Holy Virgin Lands ? Demographic Engineering, Heritage Management and the Sanctification of Territories in ex-Soviet Central Asia, since WWII

Stéphane A. Dudoignon (1)

1 GSRL - Groupe Sociétés, Religions, Laïcités

This chapter analyzes different types of embedment of religious practices and identities, in the former Soviet South, in contexts impacted since after WWII by massive population resettlements of the late 1940s and by the creation, within collective farms, of territorialized population units. It focuses on sanctifications of these territories, through Muslim hagiographic experiences developed locally during the 1990s-2000s. By hagiographic experiences, we mean combinations of instruments-textual, monumental, ritual-of the worship of men of God active, often, in Soviet times in their recognized attributes as modern community founders. Another character of this modern Islamic sainthood is the Muslim saints' alleged rebellion, if not against the Soviet order itself, at least against Russian kul'tura as it had been imposed on Central Asian societies.

Domaines: Histoire

Stéphane A. Dudoignon. Holy Virgin Lands ? Demographic Engineering, Heritage Management and the Sanctification of Territories in ex-Soviet Central Asia, since WWII. In the Khan’s oven: Studies on the History of Central Asian Religions in Honor of Devin DeWeese, 2021. ⟨hal-03506181⟩