Musa Iqbal
May 9th marks “Victory Day” – the celebration of the Allied victory over the Nazi Axis in World War II. Eighty years ago the Nazi menace was firmly defeated after nearly six long years of brutal warfare, destroying tens of millions of lives and changing the face of the world forever.
For decades since then, historians, political analysts, sociologists, military commanders, and more have studied World War II to grasp the totality of what is considered the most deadly international conflict of all time. Simultaneously, decades of erasure have also taken place, promoting a revisionist history of World War II that is encouraged to serve political and social opportunism today, mainly done by the US-European Atlanticist camp.
Through Western lenses, one can almost immediately observe the erasure of the costly sacrifices of World War II. American-led revisionism and false nationalism peddles a history that US intervention led to the collapse of the Nazi regime. As such, there are ongoing attempts to erase the sacrifice of the USSR, which otherwise is generally accepted as being the decisive factor for the Allied victory over the Axis powers.
Without question, the Eastern front – primarily the Soviet Union and China – saw the most gruesome amount of bloodshed in terms of the number of lives lost. German and Japanese atrocities committed in the USSR and China (both Allied countries) total approximately 24-27 million and 20 million, respectively.
The situation of the Soviet Union was perhaps one of the most heroic feats of military strength in human history. After suffering from months of deadly Nazi siege that slaughtered millions of Soviet civilians and soldiers starting in 1941, the Red Army of the Soviet Union broke through the Nazi offensive in 1943. Its immense victory at the Battle of Stalingrad created a momentous battlefield shift that crushed the Nazi war machine in Eastern Europe, with the Soviet Union marching to the heart of the Third Reich, reaching Berlin in April of 1945.
Despite the current erasure of Soviet military prowess and victory, even the United States acknowledged its contributions during the peak of the war. In a published memorandum, US Major General J.H. Burns states, “Russia [USSR] occupies a dominant position and is the decisive factor looking toward the defeat of the Axis in Europe.”
The Rejuvenation of the Soviet Muslims
The USSR, being the first major socialist experiment in human history, was a country composed of many nations – the rewrite of history which reduces the USSR down to “the Russians” is a blatantly false one. The USSR was composed of Russians and Central Asian nations such as Uzbeks, Tajiks, Turkmens, Kyrgyz, Azeris and more. Despite the USSR being a country that did not have an official religion – with the state adhering to atheism in political practice – the USSR allowed (with limitations for some time – as we will see) the continuation of cultural and religious practices within its union states.
As such, many Muslims lived in the USSR – though census data did not take into religious observation, only a few hundred to around a thousand mosques existed throughout the Central Soviet Socialist Republics (Azerbaijan SSR, Kazakhstan SSR, Kyrgyzstan SSR, Tajik SSR, Turkmen SSR, and Uzbek SSR), primarily located in the teeming cities of each country. In the face of a growing Nazi threat in the late 1930s to early 1940s, the Stalin-era policy of keeping religion out of the conversation was re-evaluated.
In God Save the USSR: Soviet Muslims and the Second World War, Jeff Eden describes the pivot made during the early late 30s and early 40s, where once the topic of religion was taboo and discouraged, now saw religion as a motivating force and instrumental to the progression of the Soviet identity within the Central Asian Soviet Socialist Republics. The Communist Party of the USSR waged a campaign of promoting mass unity and defense of the USSR in the face of imminent war. This could only be done with significant morale improvement and a sense of belonging and pride in the USSR. The late 1920s to late 1930s strategy of leaving religion out of the conversation was discarded.
Thus, imams who were once disenfranchised due to the closures of mosques were now able to return to work, and the state worked with religious leadership to rally the Soviet-Muslim masses to prepare for war, warning of the dangers of what a fascist German takeover might look like.
For example, Mufti Gabdrakhman Rasulev addressed the Soviet Muslims in July, 1941, one month after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union began: “The enemy’s attack has created a threat to the happiness and life of our dear Homeland, our brothers and sisters, our children. Therefore, the Central Muslim Spiritual Board calls on everyone to defend the Fatherland from the enemy. In the name of Islam and the Motherland, call on all Muslim brothers and sisters to save our homeland from the enemy. Pray in your mosques and prayer houses for the victory of the Red Army over the enemy.”
The now relaxed orientation to Islam from the Soviet authorities paved the way to mobilization and general support for the defense against the encroaching Nazi threat. Although the relationship between religious leaders such as Imams, Priests, and Soviet authorities was not completely healed, this new direction proved to be a favorable step forward for all parties involved.
All the way to Berlin
Though conscription to the Red Army began long before the Nazi invasion, expanded conscription laws were passed quickly to fend off the invading enemy. From the Soviet States with the most considerable populations likely to contain Muslims based on the presence of mosques and Islamic centers, millions of soldiers were conscripted. One million Kazakhstanis were called to serve, and one million Uzbeks, 700,000 Azerbaijanis, and 300,000 Tajiks, just to give a few examples.
These soldiers participated in engineering units, infantry, tank battalions and more – they were not given any specialized treatment, good or bad. Thus, in true Soviet fashion, all were equal under the banner of the Red Army.
The boost from the Central SSR soldiers provided a much needed rear guard as the massive Soviet push westward trudged forward, especially in the early months of the Nazi occupation of the western USSR. The changed Soviet orientation towards religion seemed to have worked. Not only was there a sense of duty to expelling the Nazi invaders, but the Soviet identity in the Central SSRs was reinforced to some degree, creating a tapestry of national pride mixed with religion. For example, Kazakh soldiers on the front line sent letters to their loved ones, which contained blatant Islamic content – from philosophical musings to reflecting on warriors in Islamic history, such as the fourth Caliph – Imam Ali (as).
Soldiers from the Central SSR not only participated in massive security and reconstruction operations as the rearguard, but were also on the very frontlines of the most decisive battles – including the war-ending Battle of Berlin.
It was Kazakh soldier Raqymjan Qoshqarbaev who first raised the Soviet Flag on the Reichstag, and it was Dagestani soldier Abdulkhakim Ismailov and Kazakh soldier Aleksei Kovalev who were two of the three soldiers pictured in the glorious raising of the USSR flag over the Reichstag, a photo that has become immortalized in world history.
Again, as one must not confuse ethnicity and religion, census data did not take into consideration religion, so it is hard to gauge whether these specific soldiers were of Muslim faith. However, the countries they hail from and their neighbors – who committed millions of soldiers to the cause of defeating fascism – all had significant Muslim populations. The massive conscription effort as well as the age requirements of conscription leaves no statistical denying that Muslims were on the front lines of the Red Army, beating back the Nazi menace to Berlin.
The Muslim-populated republics, due to their participation in the bloodiest of battles, paid a heavy price. According to the World Population Review on military and civilian casualties in World War II, Kazakhstan suffered 600k casualties – Azerbaijan 300,000, Kyrgyzstan 120,000, Tajikistan 120,000, Turkmenistan 100,000, and Uzbekistan 550,000. Over a million lives were lost from the Muslim-populated regions of the USSR to defeat the Nazi menace.
The Legacy of the Red Army Muslim
The study of the Red Army Muslim soldier is a new one – one that has gained focus in recent years. An effort towards studying indigenous-language sources and historical artifacts from the Central SSR regions will shed more light on the role of Muslims in the Red Army. Though Soviet data did not collect information on religious practices, there is plenty of qualitative and anecdotal evidence that confirms the role of Muslim soldiers in the Red Army. The renewed policy on religion and the reinstatement of Mosque Imams and their role with the Spiritual Directorates in the early 1940s concedes that without the participation of the Muslim masses, the USSR would not have had the push it needed to form an effective counter-offensive against the Third Reich.
Victory Day commemorates the triumph over Nazism, yet Western revisionism led by an imperialist United States threatens to rewrite history to erase the sacrifices of the Soviet Union. The Red Army’s Muslim soldiers from Central Asian republics, galvanized by a Soviet acceptance of Islam, fought heroically from Stalingrad to Berlin, raising the red banner of victory at significant cost. Their sacrifices, integral to defeating fascism, demand recognition.
To obscure their legacy is to rewrite history, dishonoring the multi-national struggle that shaped a freer world. Let us honor these forgotten heroes, ensuring their story endures against imperialist narratives.
“When their specified time arrives, they cannot delay it for a single hour nor can they bring it forward.” (Quran, 16:61)
Musa Iqbal is the Political Director and Editor at Vox Ummah.
