Muslim Educational Institutions of Kabardino-Balkaria in the First Soviet Decade: Features of Functioning and Transformation

The study examines the issues of the functioning of Muslim educational institutions in Kabardino-Balkaria in the first Soviet decade. A characteristic is given of the system of institutions of this type, operating before the 1917 frontier. It is concluded that the primary (lower) mosquerun schools-mektebe were the main type of these institutions and precisely via training in them the indigenous peoples of the subregion, for the most part, received education. Furthermore, the article focuses on the penetration of Jadidism into Kabarda and Balkaria and its embodiment in the activities of the Baksan Muslim Educational Center. It is noted that during the first Soviet decade, religious (Muslim) educational institutions have gone from free functioning, to coexistence with a growing and strengthening network of folk Soviet schools, and, as a result, to their full liquidation. The government’s struggle against the religious educational institutions is considered as one of the consequences of the implementation in the subregion of comprehensive modernization transformations, which were sometimes carried out by breaking the old system of organizing socio- economic and cultural spaces. The liquidation of religious (Muslim) educational institutions is associated with the mass peasant unrest, permanently taking place in Kabardino-Balkaria in 1928–1932, which led to persecution of clergy. As a result, most of the clergy were arrested, received prison terms, or publicly announced the termination of their activities. Thus, in Kabardino-Balkaria, there were almost no people who could conduct training in religious schools, which led, as a result, to their liquidation.

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