The term ‘Russians’, which the world likes to use for the 144 million citizens of my country, is often a misleading one. Granted, in the 2020 census, 71 per cent of those surveyed identified themselves with this label, with only three ethnic groups coming in above one per cent: Tatars (3.2 per cent), Chechens (1.14 per cent and Bashkirs (1.07 per cent). This all suggests a near mono-ethnic state with only minor influences from other nationalities and cultures. But nothing could be further from the truth.

Many non-Russians, provided they master the language well enough, simply prefer to identify themselves with the ‘title nation’. Sticking with the majority and even mimicking it has, in this part of the world, often been a means of survival; a Jewish friend of mine was given the ancient Slavic name of ‘Yaroslav’ for exactly this reason. Second, Russia’s ethnic composition is very uneven – in some areas, like the national republics of the North Caucasus, there are hardly any Russians at all (in Ingushetia they account for a measly 0.6 per cent).

Russia’s chief Mufti predicted that, by 2030, a staggering third of the country would be Muslim

But perhaps most importantly, there’s the question of demographic spread. In 2019, the chief Mufti Ravil Gainutdin predicted that, by 2030, a staggering third of the country would be Muslim. This might have been an over-statement aimed at securing more funds for mosque-building, but the fact remains that the number of ethnic Russians is falling (4.9 per cent lower in a 2020 census than it was ten years before) while the Chechen population – which is predominately Muslim – is on the rise (in the same period the number of Chechens grew by 17.1 per cent). Overall, the exact figures for Muslim demographic growth are hard to quantify. They’re made up not only of ‘locals’ who dwelled historically on what’s now Russian territory – nationalities like Tatars, Bashkirs, the Ingush etc – but also migrants from Central Asian countries (the ‘Stans’), who are often unregistered and don’t show up in official headcounts.

One thing is clear: this growth has happened most in Russia’s largest cities, not least Moscow where the Muslim population has increased about fivefold since the late 1990s, according to Gainutdin. In St. Petersburg in 2022, Eid, the Muslim festival, was celebrated by 160,000 people; by 2023 this number had doubled. Naturally, such change comes with tension. After protests in Moscow about sheep-sacrifice taking place in the street during Eid, the Duma in 2011 issued a prohibition against it, and since then the practice has been confined to special farms.

Elements of modern Russian life – like the way young women dress – are considered indecent or even offensive by some newcomers. In Nakhabino, near Moscow, one young female jogger was hit in the face by a Central Asian migrant because he considered her shorts too tight (subsequently explaining, after his arrest, that he wanted to ‘save her from sin’).

The cultural skirmishes are at times so ludicrous you don’t know whether they’re sincere or just a form of trolling. One activist from Bashkiria, Rasul Akhiyaretdinov, recently published an address to Putin demanding that the state of Mother Russia in Volgograd be ‘reconstructed’ and her ‘private parts’ (breasts and protruding nipples, it seems) be hidden from the public.

‘Vladimir Vladimirovich,’ he said in his video, ‘The Soviet Union made a lot of mistakes and this monument is one of them. Our mother cannot look like that!’ He suggested as a compromise putting some kind of ‘scarf’ over her arms and shoulders: ‘After all, a scarf is a symbol of female honour.’ A few days later, he climbed down, saying that responses to his previous video had brought home to him it was ‘not just a monument’ and that he wanted to apologise to the ‘veterans and anyone else who could misunderstand my statements or feel offended by them.’ Were the waters, one wondered, being tested?

But ‘sorry’ is a game both sides can play. Recently a Duma Communist deputy Mikhail Matveev had to apologise to Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov for saying that ‘some migrants are trying to aggressively impose sharia laws on us’ and that ‘the authorities are bending to the Muslim element’. He didn’t, he said in his apology, mean all Muslim migrants but only ‘shaitans and terrorists’. Yet in a previous interview, he commented on reports that Christmas celebrations had been cancelled in some Russian schools upon complaints that such festivities, with their trees and decorations, were haram (a form of banned idol-worship).

Matveev doubtless had a point: in September 2023, the Federal Agency on Nationalities’ Issues published the results of a poll they conducted among migrants, in which 43.5 per cent said they preferred sharia law to secular legislation, with 24 per cent declaring themselves ready to participate in street protests demanding its enforcement. Then there’s the matter of women’s rights. According to an independent UN expert, many women in the North Caucasus complain of being unable to leave the house without an escort, to choose for themselves either occupation or spouse, and are forced strictly to observe the religious rules, including wearing the hijab. These things directly contradict official Russian legislation, yet are tolerated nonetheless.

As for the current war in Ukraine, Matveev argued that, when it’s over, a clash between Islam and Russian Orthodoxy is inevitable. Kadyrov shot back that Chechen fighters were taking part in Putin’s special military operation ‘just like representatives of other faiths and nationalities’ and that ‘we should send this deputy packing.’ On the first point, the Chechen leader is undeniably right. Even before mobilisation, Muslim-majority regions of Russia led figures for those killed in Ukraine. One reason is the poverty and unemployment in those areas – the other being the suggestion that fighting in the war is a Muslim’s ‘duty.’

Some religious leaders – both Muslim and Orthodox – are effectively Kremlin allies in subduing the population, readily supplying ‘spiritual’ reasons for unthinking obedience to the authorities and attacking anything related to political or sexual freedom as ‘satanic temptation.’ At the same time, Islamist groups still present a terrorist threat. Within just the last few days, two such gangs were killed by the FSB, one in Kaluga region (allegedly, connected to Isis and planning to attack synagogues) and another one in Ingushetia, where a 16-hour siege against terrorists sealed in an apartment block resulted in the deaths of all five of them.

The growing number of Muslims benefits the Russian authorities, but this demographic shift is also seen by some as a threat. A game of checks and balances will be needed to split the difference. Yet no real limits on migration can be introduced as long as the war continues and the Kremlin needs more soldiers (and an adequate labour force).

Even if Muslims don’t, as the chief Mufti claimed, make up 30 per cent of the population by the end of this decade, there will soon be enough to bring change to the ‘Russian way of life.’ With things continuing on the same track, my children may well see radical changes – in schooling, legislation, dress codes and so on – and it might be the Koran, rather than Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, my grandchildren study at school. It’s a bitter irony that this war, fought under the banner of an ever-expanding ‘Russki Mir’, may, in fact, be speeding along, unwittingly, the Strange Death of Russia.