Religious revival, nationalism and the ‘invention of tradition’: political Tengrism in Central Asia and Tatarstan

Abstract

This article aims to analyse the birth of a new ideological movement called ‘Tengrism’. According to its theoreticians, Tengrism represents a key element in the identity renewal of Turkic–Mongol peoples and should be adopted as the official religion by the new states of the region. This paper enquires into the ways in which Tengrism is being politically deployed in the service of post-Soviet nationalisms in Kyrgyzstan and Tatarstan and to a lesser extent, in Kazakhstan, Bashkortostan and Buryatia. Although the ideologues of Tengrism may be marginal to the political mainstream, it is nonetheless important to analyse the role of ‘ethnicized’ forms of religious expression and their relationship with the search for post-Soviet national identities.