Approaches of Russian Orientalists towards Islam

Abstract

Russian Orientalism represents a unique trajectory in the broader history of Western engagement with Islam. Shaped by Russia’s imperial expansion into Muslim-majority regions of the Caucasus, Volga-Ural, and Central Asia, Russian scholars developed critiques of Islam that were inseparable from state policy, Orthodox missionary activity, and later Marxist-Leninist ideology. This article examines the works of nine prominent Russian Orientalists from the 19th to late 20th centuries: Nikolai Il’minskii, Nikolai Ostroumov, Evgenii Beliaev, Liutsian Klimovich, Ignaty Krachkovsky, Valentin Ditiakin, Mikhail Reisner, Mikhail Tomara, and Gleb Snesarev. It analyzes their contributions to Arabic, Persian, Turkic, and Islamic studies, with particular attention to missionary polemics, Marxist historical materialism, and ethnographic modernization theory. The study argues that Russian Orientalism functioned as both academic discipline and ideological apparatus, consistently reducing Islam to politics, economics, or culture while denying its self-understanding as revelation. The legacy of these critiques continues to influence post-Soviet scholarship and contemporary debates on religion, secularism, and state formation in Eurasia.