The leading Russian Arabist, author of 24 books and about 450 articles, R. G. Landa could not ignore the most important problem for the history and modernity of Russia-the role of Muslims and the Muslim community in its historical existence, especially when starting from the turn of the 1980s-1990s this problem became extremely acute. The researcher has repeatedly addressed the topic of modern Islam in Russia and the CIS, both in historical terms and in terms of studying modernity. He has published a number of scientific reports, articles and books on this topic.

This peer-reviewed book is perhaps the most comprehensive and fundamental domestic study devoted to the role and place of Islam and Muslims in the history of our country from ancient times to the present day.

R. G. Landa begins the story of the relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims under the shadow of the Russian state from the earliest times, when Russia, and Russia in its own sense of the word, did not yet exist. However, there was a territory inhabited by eastern Slavs mixed with Ugro-Finns, which closely interacted with the nomadic Turkic-speaking steppe in the south, and Iranian-Alanian ethnic elements in the Caucasus. Later, when the Old Russian state was already formed, it retained ties with the steppe Turks, the peoples of the Caucasus, and the lands of the Volga-Kama basin, where Volga Bulgaria was formed almost simultaneously with Russia, in which the dominant position was occupied by the Turkic-speaking ethnic element. Such a geopolitical position of Russia, its close ethnic ties with the world of the East, as R. G. Landa quite rightly notes, were a prologue to close Russian-Muslim contacts in the future.

Specifically, the establishment of ties between Russia and the world of Islam was facilitated by the spread of the Muslim religion in the Caucasus, mainly in Dagestan, the conversion to the Muslim faith of the first ruling elite, and then the bulk of the population of Volga Bulgaria, and the establishment of mutually beneficial trade contacts between Russia and the Abbasid (Baghdad) caliphate, which occurred through the mediation of the Khazars , then he fought, then lived peacefully with the Muslim Arabs, and with the ancestors of the Russians. The exceptional importance of trade contacts with the Arab-Muslim state for Ancient Russia is evidenced by the fact that most of the coin hoards discovered on the territory of Ancient Russia contain coins of Arab-Muslim origin, which were the main means of accumulation for ancient Russian merchants.

A new stage of relations between the future Russia and the Muslim world, R. G. Landa notes, came in the era of the Mongol conquests and the subsequent formation of the Golden Horde. It is known that the first collectors of tribute in favor of the Horde khans in Russia were tax collectors-

Muslims, whom the Russians called "bessermens". The actual Muslim influence on Russia through the Golden Horde was further strengthened when it became a Muslim state. While making no secret of the newfangled tendencies to extol the consequences of the Horde's rule over Russia, the tragic consequences of the Mongol invasion and the subsequent two and a half centuries of Horde rule, R. G. Landa tries at the same time to identify those aspects of the Horde's political and everyday culture that were imprinted in the soul of the Great Russian ethnic group that was actively forming at that time and contributed to the formation of a centralized Russian state. states.

The eastern, Muslim influence became even more significant for Russian culture, as R. G. Landa shows, when Muscovy in the XV-XVIII centuries won a victory over the khanates formed as a result of the collapse of the Golden Horde. After all, it was in those years that vast territories inhabited by Muslims became part of the Russian state and" under the high hand " of the Moscow Grand Duke (later the tsar) passed many service Tatars, whose descendants, although they adopted Orthodoxy, learned the Russian language and began to consider themselves Russian boyars and nobles, still retained many purely eastern features in everyday life, in behavior, in the methods of military affairs.

Tatar merchants and industrialists made a significant contribution to strengthening the economic power of the Russian state, contributing to the development of bourgeois relations, unlike their Russian Orthodox brethren, who often relied on serf labor. The Russian tsar himself took the place of the Golden Horde Khan in the minds of the Muslims under his control and the Muslim inhabitants of neighboring state entities. After all, it is not by chance that the Emperor of All Russia was later called the " White Tsar "or" White Padishah", as the Horde Khan was once called. True, in that historical period, the policy of the Russian autocrats towards their Muslim subjects was neither tolerant, nor generous, nor far-sighted. In my opinion, the monograph's author's opinion about this period of Russian-Muslim relations is quite correct, when he writes that over those long years "both Orthodox Russians and Muslims have changed in many ways, learned a lot from each other. And this deserves to be studied not less, but more, than wars, destruction, looting, oppression and other negative experiences of mutual communication " (p. 85).

New, more favorable times for Islam and Muslims in the Russian Empire, R. G. Landa notes, came at the end of the XVIII century, when Catherine II, who was established on the throne, whom contemporaries called Northern Semiramis, initially issued a law on religious tolerance, and then decreed the formation of "Spiritual assemblies for the management of persons of the Mohammedan faith" - muftiats. On the one hand, the Russian government appointed the heads of such institutions, but on the other hand, they were fully supported and rewarded with awards, as well as the most prominent mullahs. Due to these and many other favorable circumstances, the author of the reviewed work rightly notes, "the Muslim clergy, as well as a significant part, if not the majority, of the adherents of Islam in the Russian Empire from about the end of the XVIII century.began to be politically inclined to cooperate with the Russian authorities" (p. 110).

Of course, R. G. Landa does not in any way claim that Russian-Muslim relations under the shadow of the Russian Empire began to have a smooth and harmonious character in the 19th century. On the contrary, it does not hide the entire tragedy of the Caucasian War and the colonial conquest of Central Asia (although the latter was carried out with much "less blood") and shows the negative consequences of colonial rule in the Muslim regions of the empire. At the same time, he does not turn a blind eye to the positive things that interaction with the Russian administration and Russian culture has brought to Muslim peoples. The book notes that, coming into contact with Islam and Muslims, "Russian military men, managers, and intellectuals learned a lot and learned a lot" (p. 143): they learned to respect the valiant Muslim leaders they defeated, to understand the Muslim society with which they dealt, and to use a number of its institutions for good strengthening the foundations of the imperial state. With all its shortcomings, R. G. notes. According to Landa, the Russian system of governance of Muslim-populated regions has sometimes looked much more attractive than the administrative policies of Western powers in their Muslim-dominated countries.

As shown in the book, the emergence and development of the public (as in the beginning of the XX century in Russian journalism it was customary to call socio-political life) in the modern sense of this word among Russian Muslims was greatly facilitated by the liberal reforms carried out in the Russian Empire in the second half of the XIX century, and attempts to implement them

deepening efforts made by the state leadership after the First Russian Revolution of 1905-1907. It was in the second half of the 19th century and in the last years of the tsarist regime that the Muslim subjects of the Russian Empire formed an idea of some kind of unity (however, it should be noted that very strong ties between various regions inhabited by Muslims, for example, between the Volga Region and Central Asia, existed from time immemorial), new social groups and the pre-proletariat), two main trends in culture developed - the traditionalist (its supporters were called "Kadimists") and the modernist (its adherents were called "jadids"), new educational institutions began to appear; finally, Muslims became more politically active due to their participation in both all-Russian parties and socio-political Muslim organizations. organizations. It was at that time, and even somewhat earlier, that the Russian Muslim Ummah promoted many prominent reformers of Islam, who, as R. G. Landa convincingly shows, were both enlighteners, teachers, writers, and publishers. He writes in detail and fascinatingly about such remarkable figures of Russian Muslim culture as A. Kursavi, Sh. Marjani, K. Nasyri, X. Fayizkhan, I. Gasprinsky, R. Fakhretdin, M. Bigiev, S. Maksudi and many others.

Despite the growing integration of the Russian Muslim community into Russian life, as R. G. Landa notes with sadness, Islamophobic sentiments were very widespread among the Russian state elite in that "fully enlightened" century. And among the enemies of the Muslim religion and Muslim culture, unfortunately, there were not only very limited people, like the notorious obscurantist Senator V. P. Cherevansky, the author of a surprisingly short-sighted book about the world of Islam, but also a major statesman-reformer P. A. Stolypin.

During the First World War, as shown in the book, Muslim soldiers fought valiantly in the ranks of the tsarist army, thus not justifying the calculations of the German and Turkish special services that Russian followers of Islam would side with the Ottoman Sultan-Caliph. As the hardships of wartime worsened, discontent began to grow among the Muslim population of the Empire, which was most pronounced in 1916 during the uprising in Central Asia and Kazakhstan. Nevertheless, R. G. Landa points out that the fall of the autocracy in February 1917 "came like a bolt from the blue" for most Russian Muslims, because for most of them, the overthrow of the "White Tsar" undermined confidence in Russia's ability to serve as a support and protection for its Muslim subjects (p.221). Gradually, loyalist sentiments among the Russian Muslim elite were replaced by a desire for a separate existence from the Russian state - from February to October 1917, sovereign state entities were proclaimed in many Muslim regions of the former Russian Empire.

R. G. Landa devoted many pages of the book to the analysis of the role of Muslims in the Civil War, convincingly showing that it was particularly prolonged and bloody in the Muslim regions of Russia at that time. This character was largely due, in the author's fair opinion, to the fact that the leaders of the Russian Bolsheviks were most often pro-Western, considering the East a stronghold of reaction and counter-revolution. Muslims, on the other hand, were irritated by the blatant godlessness of Soviet officials in Muslim regions and the merciless plunder to which the Red commanders, sometimes of the highest rank, subjected the local population. As for the tsarist system of administration of Muslim lands, it, for all its past effectiveness, along with the collapse of tsarism, completely collapsed. The Bolsheviks, R. G. Landa notes, managed to prevent the secession of the predominantly Muslim-populated Crimea, the North Caucasus, Azerbaijan, the Volga region, Kazakhstan, and Central Asia not only because of the "completely incompetent suicidal policy of the white generals in the Muslim question" (p. 263), and to a much greater extent due to the role played by two prominent Tatar revolutionaries-Mulannur Vakhitov (1885-1918) and Mirsaid Sultan-Galiyev (1892-1940). As revolutionaries and realists at the same time, they managed to develop the foundations of the new government's policy, taking into account the peculiarities of the mentality and culture of the Muslim peoples of Russia, thereby attracting them to their side.

Describing the development of relations between the Soviet government and Islam and Muslims after the end of the Civil War, R. G. Landa tells about the tragedy of M. Sultan-Galiyev, whose remarkable ideas have not lost their significance for the modern East.

used by Bolshevik leaders, primarily I. V. Stalin, and on the activities of Muslim emigration leaders abroad. The book literally brings to life the events of the history of the 1920s and 1930s. The author shows the inconsistency of the process of Sovietization of Muslim regions, revealing both negative, sometimes tragic, and definitely positive aspects of it. It becomes clear to the reader that the policy of building national union republics in Transcaucasia, Central Asia, and Kazakhstan, which, on the one hand, formed modernized national cultures of the peoples of the Soviet East, and on the other, ruthlessly trampled on many native cultural traditions, ultimately gave rise to nationalism and laid time bombs under the foundation of a great power.

Drawing on all the sources available to him, R. G. Landa examines the peculiarities of Stalin's repressions in the Muslim regions of the Soviet Union, showing that they were directed both against the bearers of traditional culture (educated people, ordinary peasants, townspeople, owners of Arabic-language handwritten and printed books) and against the new type of intelligentsia, closely connected with the local party leadership. and the Soviet apparatus. These repressions also did not contribute to the strengthening of friendship between the peoples of the Soviet state.

R. G. Landa shows how Stalin's repressive policy was implemented during the Great Patriotic War, when entire Muslim nations (Chechens, Ingush, Karachays, Balkars, Crimean Tatars) were deported because of the cooperation of individual renegades and traitors from their midst with the fascists, while tens of thousands of sons of these ethnic groups fought valiantly at the front against a common enemy. The deportations of the 1940s bore bitter fruit, the consequences of which we still feel today.

At the same time, the book shows that the war years were a milestone that marked a turn in the attitude of Soviet society towards religion in general and Islam in particular. After all, it was then that the system of Muslim spiritual administrations was recreated, which lasted until the end of Soviet power and has been preserved in a significantly transformed form to this day, and many seemingly completely uprooted traditions of life and beliefs of Muslims began to be restored. Other traditional institutions, as we know, never died: for example, the Central Asian neighborhood community (mahalla), which during the Great Patriotic War was widely used by the authorities of the Central Asian republics to organize the reception of Soviet citizens evacuated from the temporarily occupied and front-line areas of the Soviet state.

Describing the post-war years, which were characterized by generally stable economic and social development of the Soviet Union and its Muslim regions, R. G. Landa noted the following important points in the development of the Muslim republics of the USSR: the increase in the proportion of Muslims among the population of the Soviet Union and the transformation of the USSR by the middle of the XX century into the "fifth Muslim power of the world"; ethnic consolidation of the titular population of the Soviet Muslim republics. the emergence of significant groups of Russian and Russian-speaking populations in traditionally Muslim regions, mainly engaged in industrial production (despite the ambiguity of attitudes towards non-Muslim migrants, "serious problems in the joint life of Muslims and non-Muslims in the USSR did not arise until the end of the 1980s" (p. 323); the rapprochement of the new intelligentsia of the Soviet Muslim peoples with the Russian and Russian-speaking population, the widespread use of the Russian language in this environment; the growth of the educational level of Soviet Muslims, including women; at the same time, the preservation of many traditional institutions of Muslim communities, although sometimes in a significantly transformed form; significant changes in the traditional way of life negative and positive aspects.

The contradictory nature of the development of the Muslim regions of the Soviet Union and the contradictory policy of the central authorities regarding Islam and Muslims, as well as the influence of events in Iran and Afghanistan, according to the author of the book, contributed to the emergence of a Muslim religious opposition (the so-called Wahhabis) in the Muslim regions of the USSR. However, as he shows, this movement may have been part of a worldwide process of strengthening political Islam.

The so-called perestroika, which shattered the foundations of Soviet society, led, according to R. G. Landa, to a number of inter-ethnic and intra-ethnic conflicts in the Muslim regions of the USSR, but not Muslims were the initiators of the collapse of the great power, especially since the first

The post-Soviet years brought disasters rather than prosperity to the former Muslim peoples.

In conclusion, R. G. Landa dwells on the sometimes very tragic events that have affected the Muslim regions of Russia proper and the former Soviet Muslim republics, and mentions the new migration processes that are so noticeable for modern Russia.: "Islam in Russia is treated with respect, it is being studied, and recently more deeply and seriously" (p. 422). For this reason, I think it is worth sharing the researcher's hope that thanks to the wise and patient interaction of Muslims and non-Muslims, the traditions of which have developed over centuries of being together under the shadow of a single state, "the world of Russian Islam will be loyal to Russia and inseparable from it." After all, the very existence of our great power depends on it.

Anyone who wants to better understand the world of Russian Islam, who wants to understand its history and the prospects for the development of the Russian Islamic Ummah, should definitely get acquainted with this remarkable work of a major Russian Orientalist.

Permanent link to this publication: