Union of the Muslims of Russia
Its political agenda was liberal-constitutional, closely aligned to that of the Kadet Party; the Islamic reform movement of Jadidism was an important influence.
Under Ivan, noble Muslims were allowed to keep their titles and their Russian serfs, while the middle part of the 18th century saw the destruction of 418 of Kazan's 536 mosques.
[3] The conquest of Central Asia in the latter half of the 19th century had seen Muslim leaders call for Jihads against the Russian soldiers.
The desired effect was for "backwards" Muslim culture to "die out" over time without provoking a "fanatical" answer.
[6] The main part of the Jadid reform program was the introduction of the phonetic "new method" (usul al-jadid) of teaching Arabic in Maktabs.
Additionally, they promoted the cultural unification and "awakening" of Russian muslims through the adoption of a single language, Ottoman.
Moslems and Russians can plow, sow, raise cattle, trade and make their livings together, or side-by-side.
In Central Asia, where printing had only been introduced after the Russian invasion, the Jadids founded Kutubkhana, combined bookstores and publishing houses.
According to M. Pinegin, an Kazan official tasked with censorship, their ideological alignment was rather clear: "The ideals and aims of nearly all Muslim newspapers and journals are the same, and their orientation can only be described as Nationalist-Progressive".
[14] Central Asian Jadids were influenced by Tatar ideas, but consisted out of a bourgeois middle class created by a cotton boom.
[18] The reason for Jadid dominance can instead be found in the fact that the introduction of a rational, public discourse about necessary reforms of society was itself an integral part of their program, while the Kadimists accepted the new ways of communication only grudgingly.
Between 1904 and 1907, old problems of the Russian Empire (rising politicisation, economic crisis and agrarian question) met with short-term causes, especially the St. Petersburg Bloody Sunday.
During the next years, a decay of autocratic power allowed opposition groups to discuss the foundations of the Russian state in a never-before seen scope.
After authorities had denied a formal permission for a meeting due to a "improper choice of place and time", the congress was moved to the river steamer Gustav Struve.
[24] After a ten hour meeting, the delegates in a final statement pledged themselves to the founding of a Union of the Muslims of Russia.
Unsatisfied, the Kazan Jadids, despite the first congress' decision not to found a party, formed a commission for an own political programme.
However, the delegates there would only be able to discuss made facts: Ibragimov and Yusuf Akçura, two of the most prominent Volga Tatars, had in the meantime joined the central executive committee of the Kadet Party.
There, the Kadets adopted several of their suggestions to their party program: The traditional rights of Muslims should be respected, the Muftiate should be autonomous and school education should take place in the mother tongue of the pupils.
Under these circumstances I cannot understand how one can talk of a Union..."[26]Several of the more radical delegates, organised around the newspaper Täng (Dawn) and ideologically nearer to the Social Revolutionaries, instead voted for an alliance with Socialist parties.
The left members of the Ittifaq more pointedly criticised the creation of a party ignoring the element of class, but acknowledged the Union's primacy despite Ibragimov's provocations.
The Muslim delegates actively participated in the Duma, but all structures like party or press organs where still under construction.
In practice, they still mostly followed the Ittifaq line, especially voting together with the Kadets against Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin's agricultural policies.
[32] When Stolypin dissolved the second Duma and subsequently changed election procedures, Central Asian Muslims were completely barred from voting.
This also included campaigns by conservative rural Ulama, who in petitions declared lists of Jadids to be "pan-Turkists, pan-Islamists, and singers of the Marseillaise" who were collecting money for the Turkish fleet.
[39] The February Revolution and the return of about a million of highly politicised Muslim soldiers invigorated the Ittifaq, as it did other parties.
This, the dominance of Volga Tatars in the newly-created Muslim National Council (Milli Sura) as well as their attempts at an alliance with the provisional government led to their complete isolation.
