Vol 22, No 2 (2023): Muslim Subjectivities in the Mirror of Historical Sources

A researcher who studies the subjectivity of believers and religious people will have a number of unanswered questions. Through their work, the author has hoped to address the most prominent of them: the problem of sincerity, the relationship between external and internal subjectivity, the methodology of research of the subject, the multi-discursiveness of subjectivity, and, in many respects, the duality of the given (traditional) and the indefinite/unestablished (new) thought provoked by its study. Several definitions of the concept of “subjectivity” are also proposed by the author, and Muslim subjectivities are considered in the historical context of the period, and how they are represented and covered under a new form of historical research - the History of Muslim Subjectivities. The article ends with a brief review of the thematic themes on the subject, including: the Soviet view of Muslim childhood; the “prison experience” of Russian Muslims; female subjectivity; and Islamic rhetoric and discourse of modernity.

The author discusses, in the historiographical context, problems posed by the growing wave of research on the “history of Muslim subjectivity.” Noting the paradoxical danger of the reorientalization of and the loss of historicity in Islamic studies, the author insists on the importance of the very designation of the emerging approach and suggests as a more correct term “history of Muslim subjectivities”. Some aspects of the nowadays’ interpretations of the interaction between the individual and the social and cultural in history, of the role of agency and subjecthood of historical actors are considered, as well as the correlation between persona studies and studies of the “techniques of the self.” Proceeding from the approaches that presume the “return of the subject,” the author emphasizes the expediency, for the studies of Muslim subjectivities, of microhistorical approaches, in particular, the “pragmatic turn” and the Russian version of microhistory with its characteristic attention to the individual and its complex vision of the historical context.

They were representatives of the Tatar intelligentsia, born in the 1880-90s. The pre-revolutionary world with the unique urban everyday life of the early 20th century was already lost, but it occupied a central place in the Tatar memoirs of that period. Memoirs and other records of a native of the city of Troitsk, Orenburg province, teacher Habib Zaini (1890-1967) also continue this trend. In his notes, he wrote about his native city of Troitsk and its inhabitants. In the article, we analyze the materials that the author donated to the Lobachevsky Scientific Library of Kazan University in 1967 and notebooks with memories from his family archive. “Family” and “public” memoirs differed in the style of presentation, in the second version the author used formulaic expressions and famous names more often. These ego-documents allowed us to identify several dominants of the “pre-revolutionary world” of Habib Zaini: family ties, the mahalla (Muslim community) and hometown, the clash of traditions and innovations at the turn of the 19-20th centuries. Ego-documents include two layers - the mythologized world of the 1870-80s and the childhood world of the hero of the 1890s, which are united by the place of action and actors. The author of the memoirs received a special education in his family, one of his results is the creation of such a text.

The author examines the process of construction of national identity by high-school student Fathima Kashafutdinova based on her diary entries of 1917-1920 in the context of sociocultural, economic and political changes at the turn of the 20th century and as a result of the Great Russian Revolution (1917-1922). The author analyzes how elements of the Tatar national discourse developed in Fathima’s diary over time and how they were used to express her self-reflection and her identification with other people. Through their research, the author has discovered that Fathima’s had initially needed to construct her national identity as a Tatar, which can be clearly traced through the earlier pages of the diary. Nevertheless, by May 1918, any sign of a “Russians/Tatars” dichotomy disappeared in her text. However, this dichotomy was not completely resolved since she was influenced by both cultural and intellectual processes in the Tatar community as well as by the Russian-speaking urban cultural and social space.

Through their work, the author conducts a content analysis of the materials of the “Russkaia muzykal'naia gazeta” between 1914-1918, a newspaper which served as the mouthpiece of Russian cultural figures in the early 20th century, and a periodical which reflected the events of World War I both in military territories on the frontline and in the rear. The article shows from various points the development of musical culture during the First World War, not only in the two capitals - St. Petersburg and Moscow, but also in the provinces. The attitude of the Russian musical intelligentsia to the war is analyzed in the text. Specific examples provided by the author show the high level of patriotism of Russian musicians and the attitude of Western European musicians to the events of the period. In addition, there is emphasis on the influence of patriotic sentiments on the work of Russian musicians including their awareness of the role of musical culture in uniting the people and providing spiritual support to the Russian army.

The presented article considers the issue of the Soviet-Israeli cultural interaction in the period of 1967-1991. Based on the analysis of the facts and events of that time reflected in the scientific works written on the problems of the USSR-Israel relations, as well as on the archival documents and memoir publications, the authors outlined the unique experience of the two countries’ interaction during the period, one that was sharpest aggravation of their interstate relations. Through his research, the authors have considered the consequences of the severance of diplomatic relations in 1967, its influence on the nature and forms of cultural interaction, as well as specific factors that determined the direction and content of cultural contacts across this period. Their conclusion is guided by the possibility by of using the modern crisis era of global confrontation between world powers, including the practice of “cancel culture” actively promoted by the West, to compare the positive and negative experience of building an intercultural dialogue between the two countries in the absence of diplomatic relations.

Based on the materials from a previously unpublished source - the diary of Prince V.S. Obolenskii-Neledinskii-Meletskii, preserved in the Department of Written Sources of the State Historical Museum, the authors in their article consider the travels of Alexander III through the outlying territories of the Russian Empire in 1882-1888. The diary contains not only many details from the life of the imperial family and the court, but also information on the organization of official and unofficial trips of the emperor, which made it possible to trace the changes that took place in the ceremonial practice and the influence of modernization processes on the goals of the emperor's travels. There is presented through new information on the official visits of Alexander III to Poland (1884, 1886), Finland (1885), the Province of the Don Cossack Host (1887), Ukraine (1885) and the Caucasus (1888), as well as on private vacation trips to the Finnish skerries, the Principality of Łowicz and Livadia. The author shows that as inspection and study trips around Russia became a thing of the past, as ceremonial events came to the fore. The travels of Alexander III, continuing the line traced under Alexander II, were intended to establish a positive image of the monarch and emphasize the connection with his subjects. In the 1880s, visits to remote imperial residences for the purpose of recreation and entertainment became a regular occurrence, events which should be considered as an important part of the daily life of the imperial family.

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