A apocryphal story amongst the Bashkirs retells how Stalin sought the wisdom of a sufi master on winning WW2. The Sufi master revealed that the Soviets would win, but only if Stalin converted to Islam. Stalin declared “There is no God but God, and Muhammad is His messenger."
The Sufi master's advice worked. Deeply in gratitude, Stalin asks him what he wanted as a reward. The man rejected any material prize and asked instead for religion to be strengthened in the USSR and for pilgrimages to Mecca to be permitted. Stalin assented, so the story goes.
While obviously fictional, the story is based on real events. In order to aid war mobilization, Stalin enlisted the help of religious leaders to agitate in their communities of worship--in exchange he liberalized religious policy, which persisted postwar
(Although this was interrupted by Khrushchev's ill-conceived anti-religious campaign) The Sufi Master from the story was also real--Gabdrahman Rasulev. He worked with Stalin personally and advised him on how to rally Soviet Muslims for war.
See:
"God Save the USSR: Soviet Muslims and the Second World" Jeff Eden
"Soviet and Muslim: The Institutionalization of Islam in Central Asia" by Tasar
Credit to After_History, a good channel to read through
https://twitter.com/After__History/status/1620122164170231810
Additional information:
“We are told that among the Daghestan peoples the Sharia is of great importance. We have also been informed that the enemies of Soviet power are spreading rumours that it has banned the Sharia. I have been authorized by the Government of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic to state here that these rumours are false. The Government of Russia gives every people the full right to govern itself on the basis of its laws and customs. The Soviet Government considers that the Sharia, as common law, is as fully authorized as that of any other of the peoples inhabiting Russia. If the Daghestan people desire to preserve their laws and customs, they should be preserved”
J. V. STALIN (1920)
Source: Congress of the Peoples of Daghestan (November 13, 1920), Works, Vol. 4.
“You [Albanians] are a separate people, just like the Persians and the Arabs, who have the same religion as the Turks. Your ancestors existed before the Romans and the Turks. Religion has nothing to do with nationality and statehood… Nevertheless, the question of religious beliefs must be kept well in mind, must be handled with great care, because the religious feelings of the people must not be offended. These feelings have been cultivated in the people for many centuries, and great patience is called for on this question, because the stand towards it is important for the compactness and unity of the people.”
J. V. Stalin (1949)
Source: Enver Hoxha, Memoirs from my Meetings with Stalin, Second Meeting (March-April 1949), “8 Nentori” Publishing House, Tirana, Albania, 1981. Retrieved from MIA.
“…Stalin set up four Muslim religious boards (Dini İdare / Müftiyat / Dukhovniye Upravlenia) in 1942 for Central Asian, Transcausians, Northern Caucasian and Russian Muslims.
The Muslim Religious Boards guided theoretically by the Koran, the Hadith and the maslahat / the interests of the believers to resolve questions of religious dogma. The decision / fatwa of a religious board on any religious question were brought to the knowledge of all Muslims over signature of the mufti of the Religious Board.
After the Second World War the most important Islamic establishment in the USSR was the Muslim Religious Board for Central Asia and Kazakhstan where 75 per cent of the Soviet Muslim lived. The Soviet Government depended on the Mufti of Tashkent for propagation of its views among the Sunni Muslims of the Islamic World…”
Source: Seyfettin Erşahin (2005), No. 77. Journal für Religionskultur
