Islam in the Soviet Union

[4] In 1989, as part of new Soviet policies that relaxed religious restrictions throughout the country, a number of new Muslim associations were formed and many of the mosques that had been closed by the government were reopened.

In 1917, Bolshevik revolutionary Vladimir Lenin published Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, a highly influential text that shaped communist attitudes towards anti-capitalist struggles, and led to a policy of cultivating left-wing nationalists within the Muslim communities of the Russian Empire and in foreign colonies.

This was in contrast to life under the tsars, when Muslims were suppressed and the Eastern Orthodox Church served in an official capacity in the Russian Empire, an erstwhile Christian state.

On 24 November 1917, weeks after the Bolshevik Revolution, the Bolsheviks issued an appeal to "All the Muslim Workers of Russia and the East" under Lenin:[6] Muslims of Russia… all you whose mosques and prayer houses have been destroyed, whose beliefs and customs have been trampled upon by the tsars and oppressors of Russia: your beliefs and practices, your national and cultural institutions are forever free and inviolate.

[7] In the Union Republics of Central Asia, all of which hosted overwhelmingly Muslim-majority populations, Soviet law mandated Friday as a legal day of rest.

[9] The Soviet government interpreted the paranja (a traditional Central Asian female robe) as an embodiment of Muslim oppression against women; Stalin's policies led to the initiation of Hujum, a Soviet campaign that sought to strong-arm Islamic systems in Central Asia in order to eliminate practices that were seen as perpetuating male–female inequality, particularly the practice of pardah, which directed the large-scale seclusion of women from society.

[12] In addition to his anti-religion policies, Stalin's cult of personality effectively shut out Soviet citizens' freedom to practice Islam, Christianity, or any other religions.

[7][10] During World War II, particularly in 1943–1944, the Soviet government carried out a series of deportations to Siberia and the Union Republics of Central Asia.

Collaboration with Nazi Germany was cited as the official reason for this policy, but this has been disputed by individuals and organizations who characterize them as Soviet attempts at ethnic cleansing.

Among the ethnicities subject to deportation policies (excluding non-Muslims) were the Crimean Tatars,[13] the Chechens,[14] the Ingush, the Balkars, the Karachays, and the Meskhetian Turks.