© 2002 by Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies
Islam and the Legacy of Sovietology: A Review Essay on Yaacov Ro'i's Islam in the Soviet Union
1 Indiana University
This article addresses the conceptual and analytical shortcomings of the Sovietological study of Islam in the former USSR in the context of a critique of Yaacov Ro'i's "Islam in the Soviet Union: From the Second World War to Gorbachev " (London/New York, 2000). Ro'i's book, important for the archival data it brings to light, is nevertheless marred by the same interpretative flaws that typified the Sovietological approach to Islam, as exemplified in the school of the late Alexandre Bennigsen, above all the tendency to adopt uncritically the Soviet analysis of religious life (an analysis that was designed to facilitate the elimination of religious life). By imposing narrow and inappropriate standards for defining what is "Islamic ", and what is "religious ", the Sovietological approach has done more to obscure than illuminate religious life among Soviet Muslims; Ro'i's work continues this approach, offering a solid presentation of the specifically "Soviet " aspects of administrative and political issues affecting Muslims in the USSR, but advancing, for a readership versed in Islamic studies, a fundamentally flawed interpretation of Muslim religious life.