Ahmadiyya Sect in USSR during 1920s: A Study Based on Declassified OGPU Documents

This article examines the history of the Ahmadiyya movement within the Soviet Union during the 1920s. The study draws primarily on recently declassified archival materials from the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) pertaining to the activities of the movement's representatives on Soviet territory. The analysis underscores that the security organs' documentation, while inherently biased, provides a remarkably comprehensive profile of the community's leading figures who sought to propagate their doctrine in Central Asia and the Caucasus. The research establishes that the OGPU construed the activities of Muhammad Amin Khan, Maulavi Zahur Hussein, and other Ahmadiyya affiliates within the USSR as the execution of tasks on behalf of British intelligence. According to the OGPU's internal surveys, the essence of Ahmadiyya doctrine was reduced to the fusion of religious proselytism with political agitation and espionage in the service of the British Empire. The article demonstrates that the entirety of the Ahmadiyya presence was meticulously monitored by the OGPU's Eastern Department through a network of agents and informants embedded within local religious communities. By the early 1930s, all attempts by the movement's emissaries to disseminate their teachings across Central Asia and other regions of the USSR had been effectively suppressed. The study further argues that the critical factor was the movement's alienation from the indigenous Muslim population, whose religious sensibilities rendered the Ahmadiyya message both foreign and unintelligible.