Not a Threat? The Russian Elites' Disregard for the "Islamist Danger" in the North Caucasus in the 1990s

IF 0.3 3区 历史学 Q2 HISTORY KRITIKA-EXPLORATIONS IN RUSSIAN AND EURASIAN HISTORY Pub Date : 2023-09-01 DOI:10.1353/kri.2023.a910980
Vassily A. Klimentov
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Bennigsen postulated that, because Soviet Muslims actively nurtured plans to overthrow the communist regime, Soviet authorities both in Moscow and the Muslim republics were in constant fear of Islam and closely monitored the \"parallel clergy,\" the Islamic scholars who escaped registration by official institutions tasked with policing religion.1 The Bennigsen school also convinced the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the necessity to nurture the opposition among Soviet Muslims to the Soviet authorities by smuggling Islamic literature to them and broadcasting Islamic radio content in Muslim regions. These attempts to undermine the Soviet system proved, however, underwhelming.2 When the USSR collapsed, Soviet Muslims often proved to be the most loyal of Soviet citizens and Islam did not become a driving factor for separatism.3 Except for Azerbaijan, which became embroiled in a war with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh, Muslim republics left the Soviet Union unwillingly. [End Page 817] Overall, policymakers in Moscow disregarded Islam as a source of dispute throughout the Soviet period. They did not see it as a challenge to communism.4 Despite being discredited, the Bennigsen school has had a long life, continuing to influence studies on Soviet and post-Soviet Muslims. Western and Russian scholars and policymakers, often from among security elites, have built on its legacy to analyze the rise of Islamism, a movement that conceives of Islam as a political ideology and hopes for the establishment of a theocratic state in the post-Soviet space.5 Constructing a retrospectively deterministic narrative after the consolidation of radical Islamism in the North Caucasus in the 2000s, they have argued that the Soviet and Russian states consistently fought Islamism in the 20th century. Such accounts have too often traced uncritical filiations from the Iranian Revolution to the Soviet-Afghan War, the Tajik Civil War, the First and Second Chechen Wars and, ultimately, the war in Syria.6 Since 1999, they have followed the ideology of Vladimir Putin's regime, which has repeatedly emphasized the existential and, importantly, foreign threat that Islamism represented to Russia.7 In that narrative Moscow appeared to have continuously been at the forefront of a messianic civilizational fight against Islamism. [End Page 818] Other scholars have questioned such accounts, highlighting how perceptions and policies on Islam connected with the longue durée of Russia's relationship with Muslims that was marked by orientalist stereotypes and, depending on the period, accommodation or confrontation;8 how the Soviets had a differentiated assessment of religion between domestic and foreign policy, acknowledging that Islam could be a \"progressive factor\" in the Third World;9 how the Soviet Politburo only took Islamism seriously in Afghanistan after 1986, seeing it as a weapon instrumentalized by the West as part of the Cold War;10 how the Soviets had a poor understanding of sectarian tensions within Islam;11 how Islamism was a secondary factor in the Tajik Civil War and, even more so, in the First Chechen War; and how even the religionization of the North Caucasian insurgents' platform during the Second Chechen War had as much to do with ideology as with instrumentality.12 No research has, however, investigated how Russian elites saw Islamism as it developed in the former Soviet Union and how their assessments connected with the Soviet legacy. While some studies have paid attention to [End Page 819] the continuity of the state in Russia after the Cold War, none has explored what it meant for Russia's relationship with Islam.13 By stressing the Soviet collapse, most of the research obscures the continuities in security assessments of Islamism between the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. 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Abstract

Not a Threat?The Russian Elites' Disregard for the "Islamist Danger" in the North Caucasus in the 1990s Vassily A. Klimentov (bio) Since the 1980s, Western pundits have claimed that Muslims in the Soviet Union would rise to challenge communism. Proponents of this school of thought centered on Alexandre Bennigsen, the Russian émigré scholar and specialist on Islam. Bennigsen postulated that, because Soviet Muslims actively nurtured plans to overthrow the communist regime, Soviet authorities both in Moscow and the Muslim republics were in constant fear of Islam and closely monitored the "parallel clergy," the Islamic scholars who escaped registration by official institutions tasked with policing religion.1 The Bennigsen school also convinced the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the necessity to nurture the opposition among Soviet Muslims to the Soviet authorities by smuggling Islamic literature to them and broadcasting Islamic radio content in Muslim regions. These attempts to undermine the Soviet system proved, however, underwhelming.2 When the USSR collapsed, Soviet Muslims often proved to be the most loyal of Soviet citizens and Islam did not become a driving factor for separatism.3 Except for Azerbaijan, which became embroiled in a war with Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh, Muslim republics left the Soviet Union unwillingly. [End Page 817] Overall, policymakers in Moscow disregarded Islam as a source of dispute throughout the Soviet period. They did not see it as a challenge to communism.4 Despite being discredited, the Bennigsen school has had a long life, continuing to influence studies on Soviet and post-Soviet Muslims. Western and Russian scholars and policymakers, often from among security elites, have built on its legacy to analyze the rise of Islamism, a movement that conceives of Islam as a political ideology and hopes for the establishment of a theocratic state in the post-Soviet space.5 Constructing a retrospectively deterministic narrative after the consolidation of radical Islamism in the North Caucasus in the 2000s, they have argued that the Soviet and Russian states consistently fought Islamism in the 20th century. Such accounts have too often traced uncritical filiations from the Iranian Revolution to the Soviet-Afghan War, the Tajik Civil War, the First and Second Chechen Wars and, ultimately, the war in Syria.6 Since 1999, they have followed the ideology of Vladimir Putin's regime, which has repeatedly emphasized the existential and, importantly, foreign threat that Islamism represented to Russia.7 In that narrative Moscow appeared to have continuously been at the forefront of a messianic civilizational fight against Islamism. [End Page 818] Other scholars have questioned such accounts, highlighting how perceptions and policies on Islam connected with the longue durée of Russia's relationship with Muslims that was marked by orientalist stereotypes and, depending on the period, accommodation or confrontation;8 how the Soviets had a differentiated assessment of religion between domestic and foreign policy, acknowledging that Islam could be a "progressive factor" in the Third World;9 how the Soviet Politburo only took Islamism seriously in Afghanistan after 1986, seeing it as a weapon instrumentalized by the West as part of the Cold War;10 how the Soviets had a poor understanding of sectarian tensions within Islam;11 how Islamism was a secondary factor in the Tajik Civil War and, even more so, in the First Chechen War; and how even the religionization of the North Caucasian insurgents' platform during the Second Chechen War had as much to do with ideology as with instrumentality.12 No research has, however, investigated how Russian elites saw Islamism as it developed in the former Soviet Union and how their assessments connected with the Soviet legacy. While some studies have paid attention to [End Page 819] the continuity of the state in Russia after the Cold War, none has explored what it meant for Russia's relationship with Islam.13 By stressing the Soviet collapse, most of the research obscures the continuities in security assessments of Islamism between the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. By historicizing the analysis, it is possible to pinpoint the moment of and explain the shift in the Kremlin's assessment of the Islamist danger between the relative disregard it suffered during the Soviet period and the centrality it acquired...
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不是威胁?20世纪90年代俄罗斯精英阶层对北高加索地区“伊斯兰主义危险”的漠视
不是威胁?20世纪80年代以来,西方权威人士宣称苏联的穆斯林将奋起挑战共产主义。这一派思想的支持者以亚历山大·贝尼格森(Alexandre Bennigsen)为中心,他是俄罗斯的移民学者和伊斯兰教专家。贝尼格森认为,由于苏联穆斯林积极策划推翻共产主义政权的计划,莫斯科和穆斯林共和国的苏联当局一直对伊斯兰教感到恐惧,并密切监视“平行神职人员”,这些伊斯兰学者逃避了负责监管宗教的官方机构的登记贝尼格森学派还说服了中央情报局(CIA)有必要通过向苏联穆斯林走私伊斯兰文学和在穆斯林地区播放伊斯兰广播内容来培养他们对苏联当局的反对。然而,事实证明,这些破坏苏联体制的企图并没有给人留下深刻印象当苏联解体时,苏联穆斯林往往被证明是最忠诚的苏联公民,伊斯兰教并没有成为分裂主义的驱动因素除了因纳戈尔诺-卡拉巴赫而卷入与亚美尼亚战争的阿塞拜疆,其他穆斯林共和国都不情愿地离开了苏联。总的来说,莫斯科的政策制定者忽视了伊斯兰教在整个苏联时期是一个争议的来源。他们不认为这是对共产主义的挑战尽管名誉扫地,贝尼格森学院仍然存在了很长一段时间,继续影响着对苏联和后苏联时期穆斯林的研究。西方和俄罗斯的学者和政策制定者,通常来自安全精英,已经在其遗产的基础上分析了伊斯兰主义的兴起,伊斯兰主义运动将伊斯兰教视为一种政治意识形态,并希望在后苏联空间建立一个神权国家在2000年代激进伊斯兰主义在北高加索地区巩固之后,他们构建了一种回顾性的决定论叙事,认为苏联和俄罗斯国家在20世纪一直在与伊斯兰主义作斗争。这样的描述经常将伊朗革命、苏阿战争、塔吉克内战、第一次和第二次车臣战争以及最终的叙利亚战争等不加批判地联系在一起。6自1999年以来,他们一直遵循弗拉基米尔·普京政权的意识形态,该政权一再强调存在主义,重要的是,在这种叙述中,莫斯科似乎一直站在反对伊斯兰主义的弥赛亚文明斗争的最前沿。[End Page 818]其他学者对这种说法提出质疑,强调对伊斯兰教的看法和政策如何与俄罗斯与穆斯林关系的长期发展联系在一起,这种关系以东方主义的刻板印象为特征,并根据时期的不同,有和解或对抗;8苏联如何在国内和外交政策中对宗教进行区分评估,承认伊斯兰教可以成为第三世界的“进步因素”;苏联政治局是如何在1986年后才认真对待阿富汗的伊斯兰教,将其视为西方作为冷战一部分的武器;苏联是如何对伊斯兰教内部的宗派紧张关系缺乏了解;伊斯兰教在塔吉克内战中是次要因素,在第一次车臣战争中更是如此;以及在第二次车臣战争期间,北高加索叛乱分子平台的宗教化与意识形态的关系与工具的关系一样多然而,没有研究调查俄罗斯精英如何看待伊斯兰教在前苏联的发展,以及他们的评估如何与苏联遗产联系起来。虽然一些研究关注了冷战后俄罗斯国家的连续性,但没有一个研究探讨了这对俄罗斯与伊斯兰教的关系意味着什么。13通过强调苏联解体,大多数研究模糊了苏联和后苏联时期伊斯兰教安全评估的连续性。通过将这一分析历史化,我们有可能确定并解释克里姆林宫对伊斯兰主义危险评估的转变,从苏联时期受到的相对漠视到获得的中心地位……
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来源期刊
CiteScore
0.60
自引率
0.00%
发文量
51
期刊介绍: A leading journal of Russian and Eurasian history and culture, Kritika is dedicated to internationalizing the field and making it relevant to a broad interdisciplinary audience. The journal regularly publishes forums, discussions, and special issues; it regularly translates important works by Russian and European scholars into English; and it publishes in every issue in-depth, lengthy review articles, review essays, and reviews of Russian, Eurasian, and European works that are rarely, if ever, reviewed in North American Russian studies journals.
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