ABSTRACT

The foregoing analysis of nearly a thousand years of Russia’s interaction with Islam and the Muslim world, plus the more recent dynamics of this interaction within the post-Soviet Russian Federation, has yielded a number of important conclusions. These include observations about the challenges Russia has faced in the transition from a totalitarian system with a colonial and imperial past to a more democratic society and in relating to the outside world within a fundamentally changed international system. It has also provided partial answers to the questions posed at the beginning of the study, particularly those related to the challenges a post-totalitarian state in transition faces in developing a new identity and reconciling imperatives of democratic pluralism and demands for ethnic, religious, cultural, and political self-determination with the requirements of state security and territorial integrity. Some of these conclusions challenge many long-established views regarding the process of Russia’s identity formation, the evolution of its sense of statehood, nationhood, and system of values, and its perception of its place and role in the world. Others, especially those relating to Russia’s Muslim minorities, conform to a large extent to well-established historic patterns of interaction between them and the Russian society and state. Still others point to the ongoing process of transition in Russia, the difficulties it faces in reconciling many contradictory objectives, and the risks of a slowing and perhaps a reversal of democratic trends and its consequences both for Russia’s overall evolution and the fate of its Muslim minorities.