Commissar and Mullah: Soviet-Muslim Policy from 1917 to 1924

During the revolutionary period the Soviets came into political and cultural conflict with Russia's Muslims. Despite indications that the majority of Muslims desired political unification based on their Islamic heritage, the Party divided them into separate "nationalities" along narrow ethnic lines, incorporated most into the RSFSR, and attempted to uproot traditional Islamic institutions and customs under the aegis of class war. Resistance took the form of pan-Muslim nationalism, a reformi...