Urban features of Muslim religiousity in the Middle Volga region

Abstract

The article examines urban religiosity as an essential and functional phenomenon for all social systems. The article aims to provide a sociological description of Muslim religiosity in the urban area of the Soviet Middle Volga region. During the pre-revolutionary and Soviet periods, the study of religiosity was primarily focused on rural areas. As the Russian state's modern agrarian policy stimulates urbanization, and the rural population in Central Russia rapidly declines, the topic of urban religiosity has become increasingly important. The aim of this article is to examine the stability of Muslim religiosity in the conditions of unification and standardization of urban life. To achieve this, the study applies the concepts and techniques of rural-urban sociology and the Chicago school to the analysis of Muslim religiosity in the Middle Volga region during both the Soviet and post-Soviet periods. To achieve the aim of the study, a significant amount of historical and sociological material was necessary as an empirical base. In order to investigate the issue, interviews were conducted with 104 Tatar residents of the suburban area of Kazan. The research method is a telephone interview. The article considers religion and religiosity as a spatial phenomenon, as an adaptive resource of society and as a factor in maintaining social order. The study identified several conditions that contribute to the preservation of religiosity in urban areas. It has been determined that the religiosity of urban and rural Tatars during Soviet times shared common characteristics. These included the lack of a desire among believers to demonstrate their religious identity, their superficial knowledge of the basics of dogma, the inseparability of national, family traditions from religious ones, "femininity", "rituality", etc. Within Soviet cities there were different transitional types of settlements and zones. Believers preferred to settle on the outskirts of cities, which attracted them with the opportunity to lead a lifestyle close to that of a peasant. The demarcation between the two types of religiosity occurs in the post-Soviet period.