Progressive Islam

A Soviet opinion piece in praise of the religious nature of the Iranian revolution would seem a slip of the censor, save that just such an article. "Under the Green Banner of Islam," appeared in several republic there are 15 republics in the Soviet Union) newspapers in December 1980. The author an Azeri analyst in the Institute of Scientific Atheism in Moscow, argues in his article that Islam need not be by definition a negative social force since religiously inspired opposition may at times be disguised anti-colonialism, a manifestation of popular demands for economic and social justice. Religious opposition in pursuit of such desirable ends is a progressive social force and should be encouraged by the Soviet Union.

Similar arguments have appeared in the Soviet press and in academic publications with increasing regularity in recent years, a direct result of the rising fortunes of one man. E.M. Primakov, director since 1973 of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR. Primakov's reinterpretation of the social role of Islam is predicated on an understanding of Islam as a complex social force, seeing religion as but one variable in the intricate belief system by which individuals respond to their social and political environment. It is rumored that Primakov developed this thesis of a staff-written article which appeared under the title of "Islam in the Process of Social Development in the Countries of the Foreign East," which appeared in a 1980 issue of Voprosy filosofii ("Crescent of Philosophy")

Primakov and such ideas would seem an impossibility to Westerners, who assume that Soviet social science is wholly ideological and incapable of useful analysis. However, during Khruchev's years in power. Soviet scholars gained greater access to Western scholarship, censorship was loosened and researchers were given increased authority to determine the focus of their own studies, always though within a Marxist-Leninist conceptual framework. During the late 1960s and early 1970s Brezhnev tightened the control over academe, but not all scholars found their discretionary authority restricted. In fact, in areas where applied social science research could improve the coherence of domestic or foreign policy, the conditions of scholarship were often approved, so that in the relative vacuum of Brezhnev's final years successful academian burcaucrats, like Primakov, were able to turn themselves and their institutes into quasi-formal political advisers of the Central Committee of the Central Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU).

How Primakov and the advocates of "progressive Islam," as Primakov's position might be dubbed, will fare under Andropov remains to be seen; power politics in the Kremlin have their own logic, and the substance of Primakov's argument may ultimately have little bearing on his ability to expand or even maintain his position during Andropov's rule.

A doctrine of progressive Islam, however, could well appeal to the apparently pragmatic Andropov, for it provides an ideological justification for a Soviet attempt to harness the anti-Americanism of resurgent Islam, and so subsume religious fundamentalism within the framework of East-West rivalry. Such a doctrine also creates intellectual justification for overt support of left wing Muslim fundamentalists, which groups have in the past received only covert assistance.

The success of such a doctrine relies ultimately though on Muslims outside the Soviet Union Primakov's notion of progressive Islam permits the Soviets to justify support of religious revolutionaries, hitherto unrecognized and unrecognizable by the USSR. This view of Islams, though can not ensure that Muslim activists will trust the Soviets, nor that they will turn to the USSR for aid. Muslim non-Marxists have long been suspicious of the Soviets, so Moscow must create are receptive Muslim audience abroad before progressive Islam may provide an effective strategy for Soviet infiltration of the Middle East Presumably, then, the next task of Primakov and his fellow analysts will be to develop lot export a concept of "progressive Communism."

Martha Brill Olcott is a Research Fellow at Harvard's Russian Research Center and another of an article entitled "Soviet Islam and World Revolution," which appeared in World Politics.