The Veneration and Visitation of the Graves of Saints in Soviet Central Asia

The article contributes to the development of a deeper understanding of the changes in the practice of venerating and visiting of the graves of saints in Central Asia during the Soviet period. For this purpose, the article explores the archival reports and oral histories from the region of the southern Ferghana Valley in Uzbekistan from the 1920s to the1980s. The article reveals that the broad “categories” often used to study the issues associated with the graves of saints and their visitation, such as the ideological conflict between communist politics and Islam, or the gap between normative and popular Islam, are largely insufficient when describing the practice during this period. The common “schemes” are blurred or interconnected – “believers” used the Soviet system to fulfil their goal of venerating the graves of saints, while the local authorities often helped to retain the practice, or eliminate it, as determined by the needs of their own career advancement. In addition, the process of hagiography continued under the new conditions, irrespective of the levels of education or the individual stances towards the state that existed among the different actors. For the most part, people learned how to combine both Soviet modernity and the veneration of the graves of saints in innovative ways. This analysis contributes to the innovative research process in relation to Islam in Soviet Central Asia. The article also seeks to contribute to the recent debate about the graves of saints and the gap between normative and popular Islam.