Author Description
One of Foreign Affairs' "Best Books of 2022"During the Second World War, as the Soviet Red Army was locked in brutal combat against the Nazis, Joseph Stalin ended the state's violent, decades-long persecution of religion. In a stunning reversal, priests, imams, rabbis, and other religious elites--many of them newly-released from the Gulag--were tasked with rallying Soviet citizens to a "Holy War" against Hitler. To the delight of some citizens, and to the horror of others, Stalin's reversal encouraged a widespread perception that his "war on religion" was over. A revolution in Soviet religious life ensued: soldiers prayed on the battlefield, entire villages celebrated once-banned holidays, and state-backed religious leaders used their new positions not only to consolidate power over their communities, but also to petition for further religious freedoms. Offering a window on this wartime "religious revolution," God Save the USSR focuses on the Soviet Union's Muslims, using sources in several languages (including Russian,Tatar, Bashkir, Uzbek, and Persian). Drawing evidence from eyewitness accounts, interviews, soldiers' letters, frontline poetry, agents' reports, petitions, and the words of Soviet Muslim leaders, Jeff Eden argues that the religious revolution was fomented simultaneously by the state and by religious Soviet citizens: the state gave an inch, and many citizens took a mile, as atheist Soviet agents looked on in exasperation at the resurgence of unconcealed devotional life.
Menrva's Summary
THE THESIS
This book investigates how the Soviet state's wartime pivot toward religious tolerance inadvertently triggered a widespread, grassroots revival of Islamic practice among its citizens. Author Jeff Eden, a scholar of Central Asian history, utilizes a diverse array of primary sources to argue that this religious resurgence was a collaborative phenomenon, driven both by state-sanctioned mobilization efforts and the opportunistic agency of Soviet Muslims who expanded these new freedoms far beyond the government's original intent.
THE SCOPE MAP
What You Will Find
- Analysis of the Soviet state's strategic reversal on religious persecution during the Second World War.
- Examination of the role of religious leaders in mobilizing citizens for the war effort.
- Evidence derived from soldiers' letters, frontline poetry, state agent reports, and petitions.
- Linguistic analysis of sources in Russian, Tatar, Bashkir, Uzbek, and Persian.
Scope Limits
- The study focuses specifically on the Muslim population within the Soviet Union rather than a comprehensive survey of all religious groups.
- The narrative is primarily constrained to the wartime period and the immediate aftermath of the religious policy shift.
THE AUTHORITY PERSPECTIVE
Experts recognize this work as a significant contribution to the study of Soviet religious policy and the lived experience of Muslims under Stalinist rule. Readers frequently note the impressive breadth of the author's multi-lingual archival research and the clarity with which he documents the tension between state control and individual religious expression.
Page Count:
272
Publication Date:
2021-04-01
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
ISBN-10:
0190076275
ISBN-13:
9780190076276
History
World War
Europe
Military
Political History
Social History
World
Islam
Soviet History
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