The All-Russian Muslim Movement

The October Manifesto of 1905 conceded the right of political assembly and popular representation to the population of the empire. The nascent elites of the Muslims of European Russia and Transcaucasia seized this opportunity to launch an empire-wide political movement that sought to speak in the name of all the Muslims of the empire in the newly granted institution of popular representation, the State Duma. Both in the All-Russian Muslim movement and in the Duma, however, Turkestan's participation remained minimal.

Existing scholarship has tended to endow the All-Russian Muslim movement with immense authority. Its creation, and the convocation of three congresses in the years 1905-1906, is seen as proof of the existence of a political and cultural unity among the empire's Muslim population. In fact, the movement was dominated by Tatar and Transcaucasian public figures, many of whom had received foreign educations, and the third congress was the only one to include delegates from Turkestan. That congress decided to create a political party (Rusya Musulmanlarïnïng Ittifaqï, Union of Russian Muslims) to work for the defense of the religious and cultural rights of the Muslims of the empire through the new quasiconstitutional means allowed by the October Manifesto.^[48] As such, this congress marked the political victory of Jadidism among the Muslims of Russia and Transcaucasia, but it had little impact on Turkestan. The congress also decided to ally the movement with the Constitutional Democrats (Kadets) in mainstream Russian politics. This alliance was hardly surprising. Jadid thinking consistently saw the enlightenment of individuals as the true path for the progress of society. This individualistic thrust of their thinking gave the Jadids a natural affinity for political liberalism. The political program adopted by the Muslim Faction was hardly distinguishable from that of the Kadets except for a few clauses specifying Muslim religious rights.^[49] Tatar and Transcaucasian Muslim elites could by now speak the language of Russian politics and engage the state (and other political parties) in a discourse of political rights that

[48] On Muslim political activity in this period, see Musa Jarullah Bigi, Islahat esaslari ; A. Arsharuni and Kh. Gabidullin, Ocherki panislamizma i pantiurkizma v Rossii (Moscow, 1931), 23-33; Serge A. Zenkovsky, Pan-Turkism and Islam in Russia (Cambridge, 1960), ch. 4.

[49] Programma Musul'manskoi gruppy v 2-oi Gosudarstvennoi Dume (St. Petersburg, 1907), art. 15n, 22-25, and 41, were the only parts of the document specific to the Muslim community.

required a vocabulary entirely different from the discourse of cultural reform within Muslim society. In Central Asia, on the other hand, no groups yet existed that could participate in such an enterprise. The disparity between the language of the program of the Muslim political movement and that of cultural debate in Turkestan is indicative of the marginal position Turkestan occupied in the political movement. The agenda of the political movement was set by the largely secular elites of the Muslims of European Russia, with little contribution coming from Turkestan. There were no Central Asian delegates at the first two congresses and only a few at the third,^[50] where the question of creating a Muslim spiritual assembly for Turkestan received some attention.^[51] Only one Central Asian was elected to a commission of the congress.^[52] In any case, the congress's deliberations never took practical form, and the organs of empire-wide organization of the Muslim community remained on paper only.

On 3 June 1907, Prime Minister P. Stolypin dissolved the Second Duma and revamped electoral laws in an attempt to manufacture a more pliant legislature. Representation of inorodtsy was cut drastically, and Turkestan was completely disenfranchised. This coup also put an end to the Muslim congresses, and their deliberations came to naught. The state never allowed the Ittifaq to register as a political party^[53] and in the increasingly repressive political climate after 1907, even the purely cultural and educational activities of the body atrophied. Muslim political activity was restricted to a small Muslim Faction in the Duma. Legal action had strict limits, as the attempt by members of the Muslim Faction to organize a Fourth Muslim Congress with official permission showed. The conference, convened in St. Petersburg in June 1914 to allow members of the Muslim Faction to discuss educational and religious issues with their constituents, was attended by forty officially approved delegates, who met behind closed doors. In this era of restricted activity, Turkestan again took a back seat. Now that the Muslim Faction in the

[50] The available documents of the congress do not provide a complete list of participants. We know for certain of only two Turkestanis who attended the meeting: Mahmud Khoja Behbudi (cf. Behbudi, "Qasd-i safar," Ayina ,24 May 1914, 598) and AminjanIlhamjanov,whose name appears on the list of officials elected by the meeting.

[51] "Bizlargha ne lazim?"Khurshid , 21 September 1906.

[52] Aminjan Ilhamjanov was elected to the fifteen-member Presidium, but his seems to be the only Turkestani name on that or the three other commissions elected by the congress: III-i Vserossusii Musul'manskii s"ezd (Kazan, 1906), 2, 7, 11, 13-14; cf. A. Z. V. Togan, Bugunkii Turkili (Turkistan) ve Yakin Taribi , 2nd ed. (Istanbul, 1981), 348.

[53] Alfred Levin, The Third Duma: Electron and Profile (Hamden, Conn., 1973), 56-57.

Duma did not contain even a token Turkestani contingent, its concerns focused more and more on Tatar and Transcaucasian issues. Of the forty delegates invited to attend the Fourth Muslim Congress in 1914, only three represented Turkestan (and one of them was a Tatar), even though the agenda included the creation of a spiritual assembly for Turkestan.^[54] Turkestani newspapers expressed their disappointment at this snub, but they could do little but bemoan the lack of qualified and committed individuals in Central Asia.^[55]