Muslim leaders in Russia's Volga-Urals: Self-Perceptions and Relationship with regional authorities

Islamic politics in Russia's Volga-Urals has been affected by the self-images of some of the regional communities, such as Tatarstan as 'the cradle of Russian Islam', Astrakhan as 'Russia's southern outpost', and Perm and Buguruslan as remote peripheries of the Islamic world. Moreover, some regional authorities, such as Astrakhan and Orenburg, have tried to use Muslims to stabilise the ethnoconfessional situation of the regions and also make them a bridgehead for economic ventures on the Caspian rims and western Kazakhstan. In contrast, the authorities in highly industrialised and politically stable Saratov and Perm have not been interested in intervening in regional Muslim communities. Thus, Islamic politics in Russia may have much wider and varied political connotations than is usually conceived under the term ethnoconfessional politics.