About the Book
During the Second World War, as the Soviet Red Army was locked in brutal combat against the Nazis, Joseph Stalin ended the state's violent, decades-long persecution of religion. In a stunning reversal, priests, imams, rabbis, and other religious elites--many of them newly-released from the Gulag--were tasked with rallying Soviet citizens to a "Holy War" against Hitler. To the delight of some citizens, and to the horror of others, Stalin's reversal encouraged a
widespread perception that his "war on religion" was over. A revolution in Soviet religious life ensued: soldiers prayed on the battlefield, entire villages celebrated once-banned holidays, and state-backed
religious leaders used their new positions not only to consolidate power over their communities, but also to petition for further religious freedoms. Offering a window on this wartime "religious revolution," God Save the USSR focuses on the Soviet Union's Muslims, using sources in several languages (including Russian, Tatar, Bashkir, Uzbek, and Persian). Drawing evidence from eyewitness accounts, interviews, soldiers' letters, frontline poetry, agents' reports, petitions, and the words
of Soviet Muslim leaders, Jeff Eden argues that the religious revolution was fomented simultaneously by the state and by religious Soviet citizens: the state gave an inch, and many citizens took a mile, as
atheist Soviet agents looked on in exasperation at the resurgence of unconcealed devotional life.
Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Debating the Wartime "Religious Revolution"
1. The Setting: From the Years of Repression to Stalin's "New Deal"
2. Praying with Stalin: Soviet Islamic Propaganda of the Second World War
3. Negotiating Stalin's Tolerance: Muslim Institutions in Wartime
4. Red Army Prayers and Homefront Lyrics: Glimpses of Soviet Muslim Life in Wartime
5. Bureaucrats Bewildered: Monitoring Muslims in Postwar Kazakhstan
Conclusion
Appendix: Soviet Religious Propaganda and Wartime Documents: A Selection
Bibliography
About the Author :
Jeff Eden is Associate Professor of History at Northwestern University. His previous books include Slavery and Empire in Central Asia (2018) and Warrior Saints of the Silk Road: Legends of the Qarakhanids (2018).
Review :
A Foreign Affairs Best Book of 2022
Enlightening and highly original...[Eden] successfully knits together the stories of a diverse range of Muslim peoples... to tell the story of how Soviet religious repression retreated and changed shape over the course of the war and how Soviet Muslim communities, both at home and at the front, responded to these shifts... [I]nnovative work that the author has laid out in this exciting book.
Using archival sources found in Almaty, Kazan, Moscow and Tbilisi, to explore the ways that leaders of the newly activated Soviet Muslim administrative bodies cast war participation as both patriotic duty and holy jihad...God Save the USSR allows specialists on Central Asia, the Caucasus, or on Muslims of the Soviet Union to understand not only how Soviet policies constructed common experiences for Muslims, but also to see the shared ways that Muslims deployed Islamic discourses in their engagement with the state and its demands for patriotism.
Jeff Eden's God Save the USSR has a broad scope, using archival sources found in Almaty, Kazan', Moscow and Tbilisi, to explore the ways that leaders of the newly activated Soviet Muslim administrative bodies cast war participation as both patriotic duty and holy jihad.
Based on newly available sources in many languages, including Persian, Tatar, and Uzbek, Eden's innovative study explores the dynamics of Muslim life during World War II.
Eden's newest book... adds to his ongoing accomplishments in unearthing untouched sources on significant events in Central Asia and Russia. This book is an original in many ways, one of which is most attractive to this reviewer: the skillful use of poetry by Muslim soldiers as unofficial accounts of the Second World War... This book offers an excellent case study for instructors who teach the history of religion in the USSR, not only about the Muslims but all practitioners of religion."
God Save the USSR focuses on the experience of Soviet Muslims, drawing on a huge array of sources to show the resurgence of devotional life, a social history that's rarely mentioned elsewhere.
Based on newly available sources in many languages, including Persian, Tatar, and Uzbek, Eden's innovative study explores the dynamics of Muslim life during World War II.
Eden skilfully demonstrates how the war situation offered Muslim believers a unique opportunity to regain agency as loyal citizens of the USSR. At the same time, he emphasises the complexity and ambiguity of the circumstances... [God Save the USSR] makes good use of a wealth of documents and memoirs that have recently been published in Moscow and in Russia's regions and Central Asia. These source collections comprise not only official speeches and appeals (some of which Eden offers in translation, in an appendix) but also narratives about the private piety of soldiers at the front, often expressed in letters and private poetry... As Eden shows, the Second World War turn in policies on religions was not only a revolution but also a return to tradition... [A] very welcome addition."
Jeff Eden's work deserves to be read with attention."
God Save the USSR stands out as a major achievement, contributing to both Soviet political history during the Second World War, and to the social history of Soviet Muslim communities in wartime. The author's use of poetry and other religious literature composed by Soviet Muslims at the front for their families constitutes a groundbreaking advance in the scholarship of Soviet Islam and of the USSR in the Second World War, opening new and heretofore underappreciated avenues and revealing how Soviet Muslims expressed their experiences outside of officially-sanctioned propaganda channels."
This is an excellent addition to a small but growing number of studies making the case for new ways of thinking about Muslim religious life in the USSR. Drawing upon a source base that spans much of the Soviet Muslim world, Eden's engaging and well-argued book brings to light the ways in which Soviet Muslims negotiated an undeniably religious space for themselves in the context of Soviet ideology and policy hostile to Islam and to religion in general."
This is a brilliant and original book. Jeff Eden uses a rich trove of previously unknown sources to explore the experiences of Soviet Muslims during World War II. He tells the story of the wartime 'revolution in religious life' mainly from the perspective of Muslims in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Russia, who range from young Red Army soldiers praying in foxholes to elites raising money for the war effort. God Save the USSR deserves to be read by anyone interested in Soviet history, Soviet Muslims, and the Second World War.
An unusually intimate window into the Soviet war experience.
Eden provides an insightful account of two histories. The first is the story of how the Soviet government under Stalin sought to manage and monitor Muslimness during the anti-Nazi drive of the Second World War. The second is a chronicle of how Soviet Muslim leaders in this period took advantage of loosening state restrictions on religion to advance Muslim concerns and interests, leading to what resembled a religious revival of sorts... [M]asterful.
God Save the USSR pertains to a significant social evolutionary period in religious life in the Soviet Union, through the lenses of the Soviet Muslim communities... [I]mportant historiographical work.
