3
N A G A N AWA Norihiro

Maktab or School? Introduction of
Universal Primary Education
among the Volga‐Ural Muslims

Introduction
In marked contrast with Muslims in Turkestan and the Kazakh steppe,
the Volga-Ural Muslims could enjoy zemstvo, local self-government at
province and county levels, which was one of the constituents of Alexander II’s Great Reforms. Zemstvos had been local promoters of universal primary education before the government began to show a serious
commitment to primary education by the turn of the century and escalated its spread by reinforcing subsidies to zemstvos after the 1905
Revolution. Since the Regulations on non-Russian education in 1870, theMinistry of Education (MNP) had made a great effort to cultivate Russian education among the Muslim subjects by means of non-Russian
schools and Russian language classes within maktabs and madrasas.
During the same period Muslims themselves had begun to reorganize
their confessional schools by introducing a new method (u≠ūl-i jadīd).
Zemstvos’ participation in the expansion of primary education among
the Muslims, important tax payers equal to the Russian peasants, complicated the question of the Muslim schooling. After 1905 competition
between the MNP and zemstvos for leadership in non-Russian education

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became fiercer than ever, and two alternatives appeared before Muslims:
continuing to reform Jadid maktabs for their entrance to an official
school network (shkol’naia set’), or adapting ministry and zemstvo
schools for Muslims’ interests.
Comparing Kazan, Ufa and Orenburg provinces, this chapter illustrates how the Volga-Ural Muslims were involved in the national projectof universal primary education. It also examines different strategies that
the Muslim intellectuals and villagers employed in relations with thestate institutions in general and zemstvos in particular. Although historians have noticed distinctions between zemstvos and the MNP, study ofimperial education policy toward Muslims has usually dealt with legislative processes in the ministries and the State Duma, operations of thelocal MNP officials or the Orthodox missionaries and, though not in any
substantial way, Muslims’ reactions to these measures.1 As concerns the
Ufa zemstvos, Charles Steinwedel depicts their activities within the political scene on both provincial and imperial levels. 2 But generally,
unique cooperative relationships between the local self-government andthe Muslims have not been well understood.3 Dissertations on the zemstvo schools appeared only recently in Ufa and Kazan, which reflects
today’s vital interest in the education policy of the Republics of Bashkortostan and Tatarstan.4 However, they accept such a stereotype as
conservative Muslims’ resistance to zemstvo schools from local works of
1 A. Kh. Makhmutova, Stanovlenie svetskogo obrazovaniia u tatar: bor’ba vokrug shkol’nogo
voprosa, 1861–1917 (Kazan, 1982); M. N. Farkhshatov, Narodnoe obrazovanie v Bashkirii v
poreformennyi period, 60–90е gody XIX v. (Мoscow, 1994); idem, Samoderzhavie i traditsionnyeshkoly bashkir i tatar v nachale XX veka, 1900–1917 gg. (Ufa, 2000); Wayne Dowler, Classroom
and Empire: The Politics of Schooling Russia’s Eastern Nationalities (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s
University Press, 2001).
2 Charles R. Steinwedel, “Invisible Threads of Empire: State, Religion, and Ethnicity in
Tsarist Bashkiria, 1773–1917” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1999).
3 For a valuable exception, R. Salikhov, Tatarskaia burzhuaziia Kazani i natsional’nye reformy vtoroi poloviny XIX – nachala XX v. (Kazan, 2001), chap. 3.
4 G. B. Azamatova, “Deiatel’nost’ Ufimskogo zemstva v oblasti narodnogo obrazovaniia 1874–1917” (Dissertatsiia na soiskanie uchenoi stepeni kandidata istoricheskikh
nauk, Bashkirskii Gosudarstvennyi universitet, 2000). Its third chapter is “Zemstvo and
Education of Non-Russian Population”; Iu. E. Zhelezniakova, “Zemskaia shkola Kazanskoi
gubernii 1865–1917gg.” (Dissertatsiia na soiskanie uchenoi stepeni kandidata istoricheskikh nauk, Kazanskii Gosudarstvennyi universitet, 2002).

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“national history” as well as imperial literature including Muslim intellectuals’ critiques. We will contextualize this sweeping image by considering political and administrative conditions in which Muslim communities (ma∆allas) and zemstvos existed.
This chapter is located also in the general context of the zemstvo study.
That helps to reconsider experiences apparently peculiar to Muslims
within a broader context of modernization of Russian society.5 The Ufa
zemstvos and later the Orenburg zemstvos tried to supplement theirschool construction by making use of existing new-method maktabs. We
can find precedent efforts in 1864–1890, when zemstvos worked for the
spread of primary education by formalizing existing peasant-sponsoredliteracy schools. Moreover, we aim to challenge the post-1905 “zemstvo
reaction” paradigm, as S. Seregny did by drawing evidence mainly fromUfa province. It has usually been said that the increase in MNP fundingof universal primary schools brought about greater ministry control ofthe schools and insulation of zemstvo authority from the schools. 6
However, zemstvos in this period went on to mount the most ambitious
peasant-oriented campaigns in education in their entire fifty-year history.7 Ben Eklof’s point that the zemstvos took advantage of control over
the administration of education to give shape and emphasis to policy iswell applicable to the Ufa and Orenburg zemstvos’ positive measures to
non-Russian schools.8 Indeed, rivalry between the MNP and zemtsy(zemstvo workers) was all the more serious in non-Russian education;school policy depended on what kind of “Russian citizenship” should be
implanted among the non-Russians.9
5 The phonetic method was “progressive” in zemstvo schools as well as Jadid schools.
It caused protest also among the Russian peasants, who had learned literacy by the oldmethod. Zhelezniakova, “Zemskaia shkola,” pp. 53, 106.
6 Jeffrey Brooks, “The Zemstvo and the Education of the People,” in Terence Emmonsand Wayne S. Vucinich, eds., The Zemstvo in Russia: An Experiment in Local Self-Government(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 268; Dowler, Classroom and Empire, p.
210.
7 Scott J. Seregny, “Zemstvos, Peasants, and Citizenship: The Russian Adult Education
Movement and World War I,” Slavic Review 59, no. 2 (2000), p. 292.
8 Ben Eklof, Russian Peasant Schools: Officialdom, Village Culture, and Popular Pedagogy,
1861–1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), p. 58.
9 Steinwedel, “Invisible Threads of Empire,” chap. 7.

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In administrative terms the Volga-Ural region was divided into the
Kazan and Orenburg Education Districts.10 While the Kazan Districtplayed a leading role in planting missionary schools, the Orenburg District put its priority on organization of non-Russian schools sponsoredby the zemstvos and the Ministry of Education.11 In 1910 almost half of
non-Russian schools in the Orenburg District were operating in Ufa
province. 12 Such a situation exacerbated conflict between the Ufa
zemstvos and the MNP over jurisdiction: while the ministry tried to confine the zemstvos’ participation to the financial sphere of schools, Ufa
zemtsy made an effort to organize the pedagogic sphere, too. In 1909,
when the introduction of universal education started from Zlatoust
county, Ufa zemtsy began to take maktabs and madrasas into serious
consideration.13
Ufa province deserves special attention not only in terms of the relations between zemstvos and the MNP. Ufa province had the second
largest Muslim population after Ferghana province in the empire,14 andMuslims made up half of the population in Ufa province. The zemstvos
could make use of the Orenburg Spiritual Assembly in Ufa, the sole
Muslim authority in the Volga-Ural region, for promotion of theirschooling projects among the Muslims. Importantly, Ufa zemstvos provided Muslims and zemstvos of neighbouring provinces with models ofcreative cooperation with Muslims in education policy. In comparison
with Ufa province, Kazan zemtsy put their emphasis on the building ofroads, bridges, etc. A Kazan Muslim newspaper, highly evaluating Ufa
zemstvo’s contribution to Muslim education, complained that roads and
10 The Kazan District included Astrakhan, Kazan, Samara, Saratov, Simbirsk and
Viatka provinces. The Orenburg District included Orenburg, Perm, Ufa provinces and two
steppe provinces, Torghay and Ural’sk.
11 A. F. Efirov, Nerusskie shkoly Povolzh’ia, Priural’ia i Sibiri: istoricheskii ocherk (Мoscow,1948), p. 48.
12 Zhurnaly zasedanii s’’ezd direktorov i inspektorov narodnykh uchilishch Orenburgskogouchebnogo Okruga v g. Ufe 11–16 iiunia 1912 goda (Ufa, 1913), p. 316.
13 Azamatova, “Deiatel’nost’ Ufimskogo zemstva,” pp. 158, 203. Zlatoust county stoodin a leading position in the province, for it was a centre of mining and metallurgical industry, which motivated the workers to have education. Farkhshatov, Narodnoe obrazovanie v
Bashkirii, pp. 112.
14 Mir islama 2 (1913), p. 761.

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bridges were the second or third most important needs for the people.15
After the introduction of zemstvos to Orenburg province in 1913,16 thezemtsy often referred to Ufa colleagues’ experience and directly collaborated with them. Muslims in the neighbouring Western Siberia
Education District eagerly observed experiments of Ufa zemstvos.17
As the introduction of universal primary education revealed disagreement between the MNP and the zemtsy over the cause of
non-Russian education, the spread of standardized schools caused a polemic among the Muslim intellectuals over the coexistence of Russian
citizenship and nationality. That was well reflected in a series of articles
titled “Maktab or School? (Maktab mī Ushqūlā mī?)” in the Muslim press
during 1913–1916. The debate spread in the northern periphery of Central Eurasia, from Kazan to Tomsk. We will analyze two aspects of theargument: financial management of ma∆alla, 18 and identification of
maktabs in the modernization of the imperial school system. The polemic started in a Kazan journal, Maktab in terms of the first aspect. After
1905 the new-method maktabs’ education program was increasingly approaching that of zemstvo schools. Issues in the debate developed fromalternatives between maktab and school to elaboration of “a third type”
of Muslim school.
The main orators of the debate were “secular” intellectuals (Ωiyālīlar)and maktab teachers (mu‘allims). 19 Having studied in new-method
15 Yūrduz, April 10, 1914, pp. 2–3.
16 The question of introduction of zemstvos to the south-eastern frontiers (Astrakhan,
Orenburg and Stavropol’ provinces) was on the agenda at nearly the same time as thewestern frontiers. The Muslim press also kept up with the legislative process. Waqt,
November 13, 1911, p. 1; January 26, 1912, pp. 1–2.
17 Stéphane A. Dudoignon, “Un islam périphérique? Quelques réflexions sur la pressemusulmane de Sibérie à la veille de la Première Guerre mondiale,” Cahiers du Monde russe
41, no. 2–3 (2000), p. 321.
18 I located this question in the broader context of organization of mahalla. See my“Molding the Muslim Community through the Tsarist Administration: Ma∆alla under theJurisdiction of Orenburg Mohammedan Spiritual Assembly after 1905,” Acta Slavica
Iaponica 23 (2006), pp. 101–123.
19 For the specifics of their discourse on “nation,” see my “Predstavlenie Dzh. Validova
o poniatii ‘natsiia,’ millät posle Pervoi rossiiskoi revolutsii,” in Sbornik materialov itogovykh
konferentsii molodykh uchenykh Instituta istorii imeni Sh. Mardzhani Akademii nauk RT za
2003–2004 gody (Kazan, 2004), pp. 222–228.

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maktabs or non-Russian schools, they preferred pedagogic and writing
activities under private patronage of mullahs or merchants, to clericalduties that were subordinated to unstable mahalla economy.20 The appearance of Muslim journalism in the wake of the 1905 Revolution widened their sphere of activity. Thereby, the Muslim intelligentsia, distinct
from the clergy (rū∆ānīlar), came into being. The introduction of universal primary education could threaten the presence of muallims: is it possible to make new-method maktabs compete with standardized stateschools by mahalla’s limited sources? If these maktabs were replaced by
the schools, could muallims find work there? The arguments clearly reflected the development of interaction with zemstvos and local conditions in which participants of the debate lived.

Muslims’ Attitudes toward Zemstvos’ Education Activity
The 1906 reforms and the general mobilization of the Muslim community for Duma elections had ambiguous effects on Muslim participationin zemstvo affairs.21 This section challenges a dichotomy in explaining
Muslims’ attitudes toward schooling reform in general and zemstvos’enterprise in particular: Jadid intellectuals as the only force of social reorganization on one hand, and the isolated, traditional, static, inward-looking common Muslim peasants, on the other.22 At the beginning of the twentieth century Muslim reformists exploited these stereotypes to identify their mission in the Muslim community. Today’s “national” historiographies of Kazan and Ufa contribute to the reproductionof these representations. However, we contend that it was the “national”
rhetoric of the Muslim intellectuals that sometimes rendered difficult
20 Stéphane A. Dudoignon, “Status, Strategies and Discourses of a Muslim ‘Clergy’
under a Christian Law: Polemics about the Collection of the Zakât in Late Imperial Russia,”
in Stéphane A. Dudoignon and KOMATSU Hisao, eds., Islam in Politics in Russia and Central
Asia: Early Eighteenth to Late Twentieth Century (London: Kegan Paul, 2001), pp. 57, 59; Thereform of mahalla was needed in order to attract the young to the clerical job. ∫ūrmush,November 23, 1914, p. 1.
21 Steinwedel, “Invisible Threads of Empire,” pp. 326–327.
22 For the case of the Russian peasants, see Seregny, “Zemstvos, Peasants, and Citizenship,” p. 314.

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their negotiation with zemstvos.
After 1905 Muslim villagers increasingly began to see zemstvo support as an alternative to parish resources. In June 1905, a meeting of
Bashkir representatives of Ufa province petitioned against any restrictions on Muslims’ election to zemstvo assemblies, and for sending Muslims to zemstvo executive boards in counties. Those present at the meeting also thought it necessary to open trade schools at zemstvos’ expense
so that Muslim peasants could live by trade in years of bad harvest.23
The congregation of the fourth mahalla in Safarovo village, Ufa county
was too poor to build maktab or madrasa by themselves, which compelled them to depend on zemstvo subsidies. However, neighbouring
mullahs condemned them for infringement of the Islamic law (sharī‘a).
Responding to a petition from an imam of the fourth parish, the Spiritual
Assembly on August 8, 1906 pronounced an opinion (fatwā) that theshari‘a did not prohibit the use of zemstvo subsidies for construction
and maintenance of confessional schools. 24 An Orenburg newspaper
Waqt considered the fatwa “crucial for all the community (millat)” andattracted readers’ special attention.25 Later, in Safarovo, except maktabs
for boys and girls, Russian-Tatar schools were opened, where 50 boys
and 70 girls separately studied Russian and “Muslim language (muslimāncha).”26 At the end of 1913, when the provincial zemstvo began toestablish 6 non-Russian regional libraries, one of them was placed in thisvillage.27
The most familiar reasoning for zemstvo schools’ unpopularity has
been religious conservativeness among the Muslims and mullahs’ stub23 Protokol Ufimskogo Gubernskogo Soveshchaniia, obrazovannogo s razresheniia G. Ministra
Vnutrennikh Del iz doverennykh bashkirskikh volostei Ufimskoi gubernii dlia obsuzhdeniia voprosov, kasaiushchikhsia magometanskoi religii i voobshche nuzhd bashkirskogo naseleniia: 22, 23 i 25
iiunia 1905 goda (Ufa, 1905), pp. 18–19.
24 Tsentral’nyi gosudarstvennyi istoricheskii arkhiv Respubliki Bashkortostan(TsGIARB), f. I-295 (Orenburgskoe magometanskoe dukhovnoe sobranie), op. 2, d. 281, n.p.
(journal of August 8, 1906).
25 Waqt, August 19, 1906, p. 3; August 26, 1906, p. 1.
26 Waqt, January 15, 1914, p. 3.
27 Waqt, December 10, 1913, p. 2. One of the libraries was also placed in Yāngā Qārāmālī village, Sterlitamak county, where Mirsaid Sultangaliev was appointed as library
head.

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born resistance against “the centres of Christianization.”28 But first of all,it is worthwhile comparing the Muslim case with a history of Russian
literacy schools in the latter half of the nineteenth century; seeing theexistence of literacy schools as an indicator of latent demand for education, zemstvos incorporated them into the primary schooling system. In
this process the Russian peasants also stressed religious instruction, andteachers found that its inclusion was a way to win their support for theschool. While zemstvo funds were limited, peasant communes retained
the initiative not only in funding schools but also in school curricula.29
As “Maktab or School” debate suggested, Muslims also tried to share inschool management with zemtsy so that maktabs and schools lived up to“national spirit (millī rū∆).”The extent to which officials of the Ministry of the Interior intervenedin Muslim affairs also defined the range of zemstvo operations and Muslims’ participation in them. While persecution of Jadids equated with
“Pan-Islamists” was in full swing after 1905 especially in Kazan province,
the Ufa and Orenburg governors even refuted arguments of central
MVD officials, pointing out that “fanatical” mullahs denounced “theprogressive” lest the former lose their prestige and material base.30 To
be sure, the Ufa governor tried to eliminate Muslim deputies fromzemstvos, just as Stolypin did against the Poles in the western provinces.
However, Petr Koropachinskii, provincial zemstvo chairman with Kadet
sympathies, managed to avoid conflicts with the governor.31 It was his
initiative that promoted the collaboration with Jadid intellectuals.
Moreover, recent studies of various Muslim communities in Central
Eurasia demonstrate the existence of internal politics that were causedby competition over the state’s patronage and distribution of “cultural”
28 Salikhov, Tatarskaia burzhuaziia Kazani, p. 52; Azamatova, “Deiatel’nost’ Ufimskogo
zemstva,” p. 132; Zhelezniakova, “Zemskaia shkola,” pp. 63–64.
29 Brooks, “The Zemstvo and the Education,” pp. 253, 261–262; Eklof, Russian PeasantSchools, pp. 84, 86, 88.
30 Farkhshatov, Samoderzhavie i traditsionnye shkoly, pp. 67–68, 211–218. It should be
added that the Orthodox missionaries’ influence on the MVD operations was obvious in
Kazan province. See my paper presented at the VII ICCEES World Congress in Berlin (July28, 2005), “Political Reliability: The Kazan Provincial Governorship and the Control of the
Muslim Clergies (1905–1917).”31 Steinwedel, “Invisible Threads of Empire,” pp. 329, 435–436.

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and financial capital.32 It follows from these arguments that the growinginteraction with the Russian authorities after 1905 activated the politics
inside the Muslim communities, and that conflicts of interests thereby
limited their approach to zemstvos. While some tried to make use ofzemstvos to maintain the mahalla life, others could invite the security
police to stop such an innovation under the rubric of defence of the
shari‘a. In Kazan province, where police intervention intensified after
1905, it might not have been easy for the Muslims to call for zemstvo
support. Peasants of Shemiakovo village in Mamadysh county agreed tobuild a madrasa with a Russian language class by accepting financial
assistance from the county zemstvo and Ni‘mat Allāh ‘Abbāsuf, a fellow-villager merchant living in Irgiz, Torghay province. But this enraged
their mullah Davletsha Ibatullin, who had studied in Bukhara and stuck
to “Bukharan order.” In order to remove the mullah, the parishioners
informed on him to the provincial authorities, claiming that he had been
once in contact with “Mukhamedgalii,” i.e., Dukchi Ishan, a leader of the
Andizhan uprising. The mullah and his supporters tried to convince thepolice of the merchant’s “political disloyalty,” depicting him as a“Pan-Islamist.”33
Along with the persecution of Jadids, it was due to parallelism andegalitarianism in Kazan intellectuals’ rhetoric of “national” interests thatnegotiation with the zemtsy did not bring about the same results as in
Ufa province. For protection of “national spirit,” they usually insisted on
maktabs’ parallel existence with the state and zemstvo schools, and on
the government’s equal subsidizing of both church-parish schools andmaktabs. The distinction in formation of the Muslim intelligentsia in
Kazan and Ufa provinces also seems to have told on their different
32 Stéphane A. Dudoignon, “Qu’est-ce que la ‘qadîmiya’? Éléments pour une sociologie
du traditionalisme musulman, en Islam de Russie et en Transoxiane (au tournant des XIXeet XXe siècles),” in Stéphane A. Dudoignon et al., eds., L’Islam de Russie: Conscience
communautaire et autonomie politique chez les Tatars de la Volga et de l’Oural depuis le VIIIe siècle(Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 1997), pp. 207–225; Adeeb Khalid, The Politics of Muslim
Cultural Reform: Jadidism in Central Asia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998);
Robert D. Crews, For Prophet and Tsar: Islam and Empire in Russia and Central Asia
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006).
33 Natsional’nyi arkhiv Respubliki Tatarstan (NART), f. 1 (Kantseliariia kazanskogo
gubernatora), op. 6, d. 835.

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strategies in the negotiation with zemstvos. Kazan reformists wereoriginally those peasants and their children who had moved to Kazan in
the 1870s and 1880s. It was their success in business that enabled them totake the initiative in reorganizing urban Muslim life.34 On the other hand,
many Ufa Muslim leaders were from noble families who had served in thestate institutions and the local self-government in the province. This fact
may account for their practiced collaboration with the zemtsy.
In October 1906 in the Kazan county zemstvo assembly, the executive
board admitted the necessity of native-language zemstvo schools thatshould be freed of missionary and Russification tasks. However, theMuslim subcommittee headed by Galimjan Barudi (1857–1921), a founder of the first new-method maktab in Kazan, proposed that subsidies beallocated to existing maktabs and madrasas without the obligation oflearning Russian, and that the schooling program be made exclusively
on the resolutions of the third All-Russian Muslim Congress in August
1906. Hence the confessional schools should be under the supervision of
the Spiritual Assembly.35 Criticizing the subcommittee, which only demanded money and dismissed Russian education and the zemstvo’s
administration of schools, Waqt stressed that it was no use fearing thelearning of Russian and zemstvo schools after the declaration of “freedom of conscience.”36
Thus, whereas the Muslim peasants engaged in communal politics,
resorting to “open” interactions with the state institutions, reform-minded Kazan intellectuals could not find common language withthe zemtsy due to their “closed” understanding of “national” interests.
In 1912 the head of police in Mamadysh county reported to the governor
that the common people, not afraid of the MNP’s control, petitioned forzemstvo schools, although the Tatar intelligentsia, out of the fear of thepeople’s Russification, demanded the approval of their own general
education program and the supervision of maktabs and madrasas under
the Muslim clergy.37
34 Salikhov, Tatarskaia burzhuaziia Kazani, pp. 24, 29.
35 Salikhov, Tatarskaia burzhuaziia Kazani, pp. 50–51; 1906 sene 16–21 avgustta ictima etmiş
Rusya müslümanlarının nedvesi (Kazan, 1906), pp. 59–60, 101.
36 Waqt, December 16, 1906, p. 2.
37 NART, f. 2 (Kazanskoe gubernskoe pravlenie), op. 2, d. 8958, ll. 17–19ob.

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If the interpenetration of the imperial law and Islamic idioms was a
principle of the organization of the Muslim community in theVolga-Ural region,38 then how did religious scholars, rū∆ānīlar, try tointerpret the support of the local self-government in theological terms? A
former member (QāΩī) of the Spiritual Assembly RiΩā’ al-Dīn Fakhr
al-Dīn abandoned egalitarianism with the Orthodox parish schools. He
considered permanent financial resources for maktabs and madrasas tobe subsidies of the local self-government and Islamic income tax (zakāt)
imposed on possessions of the rich according to the shari‘a. Fakhr al-Dīn
proved that expenditure of zakat on maktabs and madrasas lived up to“God’s Path (Sabīl Allāh)” in the sixtieth verse of the ninth chapter ofQur’ān which defines the use of zakat. Explaining that “God’s Path”
comprised the reinforcement of Islam and public welfare (ma≠āli∆-i‘āmma), he justified the self-government’s support by this concept of
public welfare. However, as far as universal primary education is concerned, it is possible that Fakhr al-Dīn still could not detect what thisstate project would bring to the imperial Muslim community. Keeping
parallelism with the state schools, he only called for the Muslims’ own
efforts to secure religious and “national” knowledge (dīnī wa millī ‘ilm).39
The huge investment of the Ministry of Education in widening theschool network subjected the imperial education system to unprecedented transformation. The predominance of the state expenditure wasthought to allow the ministry officials to take over the pedagogic leadership from the local self-government. However, the Ufa zemtsy strove
to maintain their authority over education in general and non-Russian
schooling in particular. As zemstvos elaborated their own cause of education and unique approach to the non-Russian population, the Muslim
intellectuals were in their turn compelled to employ other tactics, insteadof parallelism and egalitarianism.

38 See my “Molding the Muslim Community.”
39 RiΩā’ al-Dīn Fakhr al-Dīn, Maktab wa zakāt, khazīna wa zīmstwā yārdamī (Orenburg),
pp. 54, 59, 62–63. Although the year of the publication is not printed, Waqt informed that it
appeared in 1909. Waqt, May 7, 1909, pp. 3–4.

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Zemstvo, Muslims, Ministry of Education in Ufa Province
Disagreement between zemstvos and the Ministry of Education over theperspective of universal primary education and reorganization of primary schools reached the highest stage in 1900–1907. On one hand, theministry planned to introduce universal schooling by integrating all
primary schools but Synod ones under its common direction and inspection. But in the State Duma, on the other hand, the ministry was obliged
to promise allocation from its budget to zemstvos so that schools could
be much more accessible to the local population.40
The law of May 3, 1908 on distribution of 6 million 900 thousand roubles to primary schools served as the first powerful spur for zemstvos.
To be eligible, the county zemstvos had to submit a plan for realizing
universal education within ten years. They were required to maintainexisting outlays on education and to relieve the peasant communities ofall obligations for school facilities. In addition, all schools had to havefully certified teachers and offer a four-year course of instruction. 41
Muslims were also attracted to the liberation from the maintenance ofschools; if they began to go to new state schools, there would be no needto take pains to seek resources for their maktabs. But was it possible toabandon maktabs altogether? That was the crux of the debate over
“Maktab or School.”
In Ufa province the question about the school network for the Muslim
population was on the agenda already in 1908. Before the provincial
zemstvo assembly in that year, Muslim lawyer I. A. Akhtiamov, whose
father had been head of the Belebei county board, presented a report tothe school commission within the zemstvo executive board. He stressedthat realization of universal education required the Muslims’ entrance
into the school network. He considered it possible to achieve universal
education for Muslim boys in ten years, if not for girls. It deserves attention that Akhtiamov considered it necessary to find a new type of Muslim school that would provide knowledge in the native language as well
40 V. F. Abramov, “Zemstvo, narodnoe obrazovanie i prosveshchenie,” Voprosy istorii 8(1998), pp. 47–48.
41 Eklof, Russian Peasant Schools, p. 117.

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as in Russian. In order to elaborate a program of the new schools, hesuggested that the executive board invite to a conference representatives
from both zemstvo and ministry schools and maktabs. Akhtiamov also
insisted that teachers’ schools be opened in Ufa both for men andwomen. The school commission added to his report that stipends to the
Kazan Tatar Teachers’ School should be intensified by county and provincial zemstvos.42
When the zemstvo assembly was convened in 1908, the provincial executive board criticized the county boards’ reluctance to incorporate theMuslims in the school network on grounds of their unwillingness to go
to neither zemstvo nor ministry schools. The provincial executive board
claimed that the fact that maktabs and madrasas were managed by thepeople themselves and were filled with pupils was a sufficient indicatorof their aspiration for literacy and knowledge. The executive board recognized that Muslims had not seen any difference between the state policy of Russification and the zemstvo activity of enlightenment. Taking
into account “the recent progress of Tatar language,” the executive board
suggested that both Russian and Tatar languages acquire the same importance in the school. Those present agreed on Akhtiamov’s suggestion
to convene a conference, which would be realized in 1911.43
One of the advantages on which the Ufa zemtsy could depend was
the cooperation with the Muslim religious authority. Ufa county, where
3/8 of the population were Tatars and Bashkirs, had only five schools forthem, which covered only 1.3 percent of the school-year children. According to its school-network project, the county zemstvo planned tobuild 103 schools for boys and 102 for girls. In 1909 the county executive
board asked the Spiritual Assembly for information on the degree towhich the Bashkir-Tatar population was ready for universal education.
The Spiritual Assembly answered that Muslims stood at the same level
42 P. N. Grigor’ev, Ocherk deiatel’nosti Ufimskogo Gubernskogo Zemstva po narodnomu
obrazovaniiu 1875–1910 (Ufa, 1910), p. 133. In 1914, for example, 14 students finished theKazan Teachers’ School. Seven of them had received grant from the Treasury, six fromzemstvo stipends, one from pious endowment, waqf of Orenburg commerce tycoon, Akhmad
Khusainov. Ten out of fourteen were from Ufa province. ∫ūrmush, June 6, 1914, p. 3.
43 XXXIV Ufimskomu ocherednomu Gubernskomu Sobraniiu: Doklad Gubernskoi upravy po
voprosu o shkol’noi seti v otnoshenii musul’manskogo naseleniia gubernii (Ufa, 1908), pp. 1–4, 12.

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as the Russians and that all the measures for development of the economy and culture would equally affect Muslims. The authority advisedthat mother tongue and religious education not be ignored in order toerase Muslims’ prejudice against schools.44
Both Ufa zemtsy and Muslims could find common interests also in
training teachers of schools and maktabs, that is, uchitel’s and muallims.
Just as the expansion of the school network of universal education required certified teachers in the schools, so the lack of qualified muallims,
especially women, mu‘allimas, was sharply felt in the development of
new-method maktabs. In both cases, the absence of official certificatesserved as a good reason for the MNP inspectors to persecute schools andmaktabs.
Once Ufa had a Tatar Teachers’ school which had been established in
1872 in accordance with the regulations of non-Russian education in
1870. However, the school was closed down before it moved to Orenburg in 1876 and its building was handed over to the Kirgiz [Kazakh]
Teachers’ school in 1889.45 At the beginning of the twentieth century,
three teachers’ schools existed for the Muslims: in Kazan and Simferopol’ for Tatars and in Orenburg for Kazakhs. The provincial zemstvo
had not abandoned its efforts to bring a Tatar Teachers’ school back to
Ufa; since 1898, when Muslim councilor (glasnyi) Tevkelev had proposed
this question first, by 1912 the zemstvo had petitioned six times to the
Ministry of Education.46 The ministry in its turn recommended Muslims’ education with the Russians, arguing that separate education
would lead to “undesired national isolation and Pan-Islamic and
Pan-Turkic aspiration.”47 It was not until 1916 that the question waspartly solved by the Ufa zemstvo’s establishment of a three-year pedagogic course for Muslim teachers.48 Taking it as a model, Orenburg
44 TsGIARB, f. I-295, op. 11, d. 676, ll. 145–148.
45 A. V. Vasil’ev, Istoricheskii ocherk russkogo obrazovaniia v Turgaiskoi oblasti i sovremennoe
ego sostoianie (Orenburg, 1896), p. 57.
46 Grigor’ev, Ocherk deiatel’nosti Ufimskogo Gubernskogo Zemstva, pp. 126, 129; Otchet
Ufimskoi gubernskoi zemskoi upravy XXXVIII ocherednomu Ufimskomu gubernskomu zemskomu
sobraniiu po otdelu narodnogo obrazovaniia za 1912 goda (Ufa, 1912), p. 6.
47 Zhurnaly zasedanii s”ezda direktorov i inspektorov narodnykh uchilishch Orenburgskogouchebnogo Okruga v g.Ufe 11–16 iiunia 1912 goda (Ufa, 1913), p. 408.
48 For the curriculum of the course, see Efirov, Nerusskie shkoly, p. 66.

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zemstvo also produced a program for a pedagogic course, which wasapproved by the curator of the Education District in November 1916.49
Muslims themselves tried to take advantage of every opportunity togain official recognition for the need for teachers’ schools. The first opportunity came with the 25th anniversary of the mufti M. Sultanov’s
appointment in 1911. On May 21 a big conference took place in Ufa withthe governor’s permission. Those present resolved to open male and female teachers’ schools named after the mufti. A special commission wasorganized to prepare regulations on the schools, and donations for the
project amounted to 100 thousand roubles.50 Another opportunity arose
in 1913, when the State Duma approved the establishment of 93 teachers’
seminaries in commemoration of the 300th anniversary of Romanov dynasty. However, the Muslim faction in the Duma could not gain allocation for Muslim teachers’ schools, which caused harsh criticism in thepress.51
In May 23–25, 1911 as the zemstvo assembly had resolved in 1908, theUfa provincial board held a conference to seek a possible type of new
primary school for Muslims. Those present were 10 zemtsy, 2 officials
from the MNP and 23 Muslim muallims and intellectuals including theState Duma deputies from Ufa and Kazan. The conference took placeagainst a backdrop of the Sate Duma having passed a bill on universal
education in February. The resolutions would be brought to the
All-Zemstvo congress on education in August. It was meaningful that in
the congress the Ufa delegate declared that enlightenment should be
non-Russian schools’ sole aim, as Muslim representatives had insisted in
the Ufa conference in May.52 Conflict between the needs of pedagogy
49 As male teachers (muallims) were mobilized to the war, roles of female teachers(muallimas) were reinforced. Orenburg provincial executive board planned to make asummer course for female teachers of maktabs and schools in 1917. Doklady Orenburgskoi
Gubernskoi Zemskoi Upravy chetvertomu ocherednomu Gubernskomu Zemskomu Sobraniiu: Podotdel obrazovaniia inorodtsev, Otdel narodnogo obrazovaniia (Orenburg, 1916), pp. 43–44,
50–57.
50 Maktab 1 (1914), pp. 7–11; 2 (1914), pp. 32–38; 3 (1914), pp. 55–61.
51 Maktab 2 (1913), pp. 40–42.
52 Zhurnaly soveshchaniia pri Ufimskoi Gubernskoi Zemskoi Uprave po voprosu o tipe
nachal’noi obshcheobrazovatel’noi musul’manskoi shkoly 23–25 maia 1911 g. (Ufa, 1911), pp.
9–11; Pervyi Obshchezemskii S”ezd po narodnomu obrazovaniiu 1911 goda: Doklady, vol. 1

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and the demands of politics had been at the heart of the debate on thelanguage of schooling in the third State Duma.53
In the Ufa conference the “Maktab or School” debate had alreadyarisen between the Muslim representatives and the Ufa zemtsy. Steinwedel emphasizes a common position Ufa Muslims and zemtsy took,and distinguishes it from Kazan Muslims’ arguments. The Ufa groupspoke for new schools with the native language, and Kazan Muslims
persisted in keeping religiousness in both old and new-method maktabs.54 Steinwedel describes “ethnic” organization of schooling which
involved both Muslims and zemtsy. To be sure, as discussed above, theKazan and Ufa zemstvos were working under distinct circumstances.
However, the protocol of the conference permits us to extract a common“Muslim” position: Muslims, both from Kazan or Ufa, were together
trying to locate new-method maktabs within the future school system.
They took for granted old-method maktabs’ vanishing.
Kazan and Ufa Muslims shared an understanding that the program ofnew-method maktabs was approaching that of general-education
schools. However, some Muslims predicted the replacement of thesemaktabs with new zemstvo schools, and others proposed the zemstvos
to support existing maktabs. Those present55 agreed that the entrance of
maktabs into the school network was possible if they accepted a program of a new type of primary school that the provincial zemstvo would
elaborate. However, P. F. Koropachinskii, head of the provincial zemstvo
board, indicated that the MNP could disagree with the entrance due to“the confessional shade” of maktabs. When Muslims asked for subsidies
to maktabs until the realization of universal education, the zemtsy
stressed the principle of “general secular schools,” according to which
not only maktabs but also church-parish schools were not eligible for thesubsidies.56
In order to examine the extent to which maktabs acquired “construc(Moscow, 1911), p. 690.
53 Dowler, Classroom and Empire, p. 204.
54 Steinwedel, “Invisible Threads of Empire,” pp. 451–454.
55 Two officials from the MNP did not participate in the debate.
56 Zhurnaly soveshchaniia, pp. 41–51. One of those present was Fatikh Karimov, editor
in-chief of Waqt. For his high evaluation of the conference, see Waqt, June 3, 1911, p. 2.

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tion of secular primary school,” the Ufa provincial zemstvo carried out alarge-scale statistical investigation in 1912–1913. In May 1912, a special
commission was organized for that purpose. It consisted of ten Muslims
and four members of the executive board. In November forms with 115
questions written in “Tatar” were sent out to 2144 imams, i.e., leaders ofmahallas throughout Ufa province, with the attachment of the Mufti’s
appeal.57 Muslims met the investigation with sympathy; the organizer
received 1579 responses. At nearly the same time the Menzelinsk county
zemstvo, which already provided active support to maktabs and madrasas, also undertook a statistical investigation.58
The statistics detected a “secularization” tendency of maktabs interms of the education program: “purely” confessional schools accounted for 18.1 percent of all the examined maktabs; 28.7 percent werelabelled “transitional” type of maktab which taught either the mothertongue or one general-education subject; 39.2 percent of maktabs taught
arithmetic in addition to Islam and the mother tongue; and 14 percent ofmaktabs gave elementary knowledge of history, geography and naturalscience.59 The compiler of the final report was convinced that the assistance of the local self-government could accelerate maktabs’ transition toprimary secular schools, and that secular and well-organized maktabs
would serve as a means of cultural development and could enter theschool network with the same qualification as Russian primary schools.60
However, the MNP officials were afraid that zemstvos would undermine the MNP’s pedagogic authority over primary schools. The law of
May 3, 1908, which signalled the ministry’s reinforcement of investment
in universal primary education, jeopardized the traditional conflict overdemarcation of competence between the ministry and zemstvos.61 Edu57 Otchet Ufimskoi gubernskoi zemskoi upravy, pp. 30–32.
58 Azamatova, “Deiatel’nost’ Ufimskogo zemstva,” p. 154. The provincial statistics
showed that Menzelinsk county had the largest number of maktabs, which was explainedby the zemstvo’s subsidies. M. I. Obukhov, Mekteby Ufimskoi gubernii: Statisticheskii ocherk
tatarskikh i bashkirskikh nizshikh shkol (mektebov) Ufimskoi gubernii po dannym issledovaniia
Ufimskoi gubernskoi zemskoi upravy (Ufa, 1915), p. 9.
59 Obukhov, Mekteby Ufimskoi gubernii, pp. 30–31.
60 Ibid, p. 40.
61 For the situation before 1905, see Grigor’ev, Ocherk deiatel’nosti Ufimskogo Gubernskogo
Zemstva, pp. 130–131.

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cation Minister L. A. Kasso tried to intensify the local inspectors’ control
over zemstvo schools. In reality, since zemstvos had their own financial
resources, it was more difficult for the ministry to increase the number ofinspectors than for zemstvos to increase the number of schools.62
In 1912, when the congress of directors and inspectors of the Orenburg Education District was convened, the 1911 conference of the Ufa
provincial zemstvo board was denounced as an infringement of the law.
Special attention was focused on the zemstvo’s education program for
languages and religious subjects for a new type of Muslim school; theUfa conference had accepted that the teaching be done in the native
language during the whole four years of schooling, and that the learningof Russian start from the second half of the first year. The zemstvo executive board had decided to entrust the elaboration of religious subjects
to the Spiritual Assembly.63 The congress passed a resolution that thejurisdiction of the local self-government had to be strictly limited to afinancial sphere of schools.64
In contradiction of the Ufa zemtsy’s declaration, curator of the education district V. N. Vladimirov pronounced “merging with the Russians(sliianie s russkimi)” to be the task of non-Russian schools. Having experienced “struggle with the Catholics” in Vil’na Education District before his coming to Orenburg in 1910,65 he thought that learning Russian
through the Tatar language served as a spur to “Tatarization” of Russian-Bashkir schools. On the whole those present launched a fierce attack
on Il’minskii’s method; discarding “missionary” tasks of schools andcautioning against an excessive use of the native language, they put priority on learning Russian and acquisition of “Russian citizenship(russkaia grazhdanstvennost’).” 66 The congress resolved non-Russians’studying with Russians in the standardized four-year non-Russian
schools67 and the start of Russian learning within a few months after
62 Abramov, “Zemstvo, narodnoe obrazovanie,” p. 49.
63 Zhurnaly soveshchaniia, pp. 19, 54–55, 74.
64 Zhurnaly zasedanii s’’ezda, pp. 12–36.
65 Farkhshatov, Samoderzhavie i traditsionnye shkoly, p. 69.
66 Zhurnaly zasedanii s’’ezda, pp. 329, 331, 341–342, 345–346.
67 Non-Russian schools were not always “mixed” ones. Efirov, Nerusskie shkoly, pp. 29,
48–49.

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pupils’ entrance.68
Thus, Eklof’s revision of the paradigm of “a tug-of-war between a benevolent zemstvo and an obscurantist government” should be interpreted carefully. He emphasizes a form of “joint government-zemstvo
venture” in establishing a school network, and thereby he tends to underestimate conflicting aspects in the relationship between zemstvos andthe MNP. To be sure, he notices that huge subsidies from the ministryfor primary schools blurred their jurisdiction after 1908.69 However, theconflict between the Ufa provincial zemstvo and the local ministry officers demonstrates that while the MNP recognized zemstvos’ financial
contribution to school construction, it tried to keep them out of thepedagogic sphere of a non-Russian schooling project. The ministry andthe Ufa zemstvo competed with each other not only for the control ofschools, but for the cause of non-Russian education.
Zemstvos’ commitment to Muslim schooling was all the more intensified in the southern Urals with the introduction of zemstvos in Orenburg
province in 1913. Naturally Ufa’s experiments served as valuable models
there. At the end of 1914 Ibrahim Bikchentaev was appointed as chief of
non-Russian education within the Orenburg provincial zemstvo board.
The year of 1915 became a fruitful year for Muslim education. As
Seregny illustrates, peasants’ interest in information on the war offered
the key to awaking popular interest in enlightenment in general, andthereby offered a unique opportunity to nurture citizenship.70
In 1915 Bikchentaev elaborated a four-year education program formaktabs; if maktabs accepted this program, they could receive zemstvo
subsidies. The program was sent out not only to the county zemstvos in
Orenburg province, but also to the Spiritual Assembly in Ufa and an influential Muslim paper Waqt in order to “present the program to Muslim
public opinion.” Bikchentaev participated in the conference which wasconvened at the initiative of the Ufa provincial zemstvo to examine
textbooks for Russian-Tatar schools and maktabs. In 1915 the Orenburg
68 It is possible that the resolution would affect the regulations on non-Russian education in 1913. Farkhshatov, Samoderzhavie i traditsionnye shkoly, pp. 87–88, 247.
69 Eklof, Russian Peasant Schools, pp. 88, 95, 118–119.
70 Seregny, “Zemstvos, Peasants, and Citizenship,” pp. 302, 304. Despite the war censorship, Waqt devoted many pages to the war and zemstvo activities.

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zemstvo also carried out a statistical investigation on maktabs in theprovince. Six regional libraries each with three branches were opened for
Muslims. The county zemstvos set the amount of subsidies to maktabs
at: Orenburg 7,000 roubles, Orsk 15,000 roubles, Cheliabinsk 200 roubles
per maktab, Verkhneural’sk and Troitsk 140 roubles per maktab. Waqt
showed the Muslim public the procedure for receipt of the subsidies.71
The difference in the cause of non-Russian primary education between the Ministry of Education and the Ufa zemstvos became obvious:
whereas the ministry aimed at their merging with the Russians throughthe Russian language, the zemtsy engaged in enlightenment throughnon-Russians’ mother tongues. However, a common principle the ministry and the zemstvo shared was “secularism” in schooling. Therefore,
the process of secularization affected church-parish schools, with which
Muslims wanted to equalize their maktabs.72 The Ufa provincial zemstvo declined Muslim intellectuals’ egalitarian demand for subsidies,and the ministry officials abandoned the schools’ missionary task. Nevertheless, while reformers of the State Duma had passed a bill of universal education that intended incorporation of church schools into theschool network, the State Council dismissed the bill, arguing that “Russia should not be deprived of church schools and an independent administration of religious education.”73
The government applied this rigid separation between confessional
71 Waqt, June 17, 1915, p. 1; June 20, 1915, pp. 1–2; January 13, 1916, pp. 1–2; Zhurnaly I i
II soveshchanii po narodnomu obrazovaniiu pri Orenburgskoi gubernskoi zemskoi uprave v 1915
godu (Orenburg, 1915), pp. 39–42, 44–45; Orenburgskoe Gubernskoe Zemskoe Sobranie, Tret’ia
ocherednaia sessiia, Doklady po narodnomu obrazovaniiu (Orenburg, 1916), pp. 119, 121–126,
190–226.
72 Dowler, Classroom and Empire, p. 220. Bishop of Ufa and Menzelinsk counties Andrei
criticized Education Minister Kasso for ignoring religious education. He also condemned
the Menzelinsk zemstvo for investing not in church-parish schools, but in maktabs andmadrasas. This county zemstvo appropriated 14,700 roubles for maktabs and madrasas inits budget of 1915. Episkop Andrei, Mneniia ufimskikh zemtsev o tserkovnykh delakh (Ufa,
1915), pp. 32–33, 48–49. On this bishop, see E. I. Larina, “Episkop Andrei i doktrina Ministerstva vnutrennikh del Rossiiskoi imperii v ‘musul’manskom voprose’,” Sbornik Russkogo
istoricheskogo obshchestva, vol. 7 (Moscow, 2003), pp. 212–225.
73 As an analogy, the law of June 13, 1884 on church-parish schools had also served as a“counterbalance” against zemstvo schools. Abramov, “Zemstvo, narodnoe obrazovanie,”
pp. 46, 48.

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and secular schools to Muslim schools. The Special Conference on the
Muslim question, which was convened in 1910 at the initiative of theInterior Ministry, resolved that maktabs’ program be strictly confined toreligious subjects.74 As long as the school policy went on accordingly,
Muslims were forced to cling to parallelism, with new-method maktabs
left as private schools alongside the state ones. However, when the Ufa
and Orenburg zemstvos showed their positive commitment to newmethod maktabs, negotiation started between the zemtsy and Muslims
to seek the possibility of these maktabs’ entrance to a universal school
network and “a third type” of Muslim school, neither existing maktabs
nor schools.

Maktab or School?
The law of May 3, 1908 and following expenditures of the MNP andzemstvos towards universal primary education compelled the Muslim
intellectuals and muallims to answer a question about the coexistence ofRussian citizenship (Rūsīya ghrāzhdānlighī75) and nationality (millīyat). On
one hand, the introduction of uniform schools would relieve the mahalla
people of all burdens of maktabs. The state schools would provide Muslim children with Russian and other indispensable knowledge for civic
life. On the other hand, the intellectuals strove to find a way of guaranteeing the mother tongue and Islam in the curriculum. Otherwise, theywould lose their roles in the “national” education in the future. Some
expected maktabs’ entrance into the school network, and others suggested making schools live up to national spirit (millī rū∆). The course of
the “Maktab or School” debate depended on local conditions, in which
the dialog with zemstvos took place.
A spark rose in 1913 on the pages of a Kazan journal Maktab, which
represented the opinions of the “secular” intellectuals (Ωiyālīlar) in general and muallims in particular. By the word “nation (millat),” almost all
the contributors meant the Tatars. The first orator was Fuad Tuktarov,
74 Robert P. Geraci, Window on the East: National and Imperial Identities in Late Tsarist
Russia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), pp. 285–295.
75 In this case “Russian” means “rossiiskii.”

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who had finished the Tatar Teachers’ School in Kazan and then had become one of the leaders of a socialist circle, ∫āngchīlar, during the 1905
Revolution. He posed a question, what would be the state of the relationship between state schools and maktabs after the spread of theschools in every Tatar village and “universalization (‘umūmlāshdirū)” of
primary education? He spoke for parallelism: despite the persecution of
new-method maktabs, the government did not launch attacks against
being Tatars and Muslims (Tātārliq wa muslimānliq); the government
should stop the pursuit of maktabs and madrasas, “historical institutions
which had served as sources of religious and national spirit.”76
Tuktarov saw a way for maktabs’ survival in a bill on private schoolsthat the State Council passed on May 21, 1913. According to the law, decisions regarding the language of education should be entrusted to eachprivate school with the proviso that Russian language, literature, history
and geography should be taught in Russian. However, with regard toschools established and supported by the local self-government, all subjects except religion and the native language should be taught in Russian; for Russian language lessons, explanation in the native language
would be permitted only in the first year. Tuktarov insisted that maktabs
be considered as private schools, because they did not receive support
either from the state or the local self-government.77
In order to secure the funds for reforming new-method maktabs, hewarned that unnecessary subdivision of mahalla be stopped. He pointed
out that conflicts over the redistribution of mahalla capital between
mullahs and muallims prevented maktabs’ development. To be sure, hepaid an attention to the fact that Ufa zemstvos subsidized maktabs according to Muslims’ petitions. However, he claimed that the small presence of Tatars among zemtsy limited people’s reliance on zemstvos.78
A contrary argument was sent to the Kazan journal from Tomsk,
where the massive Russian immigration had driven the Muslims into amiserable economic situation.79 A muallim Ibrāhīm Bīkqūluf pointed
out that new-method maktabs in Siberia were now ready to yield their
76 Maktab 2 (1913), pp. 57–60; 5 (1913), pp. 121–123.
77 Maktab 6 (1913), pp. 145–149.
78 Maktab 1 (1913), pp. 30–32.
79 Dudoignon, “Un islam périphérique?” p. 329.

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position to Russian-Muslim schools which corresponded much more to
the needs of everyday life. Hinting at a criticism against such an idea as“maktabs as sources of religious and national spirit,” he claimed that
Jadid reform had already lost its meaning to adapt maktabs to real life(ªūrmush), because it had sacrificed this purpose simply for the benefit ofreligion (dīn). Hoping that the introduction of the zemstvo system to Siberia would reinforce the construction of schools, he expected the Muslims to implant “national spirit” in zemstvo schools.80 In Tomsk thequestion of public investment in the Muslims’ modernized education
system was tied to the destiny of the City Duma. Therefore, the municipal
elections called forth Muslims’ great interest. Moreover, educational andcultural activities of the City Duma and Russian regionalists and Narodniks since 1880 had provided the Muslims with the model of mobilizationof communal resources.81 Hence, Bīkqūluf could even boast that Siberian
Muslims’ “higher level of life” enabled them to notice a crisis of Jadid
schools earlier than Muslims in Inner Russia.
Such an opinion, of course, caused fierce resonance from Kazan
Tatars.82 However, defending new-method maktabs, they could only
call for people’s consciousness and love of nation, thereby expecting intensification of private support and subsidies from Muslim charitablesocieties (jam‘īyat-i khairīya).83 Kazan Tatars’ adherence to parallelism
may be explained by the failure in the negotiation with the local zemstvo.
In January 1911, the Kazan county executive board invited Tatar representatives “to relax the distrust of Russian-Tatar schools.” In marked
contrast to the Ufa conference in that year, the Kazan zemtsy tried toobserve strictly the principle of the 1907 Regulations on non-Russian
education; the schooling language should be the mother tongue in thefirst two years and then switch to Russian in the next two years. The
zemtsy and Muslim delegates could only agree on the propagation of the
80 Maktab 3 (1913), pp. 90–92.
81 Dudoignon, “Un islam périphérique?” pp. 320–322, 333–335.
82 Maktab 8 (1913), pp. 192–197; 10 (1913), pp. 237–242; 11 (1913), pp. 283–284.
83 It was disputable among Muslims whether the charitable societies were eligible tocollect and administer Islamic income tax (zakāt). Dudoignon, “Status, Strategies and Discourses,” esp. pp. 51–54; Z. Minnullin, “Blagotvoritel’nye obshchestva i problema zakiata utatar (konets XIX – nach. XX vv.),” in Tatarskie musul’manskie prikhody v Rossiiskoi imperii(Kazan, 2006), pp. 30–41.

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necessity of Russian-Tatar schools to the “fanatic” Muslim population.84
In Orenburg province, where zemstvos had been introduced only recently, ambivalent opinions first appeared on the pages of an Orenburg
journal Mu‘allim. Nūr‘alī Nādiyīf proposed a new type of private orzemstvo school, where the Muslims themselves could participate in the
management. He claimed that the lack of finance and the inadaptability
to the demands of epoch would not make new-method maktabs competitors of the schools “in this world where the stronger prey upon theweaker.” In order to change schools into ones corresponding to Muslims’ interests, he suggested that courses be established for muallims tobe trained as school teachers (uchitel’s) and for school teachers to study
the mother tongue and Islam, that Muslims as well as zemstvos support
the life of school teachers of the mother tongue and religion, and that
Muslims as members of the trustees’ council of schools participate inschool supervision.85
On one hand, the editor of M‘allim also admitted that people werechoosing schools so that their children study Russian. On the other hand,
he was afraid that it would be impossible to protect the national language and spirit in these schools where the instruction in the mothertongue was permitted only for the first two years. He insisted that maktabs remain as private schools under MNP jurisdiction with the introduction of Russian language classes according to the state program ofuniversal compulsory education (‘umūmī majbūrī ūqū).86 However, he
was silent on how to secure the funds.
In Waqt the “Maktab or School” debate reflected the different roles of
the intellectuals (Ωiyālīlar) and the clergy (rū∆ānīlar) in the Muslim community. Reviewing arguments in journals Maktab and Mu‘allim, Jamālal-Dīn Walīdī, a muallim of a famous new-method madrasa ≈usainīya in
Orenburg, spoke for development of new-method maktabs. As he argued in his brochure about the concept of nation, Walīdī saw an awakening of the Tatars’ “national” identity in the emergence of Jadid
84 Ia. D. Koblov, Konfessional’nye shkoly kazanskikh tatar (Kazan, 1916), pp. 76–79. Kazan
Tatars often compared the Kazan zemstvos’ results with the Ufa ones’ success. Qūyāsh,
March 2, 1914, p. 1; Yūlduz, March 14, 1914, pp. 1–2.
85 Mu‘allim 4 (1913), pp. 50–52.
86 Mu‘allim 5 (1914), pp. 66–68.

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schools: it was the Jadid movement that “brought Tatars into national
history.” 87 To be sure, he admitted that efforts at transformation ofschools according to national interests were a “national duty,” and that
Muslims as Russian citizens had to enjoy universal education. However,
he insisted that a “subjugated” nation engage in intellectual and cultural
progress by “their own national power.” As a solution he suggested increasing the number of Muslim charitable societies.88
While Walīdī, as a secular intellectual, believed in the new-method
maktabs’ mission as sources of national spirit, a local religious head (ākhūnd) of Kungur in Perm province Zāhid Allāh ‘Ibād Allāh found theclergy’s role in confessional education of the middle maktab (rushdī),
predicting the replacement of primary maktabs (ibtidā’ī) with schools. In
fact, Russian-Tatar schools in Kungur county attracted more pupils thanin any other.89 The akhund also noticed that maktab pupils were moving toward schools. He said that the obligation of learning Russian in
primary education would deprive primary maktabs of their activity. He
suggested to the readers efforts to place muallims in schools for the protection of Islam and the mother tongue. He hoped that if two years ofadditional study of religion were permitted in these schools, it would
meet the desire of those who wanted to study Islam intensively.90 Thus,
while the secular intellectuals tried to maintain their roles in the “national” education by using “national” rhetoric, religious leaders more
soberly identified their roles in the future education system.
Two articles from an Ufa newspaper ∫ūrmush demonstrate a tactical
double standard of Ufa Muslim intellectuals. Both authors of the articles
had attended the conference convened at the initiative of the Ufa provincial zemstvo in 1911. In the negotiation with the zemtsy, they eagerly
participated in elaborating a new type of school, even indicating thedisappearance of maktabs in the future. But in the Muslim paper, they
insisted on continuing the existence of maktabs, emphasizing their rolein nursing “national spirit.”
Selimgirei Dzhantiurin, deputy of the first State Duma who had
87 Jamāl al-Dīn Walīdī, Millat wa Milliyat (Orenburg, 1914), pp. 28–29.
88 Waqt, February 18, 1914, pp. 2–3.
89 Zhurnaly zasedanii s’’ezda, pp. 310–311.
90 Waqt, August 6, 1914, p. 1.

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graduated from the Orenburg Gymnasium and Moscow University,
spoke for the maktabs’ inclusion in the universal school network. Criticizing Kungur akhund ‘Ibād Allāh, he claimed that while maktabs contributed to inculcating children with the love of nation, schools were
now under the command of the MNP officers alien to “national spirit
and needs.” He recognized the fact that maktabs were deprived of support from the Treasury and zemstvos because maktabs were “confessional.” However, he stressed that nothing prevented maktabs’ education program from approaching that of schools. As proof he referred tothe mufti’s private conference in December 1913, where invited scholars(‘ulamā’) concluded that religious and general secular subjects werecompatible.91 He thought that the disappearance of differences between
maktabs and schools would make maktabs eligible for entrance into
school network.92
In negotiating with the zemtsy in 1911, Sharafutdin Makhmudov,
deputy of the third State Duma from Sterlitamak, even predicted thewhole replacement of maktabs with new zemstvo schools.93 However,in the pages of ∫ūrmush, he stuck to parallelism. He complained to the
Kungur akhund that middle maktabs could not exist without primary
maktabs, because a primary maktab was a “mother” of a middle maktab.
Makhmudov doubted if those who were now studying in the stateschools would be able to teach the mother tongue and Islam in the future: state schools, aiming at merging peoples in Russia into one, could
not consistently cultivate national spirit. Mentioning the lack of legal
grounds for subsidies of the local self-government, he stressed the necessity to support “national educational institutions” by Muslims themselves.94 Makhmudov’s opinion may be explained by the location of
91 Akt chastnogo soveshchaniia dukhovnykh lits okruga Orenburgskogo Magometanskogo
Dukhovnogo Sobraniia na 14 i 15 dekabria 1913 goda (Ufa, 1914). This brochure comprises
Russian and Turkic versions. In 1915 the section of non-Russian education within the
Orenburg provincial zemstvo distributed 300 copies of this brochure mainly to zemstvo
libraries for Muslims. The section expected this brochure to eradicate from Muslims “adeep fanaticism” which confined maktabs and madrasas to an exclusively confessional
character. Doklady Orenburgskoi Gubernskoi Zemskoi Upravy, pp. 9–10.
92 ∫ūrmush, August 24, 1914, pp. 2–3.
93 Zhurnaly soveshchaniia, p. 45.
94 ∫ūrmush, October 26, 1914, p. 2.

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Sterlitamak as one of the historical centres of Islamic studies, where hehimself had worked as a muallim. There religious institutions could rely
on good profits from pious endowments (waqf). Makhmudov committed
himself to the management of waqf in the first mahalla of the town.95
The atmosphere of the “Maktab or School” debate changed after the
Orenburg zemstvos undertook to subsidize maktabs.96 Arguments in
Waqt began to focus on how to reorganize existing maktabs and zemstvo
schools by collaborating with zemstvos. In April 1915, when a conference on education was convened in the Orenburg provincial zemstvo
board, Ibrahim Bikchentaev expected maktabs’ inclusion in the school
network to be feasible. Referring to the “Maktab or School” debate, hestressed that maktabs could develop into normally organized schools,
just as Russian schools had developed. However, the zemtsy took for
granted the replacement of maktabs with zemstvo schools. They only
agreed on temporary subsidies to maktabs until the accomplishment of
the school network. Then Bikchentaev presented a four-year education
program for maktabs as a condition for receipt of the subsidies, which wasapproved by the provincial assembly in that year.97
An imam of the first mahalla in Qārghālī near Orenburg, Khair Allāhal-‘Uthmānī named his article “a solution to the ‘Maktab or School’question.” In order to provide children with decent knowledge of Russian, he suggested that maktabs receive zemstvo subsidies by their acceptance of Bikchentaev’s education program. The imam admitted thenecessity of maktabs’ inclusion in the school network. Like akhund ‘Ibād
Allāh, the imam also thought that the Muslim community itself should
support middle (rushdī) and preparatory (i‘dādī) courses for higher religious education of madrasa.98
It is worthwhile examining the content of Islamic education in Bik95 Waqt, August 31, 1916, p. 4.
96 It may be safe to add that P. I. Ignat’ev’s succession as Education Minister after L. A.
Kasso’s death in November 1914 also affected zemstvo operations. Ignat’ev enjoyed popularity among liberals. Abramov, “Zemstvo, narodnoe obrazovanie,” p. 49; Seregny,“Zemstvos, Peasants, and Citizenship,” p. 297.
97 Zhurnaly I i II soveshchanii, pp. 36–37, 41–47. By the end of 1915 not only zemstvos in
Orenburg province but Birsk and Zlatoust county zemstvos in Ufa province adopted Bikchentaev’s program. Doklady Orenburgskoi Gubernskoi Zemskoi Upravy, p. 4.
98 Waqt, June 28, 1915, p. 1.

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chentaev’s program. To satisfy the Orenburg zemstvo’s requirement of
Russian language and other general subjects Bikchentaev was forced todecide what elements of Islamic knowledge to leave for future maktabs.
Detecting the same act of selection in the education program of Jadids inCentral Asia, Khalid called it “desacralization” of some sorts of Islamic
knowledge. Thereby the new elites challenged the authority of the old.99
In Bikchentaev’s case it was his negotiation with the Orenburg zemstvo
that molded the definition of Islamic knowledge.
Many constituents were common between Central Asian Jadids’ curriculum and Bikchentaev’s: art of reciting Qur’ān (tajwīd), ethics (akhlāq)
and holy history (ta’rīkh-i muqaddas). As Khalid argues, implicit in Bikchentaev’s as well as Central Asians’ programs was the notion that “realknowledge” lay in the scriptural sources of Islam. According to Bikchentaev, study of Qur’ān had to continue throughout the four-year
schooling. Pupils of the first grade should learn the meaning of the unityof God (taw∆īd) and profession of faith (shahāda). The second grade required knowledge of the Six Beliefs of Islam (īmān-i taf≠īlī) and the wayof prayers. In the third grade pupils had to go through all rules of thefive pillars of Islam. The fourth grade gave them knowledge on oaths,
marriage, divorce, lease, division of estate, alms, etc. from the books ofshari‘a.100
When the Ufa and Orenburg provincial zemstvos planned a joint regional conference on Muslim education in autumn 1916,101 Waqt devoted its pages to readers’ suggestions to the conference. One of muallims from Troitsk, ‘Abd Allāh ‘Azīz said that Muslims in the town had
tried to make a common education program of maktabs after the 1905
Revolution, but that they had failed to fulfill it effectively due to the absence of an overseeing organization. The muallim proposed that maktabs be transformed in order to live up to “national needs and interests”
under the zemstvo supervision. He formulated the cause of the reformed
maktabs: “our children as subjects of great Russia and as free citizens of
the great Russian state shall love Russia, . . . Still, as children of the greatMuslim nation [Muslimān millatī] living in Russia they shall be inspired
99 Khalid, The Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform, pp. 168–169, 172–175.
100 Zhurnaly I i II soveshchanii, pp. 115–119.
101 Doklady Orenburgskoi Gubernskoi Zemskoi Upravy, p. 67; Waqt, January 23, 1916, p. 1.

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by national spirit.”‘Abd Allāh ‘Azīz showed a program that muallims in Troitsk had
elaborated in 1915. In contrast to standardized four-year schools, maktabs planned to have a six-year system. According to the program, theentire six-year education should be carried out in the mother tongue;arithmetic and natural science should be taught besides Islam and themother tongue; and Russian learning should start from the fourth year.
Some muallims paid attention to the idea of making primary maktabs
into preparatory institutions for the state middle schools. However,‘Azīz disagreed with them, arguing that such an institution could nothave more than five years of schooling, and that it would sacrifice national education (millī tarbiya) for Russian learning. He suggested taking
into account the majority of peasants whose education usually ended inprimary maktabs.102
Both Ufa and Orenburg chiefs of non-Russian education within thezemstvo executive boards agreed on elaborating “a third type” of Muslim school. The Ufa chief Gumer Telegulov, who had finished the Tatar
Teachers’ School in Kazan and was appointed to the post in 1913,
claimed that the regulations of non-Russian education since 1870 had
dealt with the non-Russians not as independently developing peoples
but as objects of Russification. He also recognized inadequacy in maktabs’ transformation into primary schools, despite Jadids’ efforts sincethe 1880s. As a result maktab pupils had to go to schools to learn Russian
language. Telegulov thought a single well-organized primary school to
be feasible if education authorities organized a new school in tune with“Muslims’ interests and spirit.”103
In April 1916 Bikchentaev posed nine questions on an ideal third typeof Muslim school in Waqt.104 Answers came from muallims:105 the new
Muslim school should have six years of schooling; instruction for the
first three years should be done in the mother tongue; Russian learning
should start from the fourth year, and the volume of Russian knowledge
should be as much as in standardized four-year primary schools; and in
102 Waqt, February 6, 1916, p. 1; March 2, 1916, pp. 2–3.
103 Biulleten’ otdela narodnogo obrazovaniia 2 (1916), pp. 73–79.
104 Waqt, April 8, 1916, pp. 1–2.
105 Waqt, May 3, 1916, p. 2; June 3, 1916, p. 3; June 8, 1916, p. 2.

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the fifth and sixth years, lectures in arithmetic and Russian geography
and history should be read in Russian. The mother tongue as a subject
should continue throughout the last three years and other subjects
should be taught in the mother tongue. One contributor even proposedthat Arabic, an important constituent of “national literature” be included
two hours a week in the sixth year.
As far as the pedagogic and economic management was concerned,
few spoke for the new schools’ subordination either to the Spiritual Assembly or the existing inspection of the Ministry of Education and schoolboards, uchilishchnye sovety. One contributor suggested that trustees’
councils be organized as mediators with the local self-government andschool boards, and anther proposed that a commission consisting oftrustees, muallims, teachers from schools and imams of mahallas beplaced within zemstvos so that the executive boards could carry out thecommission’s decisions.
Taking these opinions into consideration, Bikchentaev presented areport to a provincial conference on education in the summer. Based on
the report, the conference resolved that the new six-year Muslim schools
should enter the school network and should be supported by the Treasury and the local self-government; that Muslims themselves should
manage both economic and pedagogic spheres of the schools; and that
all existing ministry and zemstvo schools for Muslims should be gradually transformed into the planned six-year schools.106
Muallims’ agreement with zemstvos on cooperative supervision of the
new schools reflected not only their changing attitude toward the local
self-government, but also their understanding of “nation” itself. Muslim
intellectuals had usually persisted in observation of maktabs and madrasas by the Spiritual Assembly, seeing it as the sole representative bodyof “national” interest.107 However, Muslim intellectuals’ negotiation with
zemstvos gave the intellectuals an opportunity to reconsider such “isolated” tactics as parallelism and egalitarianism in defending “national
106 Doklady Orenburgskoi Gubernskoi Zemskoi Upravy, pp. 67–68.
107 For example, see a bill on the reform of the Muslim administration, which waselaborated in 1914 by the Muslim representatives including the deputies of the State Duma.
Proekt polozheniia ob upravlenii dukhovnymi delami Musul’man Rossiiskoi imperii (St. Petersburg,1914), p. 17.

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spirit” and to redefine what was “Islamic” and “national.”

Conclusion
The introduction of universal primary education motivated both thegovernment and the Volga-Ural Muslims to identify the cause of “Russian citizenship.” While the 1905 Revolution compelled the government
to put its priority on making loyal citizens, the revolution served as an
event to make Muslims look into their conventional relationship with thestate, and thereby commence reorganization of their community throughnegotiation with state. However, the strategy was distinct between theintelligentsia and common people of mahalla. The young intellectuals
elaborated on various projects to mobilize people to their imaginedcommunity (millat) and simultaneously tried to reconcile it with Russian(rossiiskaia) citizenship. However, their rhetoric of egalitarianism andparallelism with the Russian (russkie) institutions often made the government suspicious of their political disloyalty and diminished theirrange of negotiation with zemstvos. As “Maktab or School” debate suggested, while “secular” intellectuals tried not to lose their leverage for“national” primary education, religious leaders of mahalla realistically
accepted their possible withdrawal from primary education. Parishioners in their turn developed communal politics, where the state institutions also joined with their own intentions: people wanted to invite zemstvo schools which would facilitate the mahalla management, and they
could maintain the Islamic order with the help of the security police, although their interests conflicted with each other. The mahalla life constituted a unique “public space,” quite contrary to the intellectuals’“closed” national discourse.
Traditional controversy over the nature of Russification before 1905
had been what should define the “Russianness,” the acquisition of theRussian language or the assimilation of Russian Orthodox spiritual culture.108 While Il’minskii aimed at inculcation of Christian spirit throughnative languages, the Education Ministry put its accent on learning theRussian language in the regulation of non-Russians’ education of 1870,
108 Dowler, Classroom and Empire, p. 161.

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categorizing peoples according to their degree of “Russification.” Theregulations obliged Muslims to study Russian either in state schools orin Russian language classes within maktabs and madrasas. The government instituted a varied and hybrid path toward “Russification.”
However, the emergence of European-oriented non-Russian intellectuals as a result of “Russification” policy made many Russifiers choose
stricter linguistic and political measures as compensation. It seemed tothem that religion’s time as an effective tool of imperial integration had
passed decisively after the manifestation of religious tolerance in 1905.109
The government tried to give state schools the exclusive prerogative tocultivate “Russian citizenship,” rejecting Muslims’ own efforts to reform
maktabs and even abandoning Russian language classes within maktabs
and madrasas. As a result the MNP officials found themselves alienating
the Muslims from “citizenship” and forcing them to defend their “isolated” parallelism.
The Ufa zemstvos recognized maktabs’ potentials in enlightenment of
Muslims and retrieved maktabs from the alienation of the state policy.
True, the MNP and the Ufa provincial zemstvo could share a common
principle of secularization in schooling. But the fact that the Ufa zemtsy
saw the native languages as means of enlightenment revealed fierce
competition between the zemstvos and the ministry over the cause of
non-Russian primary education. The local MNP officials assumed that
predominance of the state expenditure on primary schools could overcome the discrepancy. However, the Ufa zemtsy could successfully cooperate with the Muslim intellectuals on the common project of enlightenment and hold their authority among the Muslim population both
inside and outside the province.
The “Maktab or School” polemic reflected the trace of the collaboration between Muslim intellectuals and zemtsy. During World War I,
which dramatically boosted people’s interest in war information, therebyin education in general, two models of Muslim schooling were being
created in the southern Urals: some Muslims and zemtsy argued that
inclusion of new-method maktabs in the school network would be feasible if they accepted the education programs the Ufa and Orenburg
109 Geraci, Window on the East, p. 255.

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zemstvos recommended, and others tried to produce plans of a new
Muslim school. In both cases, negotiable points were the proportions of
the mother tongue and Russian, between religious and secular subjects,
and the degree to which Muslims and zemtsy would participate in supervision of schools and maktabs. It was this process that made Muslims
articulate anew the definition of “Islamic” and “national.” Here we cansee the concrete efforts of Muslims and zemtsy to find a new way ofreconciliation between Russian citizenship and nationality.

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