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

Marlene Laruelle is a scholar of Central Asian politics and religion, and this is her peer reviewed article in the academic journal Central Asian Survey, examining the modern revival of Tengrism, the traditional sky god religion of the Turkic and Mongolic steppe, as it has been taken up in nationalist movements in Central Asia and Tatarstan. Its strength is a specific, argued thesis, that this modern Tengrist revival is substantially an invented tradition serving contemporary nationalist purposes rather than an unbroken continuation of pre modern steppe religion, laid out alongside adherents' own rejection of that reading. Its limit is that this is one scholar's interpretive framework applied to a live, contested and still developing movement, so a practitioner's own self understanding of the revival, which the article itself acknowledges differs from its argument, is a necessary counterpart rather than something this article settles.