Responding to atheist state policy and practicing religion: the Ismailis of Soviet Badakhshan

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the implementation of Soviet religious policy among the Ismaili Muslim population of the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast (GBAO) of Soviet Tajikistan. By means of oral interviews and the analysis of archival sources from the province, this paper reveals the challenges and complexities faced by local commissioners and Communist Party officials when executing centralized Soviet religious policy. In this process, the local commissioners (upolnomochennye) had to stress the religious community’s compliance with Soviet legislation and were expected to provide accounts of decreasing religiosity among the Ismailis, and even their having ceased to practise their religious rituals. Meanwhile, the newly appointed Ismaili religious dignitary (khalifas) did not remain passive recipients or agents of Soviet religious policy but tried to modify their actions to conduct religious rituals within the limited but legal space for religious activities.

KEYWORDS:

• Soviet religious policy
• Central Asia Ismailis
• Gorno-Badakhshan
• khalifa; commissioner

Acknowledgements

I express my special thanks to Ms. Wendy Robinson from the Institute of Ismaili Studies for editing this article. I am very grateful to Dr. Alexander Morrison, University of Oxford who has read and offered valuable feedback and support during the writing of this article. I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments, which helped me to revise this article. I express my sincere gratitude to all of the informants for my research, who have shared their memories with me.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author. All of the individuals that I have interviewed have agreed to provide information for my research. They did it voluntarily and did not require a written consent for the notes that I took while interviewing them.

Notes

1 Citation of the materials from this archival repository are done according to the standard format: archival acronym f [ond] or collection, op [is’]-register or series, d [elo]-file, l[ist]-numbered paged. All of the archival documents for this article were taken from the Boygonii Dawlatii Viloyati Mukhtori Kuhistoni Badakhshon, Khorog (1950–1985) (State Archive of Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast, Khorog) (henceforth SA GBAO) followed by number of collection (f), number of registered series (op.), file (d.), and numbered page (l.). See for instance, GA. GBAO. f. 110, op. 1, d. 1, l. 1. For the detailed information about the two Councils, and the upolnomochennye, see Yaakov Ro’i, Islam in the Soviet Union: from World War II to Perestroika. New York (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 9–55.

2 All of the informants for this research come from this province.

3 See SA GBAO, f.110, op. 1, d. 1, l. 25.

4 SA GBAO, f.110, op. 1, d. 2, l. 109–110.

5 The commissioners recorded a short sample of the prayer of pirshoh. See, for instance, examples of excerpts from this prayer in SA GBAO, f. 110, op. 3, d. l. 3.

6 SA GBAO, f. 110, op. 1, d. 9, l. 32.

7 SA GBAO, f. 110, op. 3, d. 6, l. 9.

8 Interview with the last and late Soviet Commissioner for Religious Affairs under the oblispolkom of the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast, 15 July 2011.

9 SA GBAO, f. 110, op. 3, d. 19, l. 11.

10 See archival evidence from the provincial commissioner’s report summarized in Ro’i (2000, 423–424).

11 I have provided a detailed analysis of religious teaching among the Ismailis in the Soviet period in my PhD dissertation. See Sultonbek Aksakolov, ‘Islam in Soviet Tajikistan: State Policy, Religious Figures and the Practice of Religion (1950–1985)’ (PhD diss., SOAS, 2014), 171–175.

12 Notes from my interview with a researcher on maddoh tradition, 20 October 2022.

13 SA GBAO, f. 110, op. 1, d. 2, ll. 12–16. The types of the Ismaili religious figures were also mentioned as those conducting basic prayers (mullos), and those performing devotional poetry (maddohkhons).

14 SA GBAO, f. 110, op. 3, d. 12, l. 23.

15 SA GBAO, f. 110, op. 3, d. 10, l. 5.

16 My interview with the late khalifa from the village of Tawdem Roshtqal’a district, 17 July 2011.

17 The registered and itinerant mullos had both received payment for conducting charogh-i rawshan at the funerals, as well as from conducting matrimonial ceremony (nikoh). The income earned by the registered mullos and khalifas in each of the districts of the province had varied.

18 SA GBAO f. 110, op. 1, d. 2, l. 31–35.

19 Interview with this dissident khalifa’s daughter, and son, 5 May 2012. See also the detailed biographies, and activities, of this and other khalifas provided in Aksakolov (2014, 90–105).

20 Interview with the individual who had served as the Chairman of the Department of Religious Affairs of Gorno-Badakhshan from 1995 to 2000; 7 July 2011.

21 SA GBAO, f. 110, op. 3, d. 7, l. 44.

22 See an article about meetings, and interview with the representatives of the Ismaili Imam in Soviet Badakhshan, by Shohinbodov N, and Khairulloev, ‘Wahdat, oromi,poktinati imoni shumost’, Badakhshoni Soweti, 10 June 1991.