So Who Gets To Be Modern? Jadidism and Reform in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Russia

Jadidism was a sociocultural reformist project from the 1880s to 1920s developed by Muslim intellectuals in the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. The Jadidist movement derives its name from the "new-method" (usul-al Jadid) schools that spread Jadid pedagogy, which revolved around the inclusion of secular topics and Western knowledge as well as instruction in local, Tatar, and Russian languages, in addition to the already present religious studies accompanied by Arabic and Persian taught in the Islamic educational institutions the maktab and madrasa (primary and higher education respectively). Over time Jadidism grew to encompass a host of societal reforms advocating for women’s emancipation, and greater participation of Muslims in the Russian political sphere. To achieve their agenda of complete societal renewal for Russia’s Muslims, Jadids often collaborated with the Imperial Russian and later the Soviet governments. Conversely, the Jadids conflicted with the Russian or Soviet state at times, when the state saw their movement as a threat. Jadids depicted themselves as the main oppositional force to "outdated" aspects of Muslim society like the ulama (the collective body of Islamic scholars). The Jadid strategy included cultivating the Muslim youth in their new-method schools, utilizing the printing press to reach and influence those in power, using the theater for performing didactic stories that exhorted their co-religionists to support reform, and turning to mass mobilization and political organization to gain popular backing in the post-1905 era of political upheaval.