First World War: Lenin’s pragmatic approach to Russia’s Islamic regions

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/register/first-world-war-lenins-pragmatic-approach-to-russias-islamic-regions-t3tsqtpdk

An open-mindedness towards Muslim issues by the Bolshevik leader was welcomed during the early days of the revolution

Michael Tillotson

March 31 2018, 12:01am, The Times

Lenin sweeps away the old ways, including in 1917 removing special privileges based on faith or nationalityREX FEATURES

Writing in the Bolshevik newspaper Novaya Zhizn (New Life) in 1905, Vladimir Lenin pronounced: “As a system of belief, religion adds to the oppressive woes of the exploited, coarsening and darkening the spiritual and moral life of the masses.”
An atheist from age 16, this reflected his thinking of religion broadly and did not take account of the likely obstacles that Islam would place on the spread of Bolshevism. This was a surprising omission because the census of 1897 revealed almost 14 million Muslims mainly living in the Caucasus, the Volga-Ural regions and Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kirghizia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. These regions considered themselves suppressed by the tsars and the widespread rejoicing that greeted the fall of Nicholas II might have given Lenin grounds for optimism for their willing adoption of his political and social convictions. When conflict between Bolshevism and religion began to emerge as an issue of importance, he was to prove more pragmatic in his approach to Islam than to the various schisms of the Christian faith.

Shortly before he moved the Congress of Soviets from Petrograd to Moscow in March 1918, Lenin was reported to be furious when a mob bawling the Internationale burnt down a Russian Orthodox church in Petrograd. Clearly his fury had not arisen from any religious consideration. He simply did not wish to alienate the churches of Russia while his grip on the country was still tenuous and regional.
A week after he and Leon Trotsky had set themselves up in the Kremlin, a mob of sailors in the square of the nearby Cathedral of Christ the Saviour was thought to be threatening the building. Trotsky, appointed commissar for war after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, hastened to the scene only to discover that the sailors were rioting about not being paid. In his best rhetoric style, he condemned their lack of understanding of the sacrifices the revolution would incur and sent them on their way.
Lenin continued to move cautiously on matters of religion and it seems possible that, as the son of a god-fearing family, he overestimated the influence of the Orthodox church on the proletariat. While the church was everywhere in public life, so were the pagan legends and prejudices that had guided rural life for centuries.

The present-day Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow. The original cathedral was demolished in 1933 on the orders of Joseph Stalin, the Soviet leader, and rebuilt in the 1990sGETTY IMAGES

A woman might pray for the safe delivery of her unborn child, but was as likely to follow the local pagan ritual believed to ensure the same outcome. Priests were unpopular for their venality. A body could be left unburied and a bride waiting at the church door while the family and priest haggled over the fee.
The Orthodox church was divided between those whose humanity led them to welcome the new freedoms and outlook and those who feared for the survival of a vast and powerful structure widely perceived as an integral part of tsarist rule.
The artist Boris Kustodiev confronted the dichotomy in his painting The Bolshevik, in which a figure brandishing a red flag stands in the centre glaring at an Orthodox church. Whether he favoured one over the other is unclear, but the figure holding the flag is entirely menacing.

Boris Kustodiev’s 1920 painting The BolshevikREX FEATURES

In November 1917 the Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia removed special privileges based on faith or nationality, delighting the religious minorities who considered themselves and their respective faiths suppressed under the tsars.
Special consideration was afforded to Muslim minorities of the Caucasus and the south. Lenin declared on November 24: “Muslims of Russia, all you whose mosques and prayer houses have been destroyed, whose beliefs and customs have been trampled upon by the tsars and oppressors of Russia: your beliefs and practices, your national and cultural institutions are forever free and inviolate. Know that your rights, like those of all the peoples of Russia, are under the mighty protection of the revolution.”
The blue touchpaper had been lit and peasants of the mountains and outlying villages rode or walked into their regional capitals, dressed in their finest traditional costumes, to join citizens of the towns, even groups of disaffected soldiers impatiently awaiting repatriation, all joyfully celebrating the promise of freedoms that the Bolshevik mantra and Lenin’s call appeared to promise. Local “soviets” were set up to take control of everyday life as ethnic Russian administrators and police, on occasion fearing for their lives, headed for home.

A 1918 view overlooking the Uspensky Cathedral and the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in MoscowREX FEATURES

There were instances of violence between ethnic Russian and Muslim populations. In Astrakhan, in the Lower Volga region, which had a Muslim tradition reaching back centuries, the situation was particularly violent. Perceiving from this how closely Muslim nationalism was entwined with religious faith and how Islam’s strict code of conduct might be utilised to aid the spread of Bolshevism, Lenin set in process a campaign to persuade the Muslim provinces that their security and future lay with Bolshevism.
Local autonomy was authorised, Friday was recognised as the day of rest and prayer in Muslim regions, and sacred objects and monuments confiscated under the tsars were returned to their homelands. Yet leaders from religions other than Islam appeared in some regions, an especially active example being Stepan Shaumian, an Armenian, in the Caucasus.
Reconciling Russian laws with Sharia presented practical and intellectual challenges. The crimes could readily be brought into line, but the range of punishment, such as the amputation of hands or feet, could not. Muslim condemnation of western practices, such as the consumption of alcohol, could comfortably be left to them because it gave no offence other than to wine producers. With an open-mindedness that contrasted well with other areas of Bolshevik “reform”, special commissions were established to work out ways to eliminate differences between the new laws of Russia and the ancient practices of Islam. Much theoretical work was done, but not a lot was accomplished on the ground. The liberal-minded attitude towards Islam collapsed after Lenin’s death and Stalin came to power in 1924.