SOVIET ISLAM
Document Type:
Collection:
Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST):
CIA-RDP88B00443R001500050019-0
Release Decision:
RIPPUB
Original Classification:
S
Document Page Count:
11
Document Creation Date:
December 20, 2016
Document Release Date:
August 16, 2007
Sequence Number:
19
Case Number:
Publication Date:
March 26, 1984
Content Type:
MEMO
File:
Attachment | Size |
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CIA-RDP88B00443R001500050019-0.pdf | 453.95 KB |
Body:
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EXECUTIVE SECR TARIAT
ROUTING SLIP
EXDIR
D/ICS
DDI
DDO
DDS&T
D/Pers
D/OLL
D/PAO
AO/DCI
C/IPD/OIS
SUSPENSE
ACTION
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8" 1391
MEMORANDUM FOR:. Deputy Director for Intelligence
Vice Chairman, National Intelligence Council
National Intelligence Officer, USSR/EE
National Intelligence Officer, NESA
FROM: Director of Central Intelligence
SUBJECT: Soviet Islam
1. This is an interesting article It is a subject
I have tasked IAD to develop for use in Afghanistan, the Soviet Central
Asian Republics and throughout the Muslim world as a propaganda theme
2. I also attach a Spot Report which is relevant and interesting.
William J. Casey
Attachments:
As stated
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26 March 1984
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One of the many unanswered questions that Andropov's successor will
inherit concerns a problem that is never brought up by Soviet
leaders but the gravity of which is understood by everyone in the
USSR: that of the existence of 47 million Moslems, about 18% of the
population of the Soviet Union. People often forget that the USSR
is a large Islamic power - the fifth or sixth one in the world - and
that there are more Moslems in the Soviet Union than in Egypt and
more Turks in Central Asia than in Turkey. It is also the last of
the large multinational empires, and the eternal problem of the
relations between the dominant ethnic group (the Slavs) - who
represent only 52% of.the total population - and the nations under
(Soviet) domination (all the others) is no better resolved than it
was in the Austro-Hungarian Empire or in the Ottoman Empire.
The Moslems of the USSR are undergoing what the demographers call a
"demographic explosion,' which is in contrast to the stagnation of
the Russians and the other Slavs. Between 1970 and 1979, the
average population increase of the Moslems in the USSR was 22% and
that of the Russians 6.5%. In the year 2000 there will be 66 to 75
million Moslems in the USSR, from 22 to 24% of the total population;
a dynamic, young mass of people, who cannot be assimilated, grouped
in the area bordering the southern frontiers - the "soft stomach"
the USSR,.where the Russians and the other "Europeans' will be
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Of course, the disparate growth of the Russians and the Moslems does
not in itself threaten the stability of the empire, which shows no
sign of an imminent breakdown. Central Asia remains to this day one
of the few. areas in the Islamic world where there is any order
'(maintained, one must add, by Russian military and police forces).
The natives enjoy a standard of living that is much higher than that
of the neighboring Moslem countries and-also far pleasanter than
that of the Russians (they do not, moreover, ascribe the credit for
this to "Big Brother.")
The high Moslem religious hierarchy had been "domesticated" and
transformed into a valuable partner (it is true that this was done
at the cost of substantial concessions), and the Soviet leaders can
count, for the moment, on the loyalty of the native cadres of the
nomenklatura. Nevertheless, there are four areas where the "Moslem
problem" emerges, in the short term, as potentially worrisome.
It is a well-known fact that the industrial areas of the European
part of Russia and of Siberia are beginning to experience a shortage
of manpower, while in Central Asia there are hundreds of thousands
of young people who are unemployed and living more or less on the
margin of Soviet legality, and who to this day obstinately refuse to
submit to the urgent abjurations of the authorities to leave their
sun-drenched fatherland, where 'everything always sorts itself out,'
for Siberia.
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Unemployed Youth
What can be done? Is it necessary to use force and resort to a huge
population. transfer in the old Stalinist style, since neither
propaganda, nor appeals to patriotism, nor increased salaries have
managed to convince the Uzbeks and the Tajiks to go and found
kolkhozes in the vast Siberian north? Or how about transfering the
industry to .the available manpower, into a region very close to
hostile China and the turmoil of the Middle East? Two equally
dangerous options, which make the Soviet leaders hesitant.
Recruiting by the army presents another problem that is difficult to
resolve. The Moslems make up about 25% of young recruits (30% by
the end of the century). Up to now, except for some rare
exceptions, as far as can be judged, probably because of their weak
knowledge of Russian, they have not served in fighting units, but in
work battalions (or in units of thG_ Ministry of Interior. - meant for
repressing turmoil in East Europe or in Russia).
The leaders will have to decide, soon, either to open up the
fighting units to Moslem soldiers and officers, at the risk of
bringing about what is already called the 'yellowing of the Red
Army,' or to keep a purely-Slavic army, which will be heavily
reduced because of a shortage of recruits, or to accept the
principle of a colonial-type army with Slavic officers commanding
"Asian" soldiers. None of the three solutions could be considered
satisfactory.
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The renaissance of Islam, as.a religion and a way of life, that was
favored by Brezhnev's pro-Moslem policy, is a dangerous phenomenon
because of the classic confusion that exists in all Moslem countries
between the spiritual and the national elements and which, according
to the leaders, constitutes the major obstacle to ethnic intermixing
(mixed marriages between Russians and Moslems are just as.rare.today
as they were just before the revolution), the cultural assimilation
of the.ethnic minorities by the Russians and the coming of the
mythical 'homo sovieticus.' For the majority of Moslems, including
party members, the Russian is not only the descendant of the
conquerors, but he is also. the Kafir, the unclean infidel.
Finally, there is the rise to power of the new generation of Moslem
cadres, aged from 30 to 40, formed after 1953, who do not suffer
from the trauma of Stalinist repressions, for whom communism is
neither a philosophy nor a socio-economic system, but,a way of
achieving power (how to react the level of the nomenklatura and, if
possible, get rid of the Russian comrades). This new elite is
nationalistic, proud and passionately interested in everything that
happens beyond its borders. It is weary of the despairing greyness
of official Marxism-Leninism and impatient to take over the reality
(and not simply the illusion) of power. No agitprop trick could
conceal from them the fact that South Yemen or Somalia are
independent and sovereign states, whereas the glorious.Boukhara,
heir to Tamberlaine's empire, is not.
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It was only recently that the Soviets began to realise the potential
dangers that Islam could impose on the USSR. The alarm bell was
first rung in 1978 and 1979, when the first studies of religious
sociology in Central Asia and the Caucasus were published, with
revelations of a situation that was as alarming as it was unexpected.
After 60 years of anti-religious efforts, 80% of the ethnic
population of Central Asia and the Caucasus said they were still
'Moslem,".10 to 15% of them "fanatical" believers and less than 20%
atheists*. Rites and customs of religious origin.- circumcision,
marriage and religious burial - are practiced by almost all of the
population, including those who claim to be atheists but do not want
to be excluded from the national community. Finally, they revealed
the existence, on the sidelines of the official Moslem hierarchy, of
a powerful "parallel Islam,' strongly structured,. fundamentalist.,.
intransigent and xenophobic, independent, but comparable to the
Moslem Brotherhood of the Arab countries and to the Islam revolution
in Iran. In 1983, the Soviet press acknowledged for the first time
the appearance of a .fundamentalist Moslem samizdat.
These unpleasant revelations were followed by others that.were just
as unexpected: the Afghan resistance fighters are holding their own
*Sixty-five years after the victory of the revolution, in the Turkic
languages of Central Asia, the expressions "imansiz (without
religion) and "khudasiz" (atheist) are still synonymous with
'swindler" and "imbecile."
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against the Soviet Army, which 'had been thought to be invincible,
amd the Moslem reservists who had been sent to Kabul in December
1979. turned out to be so unreliable that they had to be brought back
home in March 1980. - In Iran, the ayatollahs. had no trouble
liquidating the Tudeh Party, the oldest of the communist parties in
the Near East. Finally, beginning in 1980, voices of authority
(General. Zia Yusif Zade, Azerbaijan's KGB chief, Mohammed-Nazar
Gapurov, first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist
Party of Turkmenistan, and others...) were heard denouncing
subversion from outside: undoubtedly, fundamentalist Islam appeared
to be more redoutable than anyone had believed, and the balance of
Brezhnev's philo-Islamic strategy turned out to be negative.
The year 1983 was marked by a clear hardening of the Islamic
policy. Should it be regarded as the personal mark of Andropov or
the result of a decision taken in December 1980? Whatever it was,
measures were laid down to accelerate the transplanting (very
unpopular) of kolkhoz workers from Central Asia to Siberia and
Northern Russia. It is still too early to evaluate how effective
these measures - which were at any. rate insufficient.- in
alleviating the manpower problem (the number of Moslems transplanted
in this way can be estimated at from 15,000 to 20,000).
The -Andropov era was also marked by complete relinquishment of
cooperation with the high Moslem hierarchy and especially by
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a brutal resumption of anti-religious propaganda. In 1983,
forty-nine anti-Moslem works appeared in the USSR, in more than
one-half million copies, compared to thirty-seven in 1982 and only
about twenty in 1981, and the violence of tone of these so-called
'scientif'ic' publications is reminiscent of that of the best years
of the Stalinist epoch.
Is there a turn in the USSR's Moslem policy, or is it simply a
temporary "reprise? Andropov's reign was too short and we will
have to wait a few months to evaluate the direction that his
successor's strategy will take. It is however certain that in
addition to the four problems mentioned above, another, even more
formidable one, must be added, in order to understand the growing
influence of Islamic fundamentalism.
This one is already penetrating Central Asia and the-Caucasus by way
of a thousand diferent channels: radio broadcasts from Iranian and
Arab stations on the Gulf, as well as cassettes, 'subversive'
publications (mostly of a religious nature) of Afghani mujaheddin
(translated into Russian and U.zbek), crossing of borders (mostly
Turkmen and Tajik) by Afghani preacher-agitators (fact confirmed in
1983 by the local Soviet press) and finally, above all, contacts
that defy control between Soviet Moslems and tens of thousands of
foreign Moslem visitors and residents (students, engineers,
officers...), not all of whom are convinced communists or admirers
of the Soviet Union.
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The message conveyed by all these channels can be summed up as
follows: modern Islam is more dynamic and better organized than
communism; it is able to mobilize the masses, while the communist
party in the east is only able to recruit a few intellectuals of
bourgeois or aristocratic origin; if Khomeiny's Iran succeeded in
humiliating the American "Great Demon,' (Chaytan-e bozorg), then we
too can hope one day to humiliate and even to rid ourselves of the
Russian "Second Demon' (Chaytan-e devvom).
As regards Islamic strategy, Andropov's successor will face a
dilemma: to continue Brezhnev's offensive policy, at the risk of
incurring repercussions in Central Asia, which is destabilized by
the contagious example of the Near East, or to return to the
isolation policy favored by Stalin, to lower the iron curtain and
shut off the Moslem republics from all contact with the outside
world. But can an iron curtain still perform its role in this age
of cassettes, and is the Soviet gerontocracy still capable of taking
draconian measures? Will it not rather try to do what the American
Sovietologists call "floundering through the swamp," contenting
itself with half-measures that do not settle anything and which only
ward off the final moment of reckoning?
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