• A
  • A
  • A
  • ABC
  • ABC
  • ABC
  • А
  • А
  • А
  • А
  • А
Regular version of the site

Muslims, society, and authority in Russian Empire and USSR: The Caucasus

2021/2022
Academic Year
ENG
Instruction in English
3
ECTS credits
Course type:
Elective course
When:
2 year, 1, 2 module

Instructor

Course Syllabus

Abstract

What role does the Caucasus play in modern history of peripheral Muslim societies from the late eighteenth through the beginning of the twenty-first centuries? How did Muslims from the Caucasus enter the hybrid multiethnic Russian polity? What political, social and intellectual effects had the colonial conquest of the region by the Russian empire and subsequent Communist modernization undertaken in the name of anti-colonial struggle? What was the relationship between Caucasian Muslims, Russian state, and society? How and why did the secularist Soviet state attempt to regulate Islam, and what are consequences of such regulation? How did Muslims answered challenges of colonial and Soviet transformation? The class aims to provide students with a greater understanding of the diverse ways of narrating and practicing Islam in Russia’s Caucasus, and to discuss their consequences for social identities, relations of power and creating symbolic universes where believers live. As such this course is envisioned as a final part of the two-year the central historical discipline of the Master’s program “Muslim Worlds in Russia (History and Culture)”. Students are expected to have basic skills of historical source analysis and knowledge of world history and the history of Russia obtained at the bachelor’s (or specialists) level, and on the historiography courses taught in the master’s program. Based on Caucasian materials the course will allow students to master the problems of new imperial history, postcolonial studies and other modern historical approaches. The course shows regional specificity and diversity of Muslim communities in the Russian Empire and the USSR, as well as the politics of power in them. A special attention is paid to issues of regional governance during the imperial period, national delimitation and nation-building during the Soviet period, relations between the center and the Muslim borderlands of the polity, and especially issues of Muslim politics in Russia’s Caucasus, regional Muslim practices and identities. Having attended the course, students get a more nuanced and complete picture of the place of region in the Muslim worlds of modern Russia.
Learning Objectives

Learning Objectives

  • Upon completion of this course, students will know basic concepts and theories of Islamic and Russian studies and use them while analyzing social and religious issues in Russia’s Caucasus;
  • Upon completion of this course, students will know basic concepts and theories of Islamic and Russian studies and use them while analyzing social and religious issues in Russia’s Caucasus; evaluate the impact of the Empire and Soviet Communism on the development of Muslim societies in modern Caucasus; be able to analyze broader key problems of global history of empires including interdisciplinary fields of postcolonial studies, imaginative geography and historical anthropology on the Caucasian data.
  • evaluate the impact of the Empire and Soviet Communism on the development of Muslim societies in modern Caucasus;
  • be able to analyze broader key problems of global history of empires including interdisciplinary fields of postcolonial studies, imaginative geography and historical anthropology on the Caucasian data.
Expected Learning Outcomes

Expected Learning Outcomes

  • Students are required to identify different views in disputes of Islam and its reforming in post-Soviet Caucasus
  • Students are required to know diverse narratives of the Russian conquest of the Caucasus. They must be able to analyze historical sources and literature on Muslim resistance critically.
  • Students must evaluate regional particularities of the Soviet modernization in the region, and be able to analyze its effects
  • Students must know aspects and stages of mental mapping of Islam in Russia’s Caucasus, and explain its importance for modern history of Muslim societies in the region
  • Students must know reference literature on the topic, and be able to analyze primary sources correspondently
  • Students must know the systems of indirect and direct colonial rule in the Caucasus, and be able to compare them with similar regimes in Russia and abroad
  • Students must prove their knowledge of post-colonial studies in the region, and analyze cultural consequences of colonialism
  • Students must prove their knowledge of principal reference works, and critically evaluate contribution of this key literature in the development of Islamic and Caucasus studies
  • Students should be able to characterize re-Islamization of the region basing on sources discussed in the class
Course Contents

Course Contents

  • Unit 1. Approaches to and views of Islam in Russia’s Caucasus revised following the Archival revolution in the 1990s
  • Unit 2. Mental mapping of Muslim Caucasus in tsarist and Soviet Russia
  • Unit 3. Muslim resistance in (post-)colonial political imagination
  • Unit 4. Imperial governance of Muslim “aliens” in the inner North Caucasian frontier of tsarist Russia
  • Unit 5. Orientalism in Russia’s Caucasus
  • Unit 6. Caucasus Muslims in Soviet modernization and nation-building
  • Unit 7. Sacred sites (ziyarat) in cultural memory and political imagination
  • Unit 8. Islamic practices in a Soviet kolkhoz
  • Unit 9. Islamic “revival” in the context of post-Soviet desecularization
  • Unit 10. Rise and decline of jihadism in nowadays Caucasus
  • Unit 0. On-line course
Assessment Elements

Assessment Elements

  • non-blocking Attendance and participation in classroom discussions
  • non-blocking Paper Review
  • non-blocking Class presentation
  • blocking Final Essay
    If student plagiarize, fails to submit a take home final essay or her/his essay is eventually rated as insufficient (grades 0–3), she/he has a make-up exam to be admitted to other examinations.
Interim Assessment

Interim Assessment

  • 2021/2022 2nd module
    0.15 * Class presentation + 0.55 * Final Essay + 0.15 * Attendance and participation in classroom discussions + 0.15 * Paper Review
Bibliography

Bibliography

Recommended Core Bibliography

  • Bobrovnikov, V. (2007). The “Islamic Revival” in Daghestan Twenty Years Later. Central Asia and the Caucasus, 2 (44).
  • Charles King. (2008). The Ghost of Freedom : A History of the Caucasus. Oxford University Press.
  • Kemper, M. (2009). Studying Islam in the Soviet Union. Amsterdam University Press.
  • Saroyan, M., & Walker, E. W. (1997). Minorities, Mullahs and Modernity: Reshaping Community in the Former Soviet Union. eScholarship, University of California.

Recommended Additional Bibliography

  • Abashin, S. (2004). Gellner, “Descendants of Saints”, and Central Asia: Between Islam and Nationalism. Ab Imperio, 3, 535–562.
  • Michael Kemper, & Stephan Conermann. (2011). The Heritage of Soviet Oriental Studies. Routledge.