Werth, Paul W. (2000) From “Pagan” Muslims to “Baptized” Communists: Religious Conversion and Ethnic Particularity in Russia's Eastern Provinces. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 42 (3). pp. 497-523. ISSN 0010-4175 (Print), 1475-2999 (Online)
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
This article argues for the culturally productive power of imperial rule by exploring how missionary projects in Russia constituted new understandings of ethnic particularity among one group of imperial subjects—baptized Tatars, or Kräshens. I demonstrate that while many Tatars who had been formally baptized into Christianity sought to rejoin the Tatar Islamic community over the course of the nineteenth century, a perhaps larger group, slowly abandoning the complex of Muslim and indigenous Turkic (“pagan”) practices that conditioned their subordination to the church's spiritual authority, constructed an indigenous Orthodox Christian identity. Subsequently, and particularly in the early Soviet years, at least some Kräshen activists sought to transcend the predominantly confessional foundations for this identity and began to contend that Kräshens constituted a secular nation altogether distinct from Tatars. In short, this study considers the (incomplete) transformation of a community that had been defined in religious terms, largely through the intervention of imperial Russian authority, into a self-conscious political and cultural community.The small number of Soviet studies on Kräshens, concerned principally with linguistics and material culture, have made little effort to trace the development of this identity, especially in its politicized forms.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | Tatar, forced conversion, incomplete transformation, imperial christianization |
| Subjects: | B Mission theology/theory > Conversion F Interreligious Dialogue and Witness > Islam G Christian traditions/Denominations > Eastern Orthodox |
| Divisions: | Former Soviet Union > Russian Federation |
| Depositing User: | Katharina Penner |
| Date Deposited: | 22 Oct 2024 06:24 |
| Last Modified: | 22 Oct 2024 06:24 |
| URI: | https://ceeamsprints.osims.org/id/eprint/3095 |
Actions (login required)
 |
View Item |
