The contacts of Volga–Ural muslims with Polish–Lithuanian muslims in the first third of the 20th century: cultural, religious, and socio-political ties in Russia’s muslim umma

Abstract

This article is devoted to the issue of the character and channels of communication within the Muslim umma during the first third of the 20th century in the Russian Empire and in the state entities that arose after its collapse. What ties existed between the Volga–Ural and Polish–Lithuanian Muslims in this period? Was it the matter of episodic contacts or was there a long-term and permanent communication? Did Volga–Ural and Polish–Lithuanian Muslims sense themselves to be part of a unified Muslim umma, or was their regional identity stronger? How informed were they about each other’s problems, interests, history, and culture? Which tendencies were stronger: centrifugal or centralizing (uniting)? These questions will serve as the research tasks.
In this interaction, we can distinguish several stages:
1. The beginning of the 20th century, especially 1905–1913. At this stage, students became the main facilitators of the idea of interaction, as well as various capital-city cultural, educational and benevolent organizations in which they took part (Dzhemil Aleksandrovich).
2. 1914–1917. During the First World War, refugees with their own problems emerge as the chief factor for integration.
3. 1917–1920. The revolutionary period and the civil war, during which many public figures and soldiers of the Polish–Lithuanian Tatar origin operated in the orbit of revolutionary events (at the eastern extremes of the former empire, i.e. in the Crimea, the Volga region, and Azerbaijan, among others; the Krichinski Brothers, Aleksandr / Iskander Talkovskii, Matvei Sulkevich, and others).
4. The 1920s and 30s. In the west of the former empire, the Tatars were divided among three independent states: the USSR, Poland, and Lithuania. At this stage, the ideological emigration of Russian Muslims was a factor; these included such prominent examples as Gayaz Iskhaki, Gayan Vaisov, and others who were in the Baltic States and Poland.
As for the contacts within Muslim society, another peculiarity deserves mention: for the most part these contacts were formed by the efforts of specific personalities. That is, one can speak of a rather high level of personification of these contacts, especially at the beginning of the 20th century. Therefore, in this work, each of these stages will be characterized through the biographies and fates of actual historical figures: Dz. Aleksandrovich, Al. Akhmatovich, Gayaz Iskhaki, and Gayan Vaisov.
As to the contacts between Volga–Ural and Polish–Lithuanian Muslims in the first third of the 20th century, one should note the following basic tendencies. The empire’s vast territorial extent and the poor mobility of its population were the most important factors impeding the establishment of close and long-term ties within the Russian umma. The situation changed fundamentarily with the advent of the First World War when western Tatars who were forced to flee the occupation of their lands by the enemy found themselves in the eastern portions of the empire and became acquainted with their co-religionists from these regions. These processes were strengthened and received a new impulse during the revolution and the civil war. On the whole, we see that the Tatars from the empire’s western regions were actively included in the social and political life of Muslims at the imperial level as a whole. They played an important role in the national movement and in the creation of national state formations, such as the Tatar Autonomy in the Crimea, the independent Azerbaijani state, and in attempts to create an independent state in the Volga–Ural region (Leon Krichinski, the Akhmatovich father and son, and Matvey Sulkevich, among others). In the 1920s and 30s, many of them returned to their homelands where there were Volga–Ural Tatars who had been forced to emigrate. As a result, with the creation of independent states with sometimes unfriendly relations (Soviet Russia and Poland), normal communications among regions of the formerly united empire became practically impossible. However, within the Polish state which included a portion of the Lithuanian lands and the city of Vilnius, not only Polish–Lithuanian Tatars but also émigrés from the eastern territories of the empire (Gayaz Iskhaki and Gayan Vaisov, among others) played an important role in the life of the Muslim community.