Allah's Kolkhozes

Stéphane A. Dudoignon, Christian Noack

"The larger part of the Muslim population in the Soviet realm lived and continues to live in rural areas. Other than in many parts of the present-day world of Islam, alternative, self-segregated, often anti-establishment Muslim congregations emerged outside the big urban agglomerations of the former USSR. Among other factors of this emergence can be mentioned: the mass resettlements operated from the 1940s to the 1970s towards cash-crop growing lowlands; the tight limitation on the drift from the land by the Soviet authorities; the relative autonomy enjoyed by rural production units endowed with specialised economic profiles; and the liberalisation of religious practice in the wake of de-Stalinisation. Eleven case studies trace the transformations of Soviet and post-Soviet Islam within the former collectivised villages in Central Asia, the Caucasus and Inner Russia. The authors...