclude that the representative in the field did not perceive his assignment as transmitting accurate information so that the higher organs of government could mold their policy on real data. Nor perhaps was he far from the mark. In 1955 SDRK wrote its representative in Tashkent: you write that the influence of religion has grown of late in Uzbekistan, but we cannot accept this conclusion, for this cannot be the case in Soviet reality.[45] In 1969 the Azerbaijan CC's Agitprop heard a report by the second secretary of the Sheki gorkom (the city party committee) how 27 unregistered mullahs had given notice of their repudiation of religious activity, how an empty mosque had been transferred to an industrial complex as warehouse, and how a holy place had stopped functioning. Yet when the upolnomochennyi visited Sheki he found none of this to be true.[46] When it came to reporting life-cycle rites, most of which were performed in the home, the picture was even more distorted. It was known to all that rites were registered only when they were performed in a registered prayer-house, and reports necessarily reflected ceremonies registered according to law, so that the questionnaires and forms distributed to the localities could not provide anything resembling accurate information.[47] Yet, they were filled in according to instructions from the center and their findings became the basis for SDRK's reports to the CC and the government on the extent of the population's observance of religiosity. Only in the late 1960s – early 1970s when the regime began to avail itself of sociological surveys did the true picture begin to emerge.
The terminology too was very much a product of the period. In one instance a SDRK inspector accused the upolnomochennyi in Turkmenistan of not being guided by "the principle of political expediency."[48] On another occasion, in 1946, a SDRK official warned against applying pressure to believers, for terror and fear - as was being used in Ajaria and Dagestan - distorted party and government policy, the theory being that "administrative measures" must be avoided since they evoked a negative reaction.[49] (Certainly, administrative meant very different things in Stalin's last years and in the "Thaw" of the mid-1950s.)
Another conclusion from perusing the documentation is that there were constant differences of opinion among those responsible for dealing with the Muslim community. There were recurrent confrontations between SDRK, or the SDR, and the Central Committee ideologists,[50] and between the Council and the KGB. One upolnomochennyi complained about having to obtain the opinion of the KGB before determining the composition of the group going on hajj which caused "misunderstandings," that organization having "no faith in us" and reporting directly to the Central Committee.[51] Clashes took place too between SDRK headquarters in Moscow and the people in the field, whose reports highlight the dilemmas of those coming into daily contact with the religious communities. One such dispute focused on the attitude to the registered clergy whom SDRK sought to co-opt in the struggle against the itinerant mullahs.[52] Above all, the upolnomochennye were constantly at loggerheads with the organs of local government, most of their complaints falling into one of two categories: either that local officialdom turned a blind eye to violations of legislation on religion on the part of the clergy and the believer community or that it resorted indiscriminately to administrative measures.[53] Sometimes too the Council in Moscow took issue with the policy followed by a republican government or party. Thus, for example, SDRK and the SDR's persistent efforts to open registered mosques in the Chechen-Ingush ASSR and in North Ossetia ran into obstinate opposition from the republican authorities.[54]
These divergences were mostly on tactics and practical conduct, not on issues of principle, and they made policy implementation difficult and often ineffective, especially in the rural sector, where most of the Muslim population resided. In the final account, those on the spot determined what steps were taken. One upolnomochennyi put it succinctly: discussing the campaign against pilgrimages to local shrines, he said the struggle to extirpate centuries-long traditions and superstitions was not easy but would eventually succeed if it were conducted thoughtfully and if all "relevant organizations of the ideological front" cooperated.[55]
Believers and clergy, including the Spiritual Directorates, sought to take every possible advantage of discrepancies within the various branches of officialdom. These attempts were not mostly successful. When believers came to Moscow to visit SDRK's offices, they usually ran into a blank wall. Although SDRK officials persistently criticized administrative measures taken by local government, they rarely sided with the grievances of their victims. They would tell believers that the conduct of prayer services hinged upon permission from local government organs, that the believers had either misinterpreted the legislation on religion or been allowed too long to indulge in practices which should not have been tolerated in the first place. The exigencies of the system which led to SDRK adhering to one policy, yet preaching another in contacts outside the Establishment underlined the anomalous nature of its position. Sometimes too there were differences of opinion within SDRK itself both on substance and on tactics.[56]
One of the most controversial issues throughout the period was the advisability of registering mosques and clergy. During a discussion of the situation in Turkmenistan in 1947, a SDRK official recommended that one mosque be opened in every population center and that the most revered mazars be legalized, as this would bring religious activity within the law and regulate it. Another SDRK official accused the republican upolnomochennyi of siding with the republican authorities in their attempt to extinguish the "religious movement," whereas SDRK's policy was to create a safety valve for religious inclinations. They must be inspired by practical considerations when dealing with "birth-marks which the state does not intend treating surgically." Precisely because SDRK did not wish to encourage religion, it believed it had to register a certain number of mosques. At the same time, for every mosque registered, ten unofficially functioning ones would be closed.[57]
While the registration of mosques was a complex procedure easily stymied by one of the numerous links in the chain of those who had to consent, the registration of clergy was rather simpler. The Council sought to increase the number of registered clergy in places where there was no registered religious society in order to enable some control and supervision of Islam. Its persistence in this policy led to the doubling of the cohort of registered clergy from the early 1970s to the early 1980s and by 1983 it was approximately three times larger than the corpus of registered mosques and religious societies – although no clear-cut resolution seems to have been taken by any decision-making body.
Another issue over which there was no consensus within the Soviet bureaucracy was that of the viability and desirability of imposing taxation on the clergy and the application of other financial constraints. While the law regarding registered clergy was explicit, there was no coherent policy when it came to unregistered clergy. Polianskii who headed SDRK from its foundation in 1944 until his death in 1956 was adamant that the sole effective way of fighting the itinerant mullahs and the unregistered mosques was to subject them to taxation. He opposed more repressive measures such as arrests and trials which would alienate the population, that still believed in God.[58] Some upolnomochennye, however, thought that taxes should be imposed solely on registered clergy since taxation implied recognition of a person's income and legitimization of his work.[59] This meant that taxation rather than curbing the activity of unregistered clergy served to enliven it.[60]
Despite the juridical advantages accruing to the clergy from the very fact of being taxed, it proved to be a very mixed blessing. Clergy, especially in the Northern Caucasus and some oblasti in the RSFSR, constantly complained that they were being taxed unjustly, disproportionately to their real income. Sometimes taxation led to clergy – both registered and unregistered – resigning their posts and functions, offering to commit themselves to cease performing rites in return for cancelation of the debt.[61] Moneys, for example, collected from believers for special expenses of their religious society, such as mosque repairs, might be included by the financial organs in the revenues of the clergy.[62] Sometimes, the clergy's complaints were so blatantly justified that the SDRK upolnomochennye would support them.[63] Many of those who performed occasional rites were sometimes totally unable to pay the taxes imposed on them. In certain instances the dead went unburied for long periods because the clergy were unwilling to expose themselves to taxation by conducting the traditional funeral rites.[64]
Nor was taxing clergy a simple task. This applied even to registered clerics whose income was mostly fixed, but who performed rites, particularly life-cycle rites, outside the mosque and had a manifest interest in not reporting all of them, precisely to evade taxation on the income that accrued from them. Those for whom these rites were performed had an identical interest, not wishing to be molested by the various government organs for initiating rites that were at best semi-legal. When it came to unregistered clergy, the assignment was that much more formidable as the constraints which existed for registered clergy were absent: they did not have to report on their financial dealings to a religious center; they were not subject to visitation by the local SDRK upolnomochennyi; there was no executive organ or inspection commission to keep tabs on their activities. When mullahs denied performing religious activity, believers preferred not to provide information for requesting illegal doings and local officials were similarly insistent that no illegal religious activity was conducted in their bailiwick.[65] The SDRK upolnomochennyi for Osh Oblast prepared in 1951 the draft of a circular to be sent to all raion financial departments suggesting a tax of 150 rubles for all clergy who performed religious rites and received income from them and explaining that assertions by village council chairmen that no unregistered mullahs operate in their area of jurisdiction were unacceptable, for such people existed in almost every kolkhoz, wherever there were believing Muslims.[66]
Throughout the period under study, even when lists of unregistered clergy were given to the financial organs, the latter imposed taxes only on very few of them: in 1950 and the first half of 1951 taxes were imposed in Uzbekistan on just 25 percent of the over 1,000 unregistered mullahs whose names were given to the financial organs.[67] Following the decision of the 1968 Tashkent conference to take count of all unregistered clergy in order to augment income tax, the financial organs in the Kabardino-Balkar ASSR together with the raion authorities took stock of all of them and in fact increased their taxes.[68] Elsewhere, the bureaucracy continued stalling or took up the challenge half-heartedly. The Kirgiz SSR Finance Ministry received a list of 229 functioning clergy but imposed income tax on just 28.[69] The Finance Minister of the Nakhichevan ASSR simply contended that the clergy performed rites without remuneration.[70]
While taxation remained throughout the main weapon in the ongoing endeavor to cut the clergy down to size and reduce its influence, the chief instrument used to undermine religious activity as a whole on the level of the individual believer, at least as of the late 1950s, was probably the introduction of secular rites. True, this process was slower in the Muslim republics, especially in Central Asia, than elsewhere in the Soviet Union perhaps because they often seemed to have Christian connotations. In many areas the issue of burial rites was the most crucial, many organs of government failing to equip cemeteries with facilities, organize civil funerals and prepare tombstones "corresponding to contemporary needs."[71] A report on Azerbaijan in the mid-1970s noted that although some collective rites were becoming part of local tradition, such as the Day of Harvest or induction into the armed forces – the new rites were not supplanting the old life-cycle rites. The ritual of the new ceremonies lacked style and the village councils did not know how to adapt them to the needs of the population.[72] In some places attempts were made to tailor the traditional spring and autumn festivals of the indigenous nationalities to the criteria of the new rites – the Nawruz in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan or the Saban-tui among the Volga Tatars and Bashkirs.[73] In Kuibyshev Oblast local party committees (raikoms) organized the Saban-tui with all the traditional accompanying festivities to coincide with Muslim religious festivals in order to detract people from attending mosque and participating in religious celebrations. This was common practice in Uzbekistan too.[74]
On the whole, it seems that at least in urban areas, the population together with the clergy came to accept a compromise situation where most of the rites of passage were marked by both secular and religious ceremonies. One akhund (a Shiite religious figure) explained: "first, young people register at ZAGS, then ask us to perform a religious marriage and afterwards organize a Komsomol wedding. We are in no way against such an arrangement. The main thing is that the marriage is ratified by Allah. Then it will be strong and the children born from it will be Muslims."[75]
Rather than be galvanized into action by hypotheses grounded in ideological stereotypes, SDRK and the SDR preferred to react to actual developments and trends within the Muslim community. SDRK Chairman Aleksei Puzin was aware that the information in the Council's reports were irrelevant when it came to assessing Muslim activity. The government closed mosques, yet people continued praying at home, performing rites, burying the dead according to traditional ritual and compelling their children to adhere to ritual. The reports insisted that children did not attend mosque, but forty years after the October revolution the mosques were still full. If Islam did not touch the younger generation this would not be the case. The issue at stake, he argued, was people's world outlook which could only be altered by stubborn and persistent effort, but without resorting to coarse methods. If unregistered mosques which in Central Asia were much more numerous than registered ones, were closed forcefully, the status quo would be perpetuated for decades. Educational means had to be used, the native intelligentsias mobilized to prove the harmfulness of "holy places" – otherwise, people would simply substitute one shrine for another. As long as they believed mazars were their last hope to heal an incurable disease or infertility, they would go a thousand kilometers to reach one.[76]
Realism too lay behind the conclusion that while persisting in its recurrent attacks on unregistered mullahs, the Council should try to differentiate between those among them who were hostile to the regime and those who were loyal, especially in areas where the unregistered clergy far outnumbered the registered ones (Central Asia, Dagestan, Azerbaijan).[77] Some of the latter could not be distinguished from registered clergy in that they served permanently functioning religious societies with their own prayer houses that SDRK and the SDR pressed constantly to register, especially large ones.[78]
The SDR was well aware of the pitfalls of a situation in which, on the one hand, resolutions were constantly being passed at all levels, yet had no practical significance, remaining mere pieces of paper, and, on the other hand, Islam retained its dynamism and, as of the early 1970s, actually acquired a new élan. Nowhere, its officials reiterated incessantly, was there so much sensitivity to the actual capabilities and effectiveness of the regime as among the Muslim community. If Moscow played by its own rules without heeding the atmosphere in the field, the game would be lost before it even began. Islam as an idea and way of life was not an ordinary adversary and could not be fought without bearing in mind its specifics.
In a memorandum prepared for the CPSU CC two years before Gorbachev came to power, the SDR summed up the state of affairs. Laying the blame, as usual, on the lower level of the bureaucracy, it stipulated that all efforts to close unregistered Muslim associations were not having any permanent results; new ones sprang up in lieu of those that were shut down, "while new generations of pensioners, some of them communists, continue to fulfil the functions of those unregistered mullahs whose activity has been stopped."[79]
Another document, addressing the critical situation in Tajikistan, where Muslim activity was getting out of control, noted that the principle of freedom of conscience enunciated in the Soviet constitution was being violated there and the CPSU CC resolutions on "the Islamic factor" were being implemented "unsatisfactorily." The sole solution was to organize a network of religious associations and clergy able simultaneously to serve the population reasonably, ensure strict observance of the law by both clergy and officialdom, terminate the use of tea-houses (chaikhonas), guest-houses and clubs as prayer-premises, and to carry out effective measures "for the struggle against religious extremism and the ideological isolation of the reactionary sector among the Muslim clergy."[80]
* * *
Given, on the one hand, the ideological constraints under which the CPSU operated and, on the other hand, Islam's vitality throughout the four decades from the end of World War II until Gorbachev came to power, no policy could be devised that might create a long-term modus vivendi acceptable to both sides. Each saw in the working arrangement between them a provisory compromise that it aspired to erode in its own favor. The fact that Islam's main stronghold was in the family and the home – religious "artefacts" which, as one Soviet source confessed, "do not lend themselves to legal regulation" – meant that "the difficulties of the ideological struggle against it" were "considerable."[81] Toward the end of this period, the increasingly defiant stance of a growing number of young Muslim clerics, especially but not solely in Tajikistan, the Ferghana Valley oblasts of Uzbekistan and the Chechen-Ingush ASSR, and the manifest bankruptcy of the Soviet system were bringing matters to a head.