S. M. ISKHAKOV. THE FIRST RUSSIAN REVOLUTION AND THE MUSLIMS OF THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE, Moscow: Sotsial'no-politicheskaya mysl, 2007, 400 p.

The reviewed monograph is a fundamental study of the socio-political situation and behavior of Russian Muslims during the first Russian Revolution. It contains a detailed analysis of the Muslim issue in the Russian Empire at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. It is richly documented and very interesting in educational terms. The author has thoroughly studied the domestic and foreign historiography of the topic under study, delved into the reasons for the socio-political activization of Russian Muslims at the dawn of the last century, as well as the circumstances of national and religious conflicts of that time with their participation. The book examines in detail the preparation, course of work and consequences of the All-Russian Muslim Congresses of 1905-1907, presents and compares various versions of the resolutions and programs adopted by them, the texts of which are given in an extensive appendix, and describes the activities of Muslim deputies of the State Duma of all its members in 1906-1917. Much attention is paid to the problems of ethno-social psychology, the peculiarities of the political culture and political behavior of Muslims during the years of revolutionary events that shook the country.

In this connection, we can welcome the author's disagreement with the underestimation of the significance of the Russian revolutions and the desire (now, unfortunately, widespread among some Russian historians) to present these revolutions only "as one of the tragic stages on the path of the country's fall into the historical abyss allegedly due to the folly of the people" (p.41).

Among the advantages of the monograph, I would like to mention S. M. Iskhakov's excellent knowledge of primary sources (which is also characteristic of his other works) and the rich, diverse and very valuable factual basis of the work directly related to this. The style of presentation of the monograph is quite clear, although the perception of the revolution as a "turmoil-a social pool" (p. 318) is very controversial and is more typical of "revolutionophobic" schemes, with which the author seems to disagree.

S. M. Iskhakov - one of the first in our modern historiography-correctly identified the problem of almost complete "ignorance of Russian society" at the beginning of the XX century with the life of Muslims in Russia, although this was first mentioned in 1907. The monograph is not always consistent, but still shows how this" lack of familiarity " harmed the Russian-Muslim rapprochement, often causing mutual misunderstanding, resentment and fears on both sides.

I will not dwell on all the details of Russian-Muslim contacts in 1905-1907. They developed quite inconsistently, overcoming many obstacles, mistakes, and omissions. But the undoubted merit of S. M. Iskhakov is a concrete analysis of everything that hindered and (less) what facilitated these contacts, who needed them and who didn't. At the same time, the author tries to get rid of outdated schemes and dogmas as much as possible, trying not to look everywhere and under any conditions exclusively for the logic of class struggle and social contradictions, typical of any revolutionary situation. On the contrary, it rather convincingly shows the predominance of ethno-cultural, confessional, and traditionally collectivist components in the political behavior of Russian Muslims at the beginning of the 20th century. Almost every section of the monograph reveals the complexity and complexity of the socio-political palette of the Muslim Ummah of Russia, which included both official mullahs, who were mostly "part of the administrative apparatus" of the empire, and elements whose "inertia" and "excessive conformism caused people to be disappointed" (p. 130), and the Muslim bourgeoisie, who wanted changes but feared their "radical" supporters, and the left wing of the community, which was more involved in the revolutionary events than others and learned a lot from the Russian Social Revolutionaries and Social Democrats.

At the same time, S. M. Iskhakov's interesting and multifaceted work has something to argue with. Agreeing with his characterization of the causes of the revolution of 1905-1907, it is worth adding to them the unresolved agrarian and peasant question (which predetermined the "red rooster" in the landlords ' estates), the accumulation of lumpens in the cities ("tramps" like Gorky Chelkash) with their own characteristics.

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the low level of general and political culture that facilitated the success of Zubatovism, Gaponism, monarchist illusions, or, at best, Socialist-revolutionaryism on the eve of 1905. The moral and psychological climate created by all this could hardly contribute to the transition "from a traditional society to an industrial one" (p.41), rather contributing to the disorientation and depoliticization of the social struggle, which often resulted in a traditional, in Pushkin's words, "Russian revolt, meaningless and merciless". Under these conditions, of course, the majority of Muslims could not be drawn into the revolutionary stream, because Islam was fundamentally incompatible with the revolution, and, if anyone remembers, the expression "Islamic revolution", which originated in Iran in 1979, did not exist at the beginning of the XX century and was simply impossible.

An unbiased reader will notice the abundance of exaggerations, subjective judgments and not always harmless assessments in the book. According to the author, Muslims "did not fall under the revolutionary euphoria", because "they had a sense of responsibility for the fate of their homeland and future generations and... did not want to join the turbulent and muddy stream of various extremism and terrorism that was spreading across the country at that time" (p. 4). Probably, the Muslims of that time, including their elite, that's what we thought. Moreover, the top officials of Russia in 1905-1907 could also imagine the revolution in this way. But a modern historian can only follow such a scheme by taking a purely anti-revolutionary position and discarding objectivity, because the content of the revolution was far from being reduced to" extremism and terrorism", although these phenomena, of course, took place.

The author explains many events of 1905 - 1907 with Islamophobia and "Russification intentions" of the imperial authorities (p. 66-67, etc.), "strong missionary influence" (p. 7), which allegedly determined the "alienation of Muslims" from Russian society. There are no words, what was, was. But was this not the fault of the reactionary or simply stagnant part of the Muslim clergy, who protected their parishioners from any outside influences in order to maintain control over them? S. M. Iskhakov does not think so, claiming that "fanaticism was not characteristic of the mass psychology of Muslims" (p. 5). How can this be combined with the statement Gayaz Ishaki, a prominent Tatar politician and writer of those years: "This fanatical and mostly ignorant Muslim clergy, fearing the loss of their huge influence on the people, was against not only everything Russian, but also against everything secular, no matter where it came from" [cit. by: Iskhakov, 2004, p. 47]. In other words, the reasons for "alienation" are not so clear.

According to the author, the Muslim population of Russia at the end of the 19th century faced "an adventurous attempt on the part of the authorities to erase its ethno-confessional identity" (pp. 101-102). How is this proven? The fact that there were rumors about the baptism of Muslims, their fears about the alleged census in 1897 and the efforts of missionaries? But missionary work by the end of the nineteenth century. it was already failing everywhere, and the religious and political ferment of Muslims was growing and even aroused the fears of the authorities, which, according to S. M. Iskhakov, was the fault of" Orientalist experts who deliberately distorted the situation " (p.5). Who they are, the author does not specify, but further clarifies: "Krymsky, like Barthold, failed to understand the psychology of Muslims correctly" (p. 87). The trouble with these scientists, it turns out, is that they allowed the presence of separatist sentiments, especially among the Muslims of the Caucasus and Turkestan. But anyone who thought so is condemned a priori by Iskhakov, which, in my opinion, is wrong, because it contradicts the facts.

Unfortunately, the author repeats in the new monograph his previous characterization of the Jadid movement as "narodnik" (p. 65). In his opinion, the Jadids, being engaged in cultural and educational activities, undertook their "going to the people", but, unlike the Russian narodniks, who "called for rebellion", they remained "loyal citizens" [Iskhakov, 2004, p. 10]. However, what their "narodism" expressed itself in remained unclear. In the history of Russia, narodniks are revolutionaries made up of raznochin intellectuals who went "to the people" in order to raise them to fight the autocracy, and then turned to terror against the tsarist authorities. And the Jadids are mostly liberals from the bourgeoisie and the bourgeois intelligentsia, who pursued primarily the goals of cultural renewal and religious reform, were extremely cautious in politics, and did not want to deal with either revolution or terror. And they did not undertake any "going to the people", because they were far enough away from it. After all, the main part of Muslims was under the control of the "Kadimists", i.e. adherents of the old traditions, who irreconcilably fought with the Jadids and in every possible way interfered with them. Iskhakov's repainting of the Jadids as "narodniks" is not only based on nothing, but also

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it is harmful, because it confuses the reader, obscures the important struggle of the Jadids against the Kadimists at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries, and actually crosses out (without any reason or explanation) an entire epoch in the life of Russian Muslims, which has already been reflected in the scientific literature.

Perhaps the blurring of the difference between Jadids and Kadimists (which, in addition to S. M. Iskhakov, is also supported by the French Islamic scholar S. Dudoignon) somehow supports the idea of the unity of the Muslim Ummah of Russia in 1905 - 1907, which was supposedly a "state within a state" (p. 6), a "single community" (p. 6). 125), etc. But this is not entirely true, because in the presence of a certain religious and ethnic unity within the Ummah, there were serious differences in social, economic, and even confessional and ethnic order, which in 1905 - 1907 determined the political and ideological contradictions among its elite. These contradictions, which severely separated the Jadids and Kadimists, were reflected even within the Jadid camp, among which there were both liberals and conservatives, and in the end even socialists (tangists), people of pro-Russian and pro-Ottoman orientation, "moderates" and not so much, opportunist compromisers and semi-revolutionaries. That is why (and also because of purely personal differences) the Jadids did not create a "truly mass party organization", as the author considers the Union of Russian Muslims - SRM (p.216).

There was a Central Committee of the CPM in 1905-1908, and out of the planned 16 branches, only one was created - in Kazan. The CPM has never had a mass base. Iskhakov considers "about 100 cultural, educational and charitable societies to be 'party cells' of the ramified structure of the Muslim party." But in the source to which he refers (essay by G. Ishaki), there is nothing about " cells "or"structures". Yes, and Iskhakov himself admits that these societies generally "had no formal membership" (p. 216), i.e. they cannot be recognized as cells of any party. Nevertheless, he records already in the middle of 1906 "the dynamic process of creating a coherent political organization with its own special grassroots and central apparatus", without confirming this in any way. And then he cites the testimony of one of the organizers of this party, S. G. Alkin, who pointed out already in the middle of 1907, i.e., a year after the beginning of the "dynamic process", to "the heterogeneity of the social elements of Islam and the consequent impossibility of uniting them all into one political party" (pp. 216, 282).

In other words, they wanted to create a party, but they could not, because the Muslim elite was split not even into two groups, according to Iskhakov (p. 263), but into many of them: "Young Tatars" and Gas princes in the Crimea, "Berek" and Tangists in the Volga region, "Gummet", " Difai", "Geyrat" in Azerbaijan, etc. While recognizing the authority of the SRM, they generally preferred to "refrain from joining any political party" (p. 193). Therefore, the SRM was not a party, but rather a current that expressed the general mood of the Muslim elite of Russia in the early twentieth century, resembling many other similarly unorganized movements of the "Asian Awakening" period, such as the Young Algerians or Young Egyptians.

The monograph's interpretation of the tragedy of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict leaves a heavy impression. The author's sympathies are on the side of Muslims, which is understandable. But he takes his position to the point of absurdity, blaming only the Armenians (or rather the Armenian Dashnaktsutyun party) for everything and irrevocably condemning anyone who thinks otherwise, be it the famous French historian E. Carrer d'Ankoss, Russian Islamic scholar V. O. Bobrovnikov or the April (3rd) Congress in 1905 of an entire party-the RSDLP (pp. 106-113, 145-146). Only sometimes admitting that "the instigators of violence cannot be accurately identified" (p.154), the author generally gives a one-sided description of what happened, completely without caring about caution and tact, which are absolutely necessary when considering any ethno-national contradiction. It is true that he blames the tsarist authorities and the social-Democrats for the tragedy (pp. 149, 155), but only a very small one. All this is regrettable, especially since the entire section on interethnic conflicts (pp. 145-161) is very interesting in terms of facts and figures.

As always, S. M. Iskhakov's writings raise the question of pan-Islamism and pan-Turkism, the very existence of which, and especially the presence of a threat from them to Russia, he simply denies. For him, any mention of these ideological trends is "innuendo", "Islamophobia", "Muslimophobic publications", "invention of European analysts" (pp. 21-23), etc. I have already had to argue with S. M. Iskhakov on this issue [Landa, 2005, pp. 216-218], referring to the opinions of domestic and foreign authorities. This time it is possible to do without it, since the material for evidence is presented by S. M. Iskhakov himself: what pan-Islamism and pan-Turkism are, as well as what they supposedly do not exist, is said on many pages of the book and so often,

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that the reader, perhaps, will not be able to forget about these "non-existent" concepts. And how can we forget about them, if their existence and various aspects were written not only by well-known Islamic scholars-researchers, whose surnames literally dot the text of the monograph, but also by many active figures of the Muslim movement, whom S. M. Iskhakov repeatedly quotes. He cites, in particular, the opinion of the well-known Chechen author A. Avtorkhanov that independence from Russia "was achieved first by the pan-Islamist, then by the pan-Turkist movement" (p. 39). He recognizes (like the rest of the world) J. al-Afghani as the "founder of pan-Islamism", but for some reason gives this teaching a "purely spiritual character", emphasizing that " the masses of Muslims in Russia had "no idea" about Pan-Islamism " (p. 640).

But what does this have to do with the masses of Muslims, who at that time were actually outside politics due to their lack of familiarity with Russian life and literacy? They went wherever their religious leaders led them, among whom there were enough followers of pan-Islamism, which was diligently planted everywhere, including in Russia, by the agents of the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II, about which dozens of books have been written here and abroad. According to S. M. Iskhakov, "education of all Turkic peoples in the spirit of unity, without distinction of race, tribe and territory "contributed to the fact that" the entire Volga and Crimean Tatar intelligentsia was imbued with the idea of unity", but this idea, they say," had nothing to do with the notorious Pan-Islamism " (p.86). What about pan-Turkism? Maybe neither Yu had anything to do with him. Akchurin, who emigrated to Istanbul and became a leading theorist of pan-Turkism there, nor the other leaders of the Muslim movement of 1905 - 1907, A. Agayev and A. Huseynov, who followed him, not to mention G. Ibragimov, who actively fought as an ideologist of both pan-Islamism and pan-Turkism? How to understand the words of A.-M. Topchibashev at the First All-Russian Congress of Muslims of Russia in August 1905?"We are the heirs of the Turks, of the same tribe, of the same roots, of the same religion. The lands of our grandfathers stretched from the Maghreb to Mashriq" (cit. by: [Senyutkina, 2007, p. 250]). But" from the Maghreb to Mashriq " the Muslims of Russia did not have any lands. There were the lands of the Ottomans, whose ethnolinguistic and religious affinity Topchibashev had in mind.

Finally, if all these ideas were just a "bogey", a dummy invented by the authorities, then why did the same G. Ibragimov and some other leaders of the Muslim movement write in January 1906 to the Minister of Internal Affairs N. Durnovo about their determination to "conduct a legitimate struggle against the far-fetched ideas of pan-Islamism" and in the same letter mention the fact of the fact that their "distribution" (p. 207)? Moreover, in August 1906, in a petition addressed to P. A. Stolypin, G. Ibragimov and a group of like-minded people again repeated almost the same words about "attempts to preach among us the utopian teaching of pan-Islamism" (p. 254). One can, of course, assume that Mr. Ibragimov and his friends simply frightened the ministers by asking them for permission to convene Muslim congresses. He said so himself. However, it was hardly possible to frighten such sophisticated and strong-willed politicians as Durnovo and Stolypin. They took seriously the possibility of spreading "utopian" ideas among Muslims, because they were well informed about the corresponding efforts of pan-Islamists and pan-Turkists, although relatively few in number, but actually existing in Russia. The latter, given by S. M. himself. Iskhakov's example of this kind is the affiliation of a member of the Central Committee of the Muslim Party of Russia, the influential Kazan Mullah G. Barudi (Galeev) to the party "Ittihad-i Mukhammedi", created in the Ottoman Empire and calling on all Muslims to rally "around Islam and the Caliph" (p.297).

And here we are confronted with the objective weakness of S. M. Iskhakov as a researcher, namely, with the often encountered, unfortunately, subjective interpretation of the entire abundance of facts and texts collected by him. It is possible to understand humanly his desire to rid the history of the Muslim movement in Russia of many arbitrary labels and unfair assessments, often direct distortions and falsifications. But this should be done while remaining grounded in the facts and not denying the obvious. Otherwise, you will also get an incorrect, distorted picture, an inflection in the other direction, which inevitably provokes the same answer. The Muslim Ummah of Russia, like any other human community, did not consist of angels. She lived in difficult conditions and struggled for her religious, cultural and ethnic identity. In this struggle, it would be strange if at least a small fraction of its elite did not use all available means and methods, including contacts with co - religionists and related peoples, historical allies and patrons, in particular the Muslims of Kashgar, Afghanistan, Iran and, first of all, the Ottoman Empire. And this is not just guesswork and speculation.

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Pan-Turkism, i.e. "radical Turkism", is just a variant of a broader and more ambiguous phenomenon, to which in general all the characteristics of pan-Turkism cannot be transferred (for details, see: [Senyutkina, 2007, p. 7, 55, etc.]). The author mentions O. N. Senyutkina's research devoted to the whole complex complex of these problems (p. 54), but does not take it into account, and the considered work of the philologist V. Kh.Ganiev covers only part of the topic (p. 42). And this is the second weakness of S. M. Iskhakov - underestimation of the work of colleagues, in relation to whom sometimes even an arrogant, dismissive tone is allowed, and their achievements, which somehow enrich our Muslim studies, are in every possible way belittled, at best not noticed.

If S. M. Iskhakov is still somehow tolerant of long-gone authors (with the exception of S. V. Chicherina and some others) and can even praise some of them, for example, L. I. Klimovich, "despite the class approach and other flaws" (p. 33), then in relation to his contemporaries he is completely intolerant and even rude. Thus, while he does not agree with S. B. Senyutkin about the threat that the Muslim movement could pose to the "external security of the state", he allows himself to call Senyutkin's text "irresponsible ranting" (p. 164). Such words addressed to the late author of more than a hundred works on Oriental studies and Islam, in fact the founder of the Nizhny Novgorod school of Islamic Studies, cause me, who personally knew Sergey Borisovich, a sense of legitimate indignation. Moreover, the relevant passages in S. B. Senyutkin's monograph are based on the analysis of materials from the Nizhny Novgorod archives, obviously unknown to S. M. Iskhakov. And Senyutkin's entire text is built on sympathy for Muslims and on refuting their accusations of sympathy for pan-Turkism and pan-Islamism, on affirming the development of the" Tatar national idea "to a certain level," without crossing the line of political and civil loyalty " [Senyutkin, 2001, pp. 304 - 319]. It is surprising, because this coincides with the point of view of S. M. Iskhakov himself, although it was not expressed by him even 6 years before him. Obviously, this was enough to cast a shadow on Impsec. Senyutkin and silence his contribution to the study of the problem instead of paying tribute to him.

S. M. Iskhakov also attacked Z. I. Levin for not recognizing M. Bigiev as a reformer (p. 164). However, Levin is formally correct: the views of Bigiyev and the Jadids close to him "do not correspond to the paradigm of Salafi reformers" [Levin, 2005, p. 194]. Personally, I consider Bigiev a reformer, but in the specific conditions of Russia, which differed from the working conditions of the classics of the Muslim Reformation al-Afghani, M. Abdo and others. Iskhakov was also outraged by the term "fundamentalist", which, in his view, discredits Muslim leaders. But in this case, he simply did not pay attention to the research of Russian Islamic scholars of the last decade (in particular, A.V. Malashenko), who long ago proved the neutrality of the term "fundamentalism", which no longer discredits anyone. In general, it is not necessary to see in any other point of view than Iskhakov's a "conspiracy" with the goal of harming Muslims, and any critical remark against them should be considered an unforgivable heresy.

It is particularly regrettable that Iskhakov did not take into account the above - mentioned monograph by O. N. Senyutkina, the main part of which [Senyutkina, 2007, pp. 114-350] is devoted, in fact, to the same topic as S. M. Iskhakov's book, and it is also based on a rich documentary base. However, everything is more complicated here. For example, while condemning O. N. Senyutkina's characterization of the Jadids ' letter to Stolypin in August 2006 as "hypocritical" in one of her earlier works (she repeated it in her 2007 monograph on p. 274), S. M. Iskhakov himself admits the insincerity of this letter (p.254). He did much the same in his first monograph, when he called the figures I gave for the number of Muslims in Russia in 1910-1923 "ridiculous" and "erroneous", and a few pages later, without any embarrassment, he gave the same figures with reference to the same source [Landa, 1995, p. 206, 308; Iskhakov, 2004, pp. 91-92, 105]. This surprising (not at all naive, but rather dangerous) confidence that everything is possible for him is something "new" in academic practice that can simply destroy it.

Iskhakov attributes to me "an attempt to discredit the attitude of the Muslim community towards the authorities during the First World War" (p. 316). Although the article he refers to (Landa, 2004) contains nothing of the sort. And the fact that the loyalty of Muslims had been "called into question" since 1915 was a reflection of the general shift in the mood of the entire Russian population after the failures of 1915 at the front. By the way, Iskhakov himself reports on the propaganda of pan-Islamism in the Ferghana region in 1915, stating that the tsarist Okhrana received this information from " Jews and Armenians... who were anti-Muslim " (p. 310). However, the course of subsequent events, especially the Central Asian Uprising of 1916, confirmed the truthfulness of the information received.-

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a secret police station. Calling it "disinformation", Iskhakov does not prove this in any way, based on some of his own considerations, which are hardly dictated by objectivity.

Another accusation against me is the promotion of pan-Islamism "following Vamberi as a religious and political threat to the existence of the Russian state" (p. 430). I must admit that I did not know who Vambery was at all until I read Iskhakov's book, which says that he is a British intelligence officer (p. 13). I didn't need Vambery to deal with pan-Islamism, and there are no references to it in any of my work. But on the pages of the reviewed book, it is mentioned 20 times (not counting references in text links) and, apparently, is well studied by its author. Of course, you need to know the enemy by sight! However, references to Vambery (as opposed to references to contemporary Russian Islamic scholars) are not always critical in Iskhakov's work (see p. 95, 129, 163, 186, 201, 214, 219, 224, 261, 274, 313). So any attentive reader will easily understand who exactly goes "after Vambery".

In this review, I would not like to continue the polemic started by S. M. Iskhakov with me (without any provocation on my part) in his first monograph and continued with pleasure in the second. All his attacks on me are quite easily parried, because they are poorly thought out and are rather emotional in nature. I do not want to stir up this generally unscientific dispute, because it is becoming a favorite pastime for S. M. Iskhakov and, I am afraid, will attract him so much that he will spend more energy on it than on really serious science classes. But some of his attacks cannot be ignored. Moreover, he himself believes that without criticism, "as is well known, there is no science" (p. 43), forgetting that criticism is discord with criticism. In his opinion, my letter to the editor of the magazine "Vostok (Oriens)" (Landa, 2005) is "offensive", but what exactly offended him does not explain. Why? Yes, because there is nothing to object to the essence of the problems raised in the letter. After all, it was about the fact that almost all the critical comments of his first monograph addressed to G. M. Yemelyanova, R. G. Landa, L. R. Some of them are not scientifically justified, are sometimes of an unscrupulous or highly dubious nature (see specifically: [Landa, 2005, pp. 218-220]), and are caused simply by the desire to cast a shadow on " those who somehow touched upon the stories concerning the Muslims of Russia in 1917-1918."

If Iskhakov does not like certain authors, their views and conclusions, it is necessary to prove their case with arguments, with facts in hand, specifically, and not simply trying to silence the contribution of their predecessors, belittle or discredit them, demonstrating them with an arrogant and careless remark, or even, to put it mildly, an untruthful accusation, according to the author himself. Iskhakova "elementary indecency in relation to colleagues" (p. 43). Nothing but regret can cause the author's persistent desire to "clean up the site" and appropriate a monopoly on scientific truth. This is also noticeable in the peer-reviewed monograph, which, like the first one [Iskhakov, 2004, p.6 - 99], pays considerable attention to historiography (p. 7 - 62). The section devoted to it, as well as in other chapters, first of all catches the eye that for S. M. Iskhakov, the modern Russian historiography of the Muslim movement of the late XIX-early XX centuries, with rare exceptions (like M. I. Chemerisskaya), is not a base for further study of the problem, but only an object for criticism, which is often used as a source of (as mentioned above) biased and superficial. Too many Russian authors (and some foreign ones) do not like Iskhakov. I will mention only those whose works I know and appreciate very much. These are D. Y. Arapov, V. O. Bobrovnikov, I. Goldtsier, M. N. Guboglo, G. M. Yemelyanova, D. M. Iskhakov, Z. I. Levin, D. V. Mukhetdinov, L. R. Polonskaya, O. N. and S. B. Senyutkin, D. M. Usmanova, A. Y. Khabutdinov, R. Shukurov, A. B. Yunusova. Their merits - and considerable ones - are not mentioned in the monograph. But at least a critical arrow or an unfair assessment is directed at everyone.

What is the result? Despite all that has been said, I consider this peer-reviewed monograph to be a significant contribution to Russian Muslim studies.It is necessary, useful and timely, highlighting an important, controversial and in its own way vivid period in the history of Russian Muslims with the help of many previously unused sources. Some questions were silenced by the author, some were resolved, some were only raised, some were given a controversial interpretation, making them the subject of inevitable discussions in the future. Along with many claims that you can (and should) However, the author should still admit that he has succeeded in many things, and even where he is wrong, his work suggests new thoughts and new approaches to the study of the truly inexhaustible problems of Russian Islam. Monopolizing the study of all its diversity is hardly possible for anyone alone.

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Obviously, the solution of this problem should be (and is gradually becoming) the result of the efforts of many researchers, including experts in the general history of Islam and the Arab-Islamic civilization born of it, which largely determined the development of the culture and social life of Muslim peoples. The complexity of interreligious (and interethnic) relations in Russia cannot be comprehended without a careful study of its relations and conflicts with the Golden Horde and post-Horde khanates, the Ottoman Empire and Iran, the Islamic states of the Crimea, the Caucasus, Central Asia, Afghanistan and Xinjiang. But such a study will be fruitful only with a broad, balanced and responsible approach, with strict adherence to objectivity and impartiality in conclusions and assessments, including in assessments of the work of colleagues, who should be seen primarily as partners, and not competitors.

list of literature

Iskhakov S. M. Russian Muslims and the Revolution. 1917-1918. Moscow, 2004.

Landa R. G. Islam v istorii Rossii [Islam in the History of Russia]. Moscow, 1995.

Landa R. G. Moslemskiy mir i Pervaya mirovoi voina [The Muslim World and the First World War]. 2004. N 1.

Landa R. G. Letter to the editor / / Vostok (Oriens). 2005. N 2.

Levin Z. I. Reforma v islame [Reform in Islam]. To be or Not to Be, Moscow, 2005.
Senyutkin S. B. History of Tatars of the Nizhny Novgorod Volga region from the last third of the XVI to the beginning of the XX century. Nizhny Novgorod, 2001.

Senyutkina O. N. Turkism as a historical phenomenon (based on the materials of the History of the Russian Empire in 1905-1916). Nizhny Novgorod, 2007.

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