At the end of last week, an order was published by Vladimir Putin to the Russian government, together with the government of Tatarstan and with the participation of «interested religious organizations», to submit proposals for the celebration of the 1100th anniversary of the birth of Christ. The persons responsible for this, according to the order, are the head of the Russian government, Mikhail Mishustin, and the president of Tatarstan, Rustam Minnikhanov. The celebrations themselves are scheduled to take place in 2022 — exactly 1100 years after the adoption of Islam as the state religion of Volga-Bulgaria. This is often informally presented as 1100 years since the emergence of Islam on the territory of present-day Russia, which did not yet exist as a state, at least on this territory.
Let’s first talk about the date itself, its interpretation and celebration. Of course, the calculation of the emergence of Islam in the territory of modern Russia from its adoption as the state religion of Volga-Bulgaria can cause disputes. In particular, Muslims from Dagestan may point out that Islam came to their country with the companions of the Prophet, may Allah bless him and salute him. But one must understand that such dates and their celebrations are not so much about historical accuracy as they are about political demonstration. The leadership of Dagestan could also claim the role of the homeland and stronghold of Islam in the territory of present-day Russia. However, considering that its last two leaders were Moscow’s viceroys, ruling Dagestan with a team of «Varangians» on secondment, it is not expected that they will fight for the role of «the leading republic of Russian Islam».
In Tatarstan, however, there is still a local, albeit capitulating, leadership rather than one sent from Moscow. Although it has signed a bilateral agreement between the republic and the federal center, it still retains the title of president of the republic, rather than «head» as in all other republics. In this context, the fact that Tatarstan claims to be the political center of Islam in Russia objectively corresponds to its greater autonomy and status compared to other Muslim republics.
The second point is how important it is for the Muslims of Russia to attach importance to the officialdom of the Russian state. Our attitude towards the ruling regime in Russia is well known to our readers, but given the rampant Islamophobia in the world and even in Russia itself, we have to separate the wheat from the chaff. This kind of celebration is not an initiative of the Kremlin, but an initiative of the leadership of Tatarstan, and even earlier of the Tatar Muslim community, which emerged as a response to the celebration of the millennium of the baptism of Rus in the late Soviet years. It became clear then that communist ideology was becoming a thing of the past, and that the emerging ideological vacuum would be filled, among other things, by religion. And in Russia, the Russian Orthodox Church would try to do this primarily by claiming the role of state church, which it effectively became under Putin and Patriarch Kirill. Therefore, representatives of the Muslim establishment at that moment came up with the idea of solemnly marking the acceptance of Islam by Volga-Bulgaria as an analogy to the acceptance of Orthodoxy by Kievan Rus (then still part of the USSR, which included Ukraine).
The question is, what significance can all this have now? At the time when this idea was born, the processes of both Orthodox and Islamic revival, as well as the sovereignty of the republics, were gaining strength. Therefore, this idea, combining the aspect of Islamic revival with the aspect of revival of Tatar statehood, was perfectly in line with the spirit of the time. But what about now? On the one hand, under Putin, the Islamic revival has been and continues to be dealt heavy blows, while the Russian Orthodox Church has been transformed from the «first among equals» to the «first among unequals». On the other hand, the sovereignty and statehood of Tatarstan, acquired in the 1990s, have been reduced to the symbolic level. Thus, in the current conditions, this initiative, which aims to show that Islam on the territory of Russia has the same historical rights as Orthodoxy and is based on the ancient state history embodied today in Tatarstan, will rather illustrate the opposite. On the other hand, the 1100th anniversary of the acceptance of Islam by the ancient Muslim state of Northern Eurasia will be celebrated in 2022. And theoretically, there is a chance that by then, Muslims will be able to give this celebration its original meaning…