The Islamic time bomb
Bohdan Nahaylo
While a large body of samizdat documentation has reached the West from various Soviet national minorities, relatively little is known about the circumstances of the 45 million Muslims in the Soviet Union. The Soviet authorities, of course, go to great lengths to promote a favourable image of Soviet Islam to foreigners and claim that the USSR is a true friend and protector of Islam. Considerable information about the situation of Soviet Muslims can, however, be gleaned from Soviet materials intended for internal consumption, and a very different picture emerges.
Today one in every six Soviet citizens comes from a Muslim background. If the Present high birth rate among Soviet Muslims continues, experts predict that by the Year 2000 this ratio will narrow to between one in four and one in three. The traditionally Muslim nationalities live mainly in the Central Asian republics of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tadzhikistan, Kirghizia and Kazakhstan and the republic of Azerbaidzhan. Soviet Central Asia is already an area of surplus manpower, but there appears to be no desire on the part of its population to migrate to the labour-deficit areas in the European part of the Soviet Union and in the regions under development in Siberia. If only in economic terms then, this demographic trend presents a major problem for the Soviet leaders. Their sensitivity is borne out by the studious efforts of Soviet spokesmen to reject any suggestion of a 'Muslim problem' in the Soviet Union. The views of Western analysts on possible consequences of the 'demographic explosion' are scornfully dismissed by Soviet officials as provocative and unfounded speculation. A Turkmen Journalist, S. Atayev, recently accused 'bourgeois scribblers' of ignorance by referring to the nationalities of Soviet Central Asia as 'Muslim peoples'. At the present stage of 'mature socialism', he argued, the Peoples of the USSR were being imbued with 'Soviet patriotism' and 'proletarian internationalism' and the number of religious believers was falling every year. Atayev's remarks are indicative of the official attitude towards Islam within the _Soyiet Union. While Muslims outside the USSR are continually being told that after the Russian Orthodox Church, Islam is the second largest religious group in the Soviet union, and that Soviet Muslims enjoy complete freedom of worship, the real situation is not quite as rosy. Like all uufficially recognised religious groups in the SSR, Soviet Muslims are subjected to strin. gent restrictions on their religious activities. Moreover, with the Soviet state committed to the eventual 'withering away' of religion, the Soviet Constitution guarantees citizens the 'right to conduct atheistic propaganda' but not to preach and teach religious beliefs. Such activities are actually punishable under Soviet law if they are carried out in a manner disapproved of by the authorities. Far from encouraging Islamic beliefs and traditions, or even maintaining a benevolent neutrality towards them, the Soviet state's policies are aimed at their swift elimination. As Pravda itself admitted last summer, 'we communists are atheists, and are far from welcoming religious fallacies'. Just what this means in practice though, was indicated by an article last October in Kommunist Tadzhikistana. The newspaper reported that within the space of six months in Tadzhikistan alone, official , efforts to overcome 'religious survivals' had involved more than 4000 lectures being given.
Officially, the religious life of Soviet Muslims is controlled by four Muslim boards or spiritual directorates based in Tashkent, Ufa, Makhachkala and Baku. The 1000 or so officially recognised Muslim clerics are expected to operate strictly within the narrow confines permitted by the authorities.
Before 1917 there were more than 26,000 mosques in the Russian Empire served by some 45,000 Muslim clerics. Today, the number of functioning mosques is estimated at around 300 and, in the entire USSR, only two Islamic theological schools exist with some 60 students. Not surprisingly, there is now also in the Soviet Union a clandestinely organised unofficial Islam, with its own clergy, Koranic schools, religious places of worship, and an even larger number of adherents. It is this powerful 'underground' network, based mainly on the Sufi brotherhoods, which has helped Islam to survive, not only as a religion but also as a way of life. Recent Soviet surveys of traditionally Muslim peoples showed that around 80 per cent of those questioned declared their firm adherence to Islam.
Faced with the persistence of 'religious and national vestiges' and the high birth rate among Soviet Muslims, the authorities are worried about the possible effects of foreign radio broadcasts, notably American, Chinese and Iranian. In 1979, for example, a certain N. Bairamsakhatov, responsible for agitprop in Turkmenistan, revealed in a brochure that some of the Turkmen population had not only been listening regularly to religious broadcasts from Iran in their native language, but that cassette tape recordings of these broadcasts had been made by mullahs and played before groups of Muslims throughout the republic. More recently, on 19 December, the chairman of the KGB in Azerbaidzhan, Major-General Z. Yusif-Zade, warned that the USSR's enemies were carrying out 'ideological sabotage' in the republic.
Yusif-Zade's article also indicated that there were serious problems within Azerbaidzhan. The authorities, he said, were engaged in 'rebuffing manifestations of nationalism and chauvinism'. They were working to 'curb anti-social actions by the sectarian underground and the reactionary Muslim clergy, as well as politically harmful manifestations among certain members of the intelligentsia and the young people'. This admission that 'crimes against the state' are being committed in Azerbaidzhan by 'politically immature' segments of the population, 'especially young people', is particularly significant for two reasons. First, Azerbaidzhan is the only Soviet republic where the Muslim population is fundamentally Shi'ite, as in Iran, rather than Sunni. Secondly, in April 1978. the Azerbaidzhani authorities bowed to national sentiment by abandoning a plan to deprive Azerbaidzhani of its constitutional status as the republic's official language.
Kirghizia, which has a border with China and is only 100 miles away from the Soviet frontier with Afghanistan, appears to be another troubled area. On 4 December the Kirghiz premier Sultan Ibraimov was assassinated and,rather surprisingly, the Soviet authorities announced that he had been killed for political reasons — allegedly by Muslim nationalists. This is the first time since the 1940s that a political assassination of a -senior official has been admitted.
In recent years the Soviet authorities have increased 'internationalist and atheist education', and the teaching of Russian in the traditionally Muslim areas. Reports in the Soviet press indicate however that the creation of a new Soviet, Russian-speaking, citizen is not progressing quite as smoothly and as quickly as they would like. In Turkmenistan, according to a recent speech by the Turkmen party leader, M. Gapurov, mperalist propaganda' and 'self-appointed charlatans' are partly responsible for perpetuating 'narrow nationalistic views'. Religion apparently 'occupies a particularly firm position in family and domestic rites' in Tadjikistan, Here, 'many religious rites are observed even by representatives of the intelligentsia' who 'sometimes develop a split personality, as it were, when knowledge stands on one side and convictions on the other'. In Kirghizia, there are reported to be those 'who consider that a person who observes Islamic rituals is displaying "respect" for his nation.' One Soviet author claimed recently that, since the Revolution, Soviet Muslims have 'marched to unprecedented heights of eco nomic, social and cultural development'. However after 60 years of Soviet rule, the traditionally Muslim nationalities remain unassimilated, and their national assertiveness is growing rather than declining.
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