The Muslim populations of Central Asia and the Caucasus areas posed a particularly vexing problem for the Bolsheviks when they assumed power. Having control of these regions was not something that the Bolsheviks had ideologically prepared for, doubly so since the expected European proletarian revolutions never occurred and the Bolsheviks were left to turn inwards and organize their state. Two basic responses to Islam evolved within the Soviet hierarchy and the crux of both hinged on whether one considered Islam to be a religion or whether it was more of a cultural or ethnic identity. For those Bolsheviks that considered Islam primarily as a religious affiliation, it was an impediment towards the cultivation of a proper class consciousness that befit the Soviet Union. Although he was very canny about it, Stalin increasingly became the leader of this faction (faction being applied here quite loosely). Other Bolsheviks saw that Islam was more of a set of social practices that could be selectively adapted and acculturated to suit Soviet purposes. Prominent among this group was the Tartar Bolshevik Sultan-Galiev who in some ways prefigured Mao and called for communism to be wedded with a firm anti-imperial movement. Sultan-Galiev thought that a pan-Islamic communist movement would allow for the global revolution the Bolsheviks desperately craved, but in the under-developed European empires, not the industrial West.

Underlying both solutions were two basic principles. Firstly, that whatever course Soviet policy took, it would have to serve the needs of the Soviet state. Second, the end goal of Soviet Islamic policy would be the "modernization" of its Islamic citizens. The latter principle meant that the Soviets would attempt to systematize and integrate these regions within the larger Soviet cultural and economic whole. This meant that the state sought to territorialize ethnicity and impose a schematic development upon these regions. part of the way to accomplish this was a policy called korenizatsiia (indiginization) in which the state would promote indigenous cadres for the local Communist party and local government. The state also sponsored cultural activities like national language journals or associations to further modernize these regions.

Although the impulse of the Bolsheviks was to do the opposite of what the tsarist state had done, Moscow's lack of practical knowledge meant that they often recapitulated older Orientalist discourse about the peripheries of empire produced by the previous regime. The Soviet authorities perceived these regions as backwards and by the Stalin era, Islam had increasingly became associated as one of the root causes of this alleged backwardness. Sultan-Galiev had been expelled from the party in 1923 and arrested again in 1928. The cultural agencies set up in the earlier period now emphasized that Islamic religious practices and Imams were resistors to Soviet modernization. One of the symbols of this turn was the hujum of 1927, where the state organized a mass burning of Islamic veils in Uzbekistan.

The veil issue itself encapsulates much of the shortcomings and myopia of Stalinist Islamic policies. The veiling and seclusion of women were not major traits of Uzbek culture prior to the Soviets declaring them to be examples of the backwardness Islam had imposed upon the people. In doing so, the Soviets repacked older tsarist era discourses about Islamic women. Although many local Communist activists were sincere about the emancipation of women, Soviet policies became coupled with other aspects of Soviet rule such as the control over local pastoral herds. Thus defense of the veil became part of a larger defense against the state encroachments on locals.

The climax of the Soviet campaign against Islam peaked in the 1930s as it closed religious schools, substituted state justice over Islamic justice, outlawed polygamy, and forbid Muslims from undertaking the Haj. All throughout this period, Islam had a somewhat underground existence. Although korenizatsiia continued apace, many of these new local leaders found out that Moscow was very far away and pushing an anti-religious line could create disorder that was more trouble than it was worth. Furthermore, the highly decentralized nature of Islam and the deeply ingrained cultural practices meant that it was much harder for the state to root out than Russian Orthodoxy where it could couple anti-religious policies through state control and supervision of the clergy like Patriarch Sergius.

By the postwar era, the state's approach to Islam tended to be benign neglect punctuated by periods of repression (the later was especially true for the Caucasus during wartime). The Soviets heavily promoted local culture and the periods of the Thaw and Brezhnev era were quite fruitful for Central Asian cultural projects, especially cinema. Elements of Islamic culture thus seeped through into this larger local culture. The apparatus of territorialization meant that when the Soviet Union collapsed, there was a leadership cadre ready to assume the mantle of leadership. Islam then reemerged as a symbol of national integration and a means to make diplomatic connections with the Middle East.

Sources

Hirsch, Francine.Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge & the Making of the Soviet Union. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005.

Igmen, Ali F. Speaking Soviet with an Accent: Culture and Power in Kyrgyzstan. Pittsburgh, Pa: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012.

Keller, Shoshana. To Moscow, Not Mecca The Soviet Campaign against Islam in Central Asia, 1917-1941. Westport, Conn: Praeger, 2001.

Martin, Terry. The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001.

Northrop, Douglas Taylor. Veiled Empire: Gender & Power in Stalinist Central Asia. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004.