Thesis--Wisconsin. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 286-309).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of Political Science, December, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Tübingen, Univ., Magisterarb., 2008.

Zugl. Hamburg, Univ., Diss. / Zsfassung in russ. Sprache

The Republic of Tatarstan, a Muslim-majority region of the Russian Federation, is home to a post-Soviet Islamic revival now entering its third decade. Throughout the 1990s, the Tatars of Tatarstan were recognized as practicing a liberal form of Islam, reported more as an attribute of ethno-national culture than as a code of religious conduct. In recent years, however, the republic's reputation as a bastion of religious liberalism has been challenged, first, by a counter-revival of conservative Islamic traditions considered indigenous to the region and, second, by increasing evidence that Islamic fundamentalism, generally attributed in Russia to Wahhabism or Salafism, has taken hold and is growing in influence among the region's Muslims. This dissertation explores how changing political-territorial circumstances are implicated in this transformation. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in Kazan, the capital of Tatarstan, and a variety of qualitative research methods, including textual analysis, semi-structured interviews, and ethnographic study, the dissertation demonstrates that the transformation in Islamic identity relates to changing understandings of this region as a political space. An examination of practices and representations of the Muslim Spiritual Board of Tatarstan and conflicting perspectives on landscape elements in the Kazan Kremlin shows that the meaning of Islam is being driven by political-geographic change. Analysis of these matters reveals that, as part of Tatarstan's quest for wide-ranging territorial autonomy in the 1990s, government-supported institutions cultivated a preferred understanding of Islam that corresponded to visions of the region as the Tatars' sovereign historic homeland. Over the past decade, amid a rapid recentralization of the federation, support has shifted to Islamic practices deemed "traditional to Russia" as part of a broader multinational Russian identity crafted to fit visions of the country as a powerful, unified state. Thus, the meaning of Islam in this particular place is mediated by competing visions of Tatarstan as a homeland.

In Post-Soviet Russia new federal model was established in a very short time. It negatively influenced its future functioning. With the aim of precluding the secessionism of certain federal subjects, government decided to solve this situation by signing special bilateral agreements with part of them. Those agreements were breaching Russian Constitution adopted in 1993 but on the other hand, they brought a desired stability to the whole country. In my thesis I described a legal model of the federal arrangement and observed the differences between legal theory and practice, based on the agreements, mentioned above. Vladimir Putin, who became Russian president in 2000, started to reform federal system significantly. The main pillar of the reform was comprised by a bunch of federal laws adopted predominantly at the beginning of his presidency. Those laws were created in order to revise the advantages which were given to regions in the bilateral agreements. Legal theory and practice came closer together again. Is it possible to say that Russia set out on the journey of rule of law? My thesis will describe this development from the legal point of view. As the case study on which I want to demonstrate my conclusions I chose the Republic of Tatarstan.

Techn. Univ., Diss.--Braunschweig, 2000.

Tatarstan’s degree of political, economic and cultural sovereignty within the Russian Federation is the result of Soviet era ethno-national politics. The re-adoption of the ethnic federal state model in 1992 by Russia allowed ethnic regions such as Tatarstan to challenge the federal authorities for con-federal relations within the Federation. The Tatar leadership has attempted to work within the institutional and legal framework of the Russian Federation in an attempt to codify their state sovereignty within the Russian Federation. The political and economic concessions gained through tedious negotiation with the center have provided the Republic with the means to build a culturally distinct and semi sovereign state in the heart of the Russian Federation. / text

The objective of this thesis is to examine the nature of federal bargaining in post-Soviet Russia by comparing Moscow&rsquo / s negotiations with Russia&rsquo / s two oil-rich republics in the Middle Volga: Tatarstan and Bashkortostan. In particular, the thesis attempts to explain how Bashkortostan was able to gain autonomy from Moscow that is very close to the level of autonomy enjoyed by Tatarstan, despite the fact that Bashkortostan is clearly in a disadvantageous position when compared to Tatarstan and the Bashkorts form only the third largest ethnic group in the Republic after the Russians and the Tatars. The central hypothesis of this thesis is that sometimes the relatively disadvantageous party in federal bargaining might be given more autonomy not because of its bargaining power, but because of the general bargaining strategy of the federal center. Therefore this thesis is an attempt to understand how Moscow, fearing that Tatarstan might emerge as the hegemonic power in the Middle Volga, sought to strengthen the position of Bashkortostan against Tatarstan, and how the success of the Bashkort political elite to manipulate the weaknesses of Moscow in the post-Soviet arena provided Bashkortostan with more or less same degree of autonomy compared to that of Tatarstan&rsquo / s.

This dissertation introduces and analyzes "piety stories," the stories that Muslim Tatar women in Tatarstan, Russia, share about their paths to becoming observant Muslims. It examines the ways women use these stories to create and represent moral worlds that diverge from those of the mostly secular, historically Christian, society that surrounds them. This study is based on ethnographic research and recordings of stories in Tatarstan's capital city of Kazan and its suburbs over a total period of thirteen months (from 2006 through 2010). While outsiders often see Islam as oppressing women, these women experience Muslim piety as a source of agency and a resource for personal and social transformation in post-Soviet Russia. Piety stories allow Muslim Tatar women to (re)experience their commitment to Islam at the discursive level and to invite others to step onto a path to Muslim piety, thus serving as a form of da'wah, a Muslim's moral duty to invite others to Islam. Through these stories, women perform identities, negotiate group memberships, and contribute to building both local and global Muslim communities. Piety stories serve as a window onto the personal politics of the post-Soviet Muslim revival. Older women, for example, use stories to create coherent narratives of their piety, despite their relative lack of religious practice during the state-endorsed atheism of the Soviet period. Expressions of gender are also intertwined with this political and economic history. Both Soviet policies and the immediate post-Soviet economic collapse required women to work outside the home in addition to caring for their families, and many Muslim Tatar women find the clear delineation of traditional gender roles and rights in Islam liberating. In global and local contexts where Muslim piety is often conflated with political Islam and terrorism, women use piety stories to deal with stereotypical perceptions of Muslims by showing their religious identities and the forms of Islam they practice to be moral. Ultimately, practicing Muslim Tatar women use piety stories as one way--a discursive one--to challenge, re-produce, or legitimize their understanding of Islam and what it means to be a practicing Muslim Tatar woman in Russia today.