On the basis of the records of the central and regional authorities of the Russian Empire, the article reconstructs the views of a Governor-General N.A. Kryzhanovsky on the “Muslim issue”. Its actualization in the middle of the 19th century was associated with an increase in the number of the Muslim population of the empire, the growth of their ethnic consciousness and the need, in this regard, to establish control over the activities of Islamic religious institutions. N.A. Kryzhanovsky was an active participant in a long-term interdepartmental discussion, as the head of one of the largest Muslim enclaves of the Russian Empire – the Orenburg Governorate-General. During it, the position of the Governor-General as an ardent Islamophobe was identified. In particular, he initiated the tightening of the state's religious policy towards Islam, through the establishment of government control over the details of the Orenburg Muslim Spiritual Assembly, the process of opening mosques and Muslim schools, the Russification of Muslim clergy, the spread of the Russian education system, and the intra-confessional separation of the Bashkirs and the Kazakhs. Most of the reforms proposed by N.A. Kryzhanovsky found practical implementation and were approved at the legislative level.
Keywords: Islam, Russian Empire, regional authorities, legal regulation, Orenburg Muslim Spiritual Assembly
DOI: 10.22250/20728662_2022_1_5
About the author
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Yulia A. Lysenko – DSc (History), Head of the Department of Oriental Studies, Altai State University; |