Kremlin Mobilizes Muslim Hierarchies to Support War Effort

Executive Summary:

• Moscow is using the Muslim Spiritual Directorates (MSDs) for the primary purpose for which they were established during World War II: to mobilize Muslims in Russia against a foreign enemy.
• The MSDs’ tasks include boosting the recruitment of young Muslims, limiting internal clashes between Muslim and non-Muslim soldiers, and controlling the anger among Muslims about the rising number of combat deaths.
• Moscow is relying far more heavily on MSDs for troops now than it did at its inception in the 1940s, using non-ethnically Russian minorities as much as possible to maintain the illusion that Russia is in fact at peace.

Moscow is once again using the Muslim Spiritual Directorates (MSDs), bodies the Soviet Union set up in World War II to supervise the Islamic community, for the primary purpose for which they were established: to mobilize Muslims to fight against a foreign enemy. If anything, the role of the MSDs is even more important now in Moscow’s war against Ukraine than it was against Nazi Germany. The Kremlin has chosen to rely on non-Russian areas and poorer Russian populations for recruitment to maintain the perception of normalcy among residents of major cities (see EDM, July 14, 2022). The MSDs’ roles have also expanded to encompass more tasks than during World War II. These roles now include recruiting young Muslims, sending aid and ammunition to the front, limiting internal clashes between Muslim and non-Muslim soldiers in the field, and suppressing anger among Muslims concerning the rising number of their combat deaths (12-kanal.ru, August 18, 2023). Opinions on the success of the MSDs in meeting these tasks have been mixed, but Moscow’s decision to rely on them both reflects the Russian government’s own administrative weakness and the importance of these directorates.

MSDs in the Russian Federation trace their origins to three earlier events. First, the tsarist era saw attempts to create an administrative hierarchy for a faith that lacks such hierarchies canonically. Second, the All-Russian Muslim Congress in 1917 called for the creation of bodies that could represent the faithful in their dealings with the Russian state. Third, having previously suppressed these institutions, former leader of the Soviet Union Joseph Stalin restored them during World War II  to help mobilize Muslims to fight against the German invasion (Millard Tatar, November 16, 2023). Since the end of Soviet times, these groups have exploded in number, with nearly 100 regional MSDs and half a dozen “super” MSDs—an MSD that subordinates to itself MSDs in the regions—currently in existence (Window on Eurasia, April 24, 2020). As they have increased in number, however, the MSDs have decreased in importance. This is because the Russian state has been able to dismiss them as irrelevant or play the groups off against one another. At the same time, individual parishes have often chosen to go their own way. Now, due to Russia’s war in Ukraine and how Russian President Vladimir Putin has chosen to fight it, the MSDs are recovering the purpose for which Stalin created them and quite possibly gaining the importance that some have hoped for as a Muslim version of the Moscow Patriarchate’s hierarchy. If that happens, Putin’s use of MSDs could backfire and allow them to emerge as a significant challenge to the Russian state.

Since the start of his expanded war in Ukraine, Putin has chosen to raise an army first and foremost in non-Russian republics and poorer Russian regions (see EDM, March 1, 2020, April 4, 9, 16, July 16). These regions far from Moscow allow him to maintain the fiction to the cities where three-quarters of the population lives that everything remains as it was before the conflict. The existing MSDs, almost without exception, are similar to the other bodies of the so-called four traditional religions of the Russian Federation—Russian Orthodox Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism—that have issued statements in support of the war. Russian religious organizations, except for the Russian Orthodox Church, however, have done relatively little in supporting the war effort until recently (Window on Eurasia, June 3, 2022). Russia’s Buddhist population, however, is one of the few organizations in Russia that has even condemned the war (see Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, October 3, 2022). This is beginning to change, first of all among the Muslim hierarchies, where recruitment and combat deaths are the highest per capita, leading to shifts in public opinion.

Tatarstan and the North Caucasus have seen the most important moves in this regard. In Tatarstan, the dominant republic in the Middle Volga, the mufti, who heads the MSD there, has created a new deputy to supervise the institution’s multifarious activities related to “the special military operation” (Novyye Izvestiya, October 8). In the North Caucasus, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who has been playing a major military role in Ukraine, has installed his man as head of the region’s MSD, the Coordinating Center of Muslims of the North Caucasus. From this position, Supreme Mufti of Chechnya Salah Mezhiev can be expected to push for an expanded role in Ukraine by other parts of that region as well (Window on Eurasia, October 5;  Nezavisimaya Gazeta, October 1;  KavkasUzel.eu, October 1).

The new arrangement in Tatarstan is the more critical of the two because the region’s actions generally serve as a precedent for MSDs elsewhere. Novyye Izvestiya points out that “the [MSD] of Tatarstan has been involved with the support of Russian Muslims fighting in Ukraine from the very beginning of the special military operation. Tatarstan Mufti Kamil Samigullin has visited the front seven times. His new deputy … will assume responsibility for supporting the families and the soldiers themselves, sending supplies to the front, and supervising ammunition production” (Novyye Izvestiya, October 8). These are no small things given Moscow’s priorities as Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine approaches its third anniversary. This public listing, however, obscures the tasks set before the newly invigorated MSD in Tatarstan.

As with other federal subjects far from Moscow, Tatarstan is under enormous pressure to recruit more men to send to the front. The region’s MSD will help, but will also deal with two other problems that may be even more fateful. The deputy head of the MSD will work closely with Tatarstan citizens fighting in Ukraine to limit clashes between them and soldiers of other ethnicities that have undercut unit effectiveness (Window on Eurasia, July 30, 2022). The new deputy mufti and his staff will also deal with the rising tide of combat deaths among Tatarstan residents in Ukraine. Those deaths, now at unprecedented levels, have sparked growing anger about the war that could eventually trigger anti-war protests (Idelreal.org, September 30, October 3).

Due to Moscow’s immediate needs, it clearly hopes that the MSDs will be able to meet all the assigned tasks, but it also has reason to fear any successes on the part of the MSDs that could help power the rise of a new Muslim movement in the country. Moscow would likely then resort to its traditional divide-and-rule strategy, but in doing so may find that it will lose more in the short-term than it can afford. This is especially likely given the short time horizons Putin and his team have adopted on Ukraine and so many other issues.