Description
Walter Mignolo argues that coloniality is the darker side of Western modernity. This theoretical insight will be applied to Russia’s historic relations with the Muslim world. Tsarist Russia was similar to other European powers who colonised Muslim communities in the Middle East, Central Asia and South Asia. However, Russia’s coloniality had distinctive features. Unlike other European powers, Russia has significant Muslim communities within the Russian Federation (such as the Tatars and the Muslim peoples of the North Caucasus) as well as those who were a longstanding constituent part of the Soviet Union (Central Asia). Russia has also changed the nature of its state – from a Russian imperial state to the Soviet Union to the post-Soviet Russia. Throughout these historic shifts, there has been a consistent claim that Russia/the Soviet Union brought secular modernity, inter-religious toleration, and national liberation. How these claims of modernity mesh with the ‘darker side’ of coloniality will be assessed and what the challenge of decolonization in this context entails.
