The role of veterans of the Great Patriotic War in Islamic activism in 1960’s and 1980’s: the case of the Muslim community in Rostov-on-Don

The importance of the issue relates to the defi ciency of knowledge in understanding the local specifi city of the Soviet period Muslim community. The post-war Islamic activism is usually considered as a particular phenomenon based on the socio-cultural conditions in the spiritual space of the believers that case as the reverberations of the Great Patriotic War (GPW). The article uses a study of a series of photographs from the late Soviet period of the Muslim community in Rostov-on-Don. The main hypothesis is the author's point of view about the signifi cance of the contribution of GPW veterans to the consolidation of Muslim communities in the post-war years. The example of the Muslim parish in Rostov-on-Don shows their fundamental role in maintaining religious activity until the collapse of the USSR. Islamic activism was one of the forms of social self-organization of participants in military events and was based on the ethnic and religious unity. The social status of GPW veterans did not allow local government agencies of the USSR to apply harsh measures to active Muslims, despite the anti-religious policy of the Communist Party.