Eurasianism and political Islam in Russia : ethnoreligious identities in transformation, 1990-2020

Abstract

This dissertation approaches the formation of Russian post-Soviet identity discourse as well as the evolution of the nation’s federal structure of government from the angle of its ethnic and religious minorities. Since late 1990s, the Russian Federation’s Muslim-dominated republics set straight that they expected to become active participants of post-Soviet systemic transition; not as part of Moscow-centered secular structures, but within separate autonomous political-cultural spaces, in which the respective republics could pursue nation-building projects of their own, erected around Islamic values. The dissertation investigates those transformation processes on three case studies (Tatarstan, Chechnya, Dagestan). It further analyzes a variety of concurrent concepts of political Islam, each holding to distinct interpretative imaginaries of modern Russia, and competing for dominance. This political, but more importantly, heuristic emancipation from Russocentric and Eurocentric tropes had far-reaching consequences, not least for the discourse on national identity, Russia’s foreign policy orientation, and the system of federalism in general. In this light, the dissertation interprets Russian society’s progression towards a new Conservatism and Post-secularism, as well as Russia’s discursive positioning on debates over modernity and globalization, not solely as the outcome of so-called siloviki winning the power struggle over liberal democrats, or the hegemonic role of the Russian Orthodox Church, but equally as a reflection of the growing role of Islam and the increasing participation of Muslim agents on national debates. Recentering Islam in contemporary Russian history imposes the question whether the Eurasian turn, which currently lays in the center of scholarly attention, has been precondition to, or consequence of, inner-Islamic dynamics and processes on a regional level. The response to this question deconstructs many prevalent academic positions and recalibrates the modalities through which Russia is perceived.