Tengrist shaman, an ethnic Tuvan, Ai-Churek/Moon Heart, (Died 2010). Tuvans are a Turkic nation within Russian Siberia, photo by Dr Andreas Hugentobler, Wikimedia Commons
Russia twice lost the opportunity to take control of Istanbul, capital of the Ottoman Empire. The first lost chance was in 1793 with the death of Catherine the Great. The second was when Russia, Britain and France agreed that Russia would get the Ottoman capital as the rest of the rest of the Ottoman Empire was carved up as a result of World War One, 1914-1918.
But Russia had to withdraw from the war due to the Bolshevik Revolution at home, and the remaining allies determined the fate of the Ottoman lands. The result was Turkiye, or Turkey, a secular Turkish nation-state that has had its strongest European ties with Germany, but that’s another story.
Western media treats Turkiye and Russia as two distinct realities, without any consideration of their close interrelatedness.
The philosophy of Pan-Turkism, starting among ethnic Turkic intellectuals, began in Hungary with scholar Arminius Vambery, spread to the Russian empire and from thereto the Ottoman Empire, where it inspired the “Young Turk” revolution that helped create the modern nation of Turkiye.
Ironically, the majority of ethnic Turks remained under Russian control, becoming part of the Soviet Union (USSR). Even after the collapse of the USSR, about 70 million ethnic Turks remain in post-Soviet states like Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. These post-Soviet states still have strong ties to Russia, and many of their citizens migrate to Russia for work.
A few million other ethnic Turks; the Tartars, Bashkirs and Yakuts, reside in Russia as full Russian citizens. These three nationalities all have their own semi-autonomous states within Russia. Most of the Yakuts were still tribal semi-nomads until the early 1900s. However, their integration into Russian society has been quite thorough, even while maintaining their ethnic pride.
The Russian defense minister, Sergey Shoigu, is an ethnic Tuvan (a Siberian Turkic group that is Orthodox Christian) and can be seen frequently in the presence of Russian president Vladimir Putin. In his Tuvan hometown, Shoigu is hailed as a reincarnation of Ghengiz Khan, whose Mongol dynasty conquered Russia itself with the help of Turkic tribes.
The Golden Horde, led by Ghengiz Khan’s grandson Batu Khan, conquered Russia and most of Central Asia. When the Horde converted to Islam in 1313, so did their Turkic subject/allies: the Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Kyrgyz, Azeris etc. Before conversion to Islam, the Turkic and Mongol peoples practiced Tengrism, a shamanistic religion that many continue to practice today, even while being outwardly Muslim or Orthodox Christian. (The Mongols, however, largely converted to Buddhism.)
The Russian language is full of Turkic loanwords. Much of the old Russian aristocracy was descended from marriages of Turkic Khans and Slavic Russian princesses. Even Russian Czar Ivan the Terrible, who threw off the “Tartar Yoke” of the Golden Horde, had a Tartar(Turkic) grandmother. Ironically, the nomadic and semi-nomadic Muslim Turkic tribes in Russia had greater freedom of movement than the Christian Slavic peasants who were not freed until the 1860s.
All of this leads me to Pan-Turkism and Islam in Russia, by Serge A. Zenkovsky, published in 1967. The author ponders a question one never hears in the West: why didn’t the ethnic Turks of Russia seize the opportunity to establish a pan-Turkic state as the Russian empire was on the verge of disintegrating in 1918?
First, a note on the integration of Tartars into the Russian state. Tatarstan is currently the most productive state within Russia. It outperforms every other region of Russia in industrial production. It has a high birth rate, and high weekly attendance at the mosques. Russia’s aviation industry is largely headquartered there. Tatarstan actively promotes the peaceful relationship between its Muslim and Christian populations.
Yet, in 2017, Putin eliminated the requirement that all students, Tatar and non-Tatar, in Tatarstan learn the Tartar language in school. This move might seem a blow to Tatar identity, but Putin, a practicing Orthodox Christian, still actively promoted the construction of Mosques within Tatarstan and other Russian republics.
For one recent eight-year period, Russia opened one Mosque per day, or about 2900 Muslim places of prayer. Putin is more comfortable with his citizens being devout Muslims than potential Turkic nationalists.
Putin has practical reasons for this. Turkiye sponsors cultural exchanges with the Turkic-speaking Central Asia republics, which are no longer technically Russian. Pan-Turkism might spread into Russia itself and sow division there, so he has taken measures to discourage ethnic rebellion. Yet he allows Turkic peoples to be devout Muslims and loyal Russian citizens at the same time.
Oddly, the Turkic intellectuals of the Bolshevik period thought the same way. Zenkovsky notes that pan-Turkic nationalism was weak in the rural villages. There was no pan-Turkic networks in place to seize power.
Islam was the driving force among the Turkic nationalities, and the glue that held their societies together at the local level. Turkic intellectuals in the Russian empire cited Islam as the movement with the greatest potential for their long-term empowerment.
Ironically, atheistic Communism was seen as a viable new philosophy on which to build an international order. Zenkovsky cites Lebanese thinker Nabih Amin Faris, then chairman of Arab Studies at American University in Beirut, who writes. “The principal message of Islam is the existence of God; true communists must deny the existence of God as article of their faith.” Faris adds that the Koran, unlike communism, allows private property.
Faris writes, “many parallels exist between Islam and Communism and these make a transition from Islam to Communism possible and even natural, once the individual Muslim shifts his emphasis away from the spiritual to the temporal.”(p. 277).
In other words, Russian Turkic nationalists converted to Communism because of its parallels with Islam’s desire to establish a just world order, Zenkovski concludes (p. 279).
The Turkic peoples’ attitude toward Russia is complex. The last Soviet Republic to remain in the USSR was Kazakhstan. It was the most western Soviet republics, the most European, who bolted from the Russian grasp at their first opportunity in the 1990s. Some of this was practical: Central Asia’s railroads and industrial infrastructure were shared with Russia. The Russian space program still launches from Kazakhstan.
And one other consideration: without their attachment to Russia, Central Asia is landlocked. The only other outlet to the world ocean is through China, who has financed much of Central Asia’s economic growth in the post-Soviet decades. The Turks, like their non-Turkic neighbors, the Tajiks, have a complex relationship with China.
Putin’s political party, United Russia, was founded by ethnic Tartars, and has a strong following in half-Muslim Tatarstan.
Russia is now officially Orthodox Christian and Muslim at the same time. Putin remains popular among the Muslim populace in the Caucasus Mountain regions of Russia. Certain aspects of Communism persist of course after seven decades of Soviet influence. Part of what fueled the Soviet/Communist system was the willing participation of Russia’s Turkic Muslims.
Most Western observers of Russia ignore all of this history, choosing instead to portray Russia as merely the property of Putin, who they portray as a cartoon super-villain. Westerners ignore the long, bloody history of Russia and Central Asia, and the peoples who have survived there because of deep spiritual and cultural traditions.
Putin is very aware of the link between Russia’s overlapping ethnic and religious traditions and their role in holding his society together. Western elites in both political and media will continue to misunderstand Russia as long as they fail to do the same.
Sources:
Andras Toth-Czifra, “How to be a successful region in Russia: the case of Tatarstan,” Institute of Modern Russia, February 1, 2022, imrussia.org
Pinar, Ure, Istanbul Kemerburguz University, “Panturkism,” International Encyclopedia of the First World War,” from encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/panturkism
Cyrus Hamlin, “The Dream of Russia,” the Atlantic, December 1886, the Atlantic.com
Serge A. Zenkovsky, Pan-Turkism and Islam in Russia, copyright by the President and Fellows of Harvard College, 1960.
