Russia and Its Islamic world : from the Mongol conquest to the Syrian military intervention / Robert Service.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 105-106) and index.

Acknowledgments -- 1. Russia's Long Interaction with Islam -- 2. Muslims in the Russian Cultural Imagination -- 3. The Communist Offensive against Islam -- 4. The Soviet Quest Abroad for Muslim Allies -- 5. Perestroika and Its Complications -- 6. The Islamic Question in the Russian Federation -- 7. Dealing with the "Near Abroad" -- 8. The Recovery of Russian External Confidence -- 9. Russia's Internal Politics under Putin -- 10. The Assertion of Russian Power and Status -- 11. The Fateful Years: 2015 to the Present -- 12. Possible Futures -- Further Reading.

"Robert Service examines Russia{u2019}s interactions with Islam at home and around the globe and pinpoints the tsarist and Soviet legacy, current complications, and future possibilities. The author details how the Russian encounter with Islam was close and problematic long before the twenty-first century and how Russia has recently chosen to interfere in Muslim states of the Middle East, building alliances and making enemies. Service reveals how some features of the present-day relationship continue past policies; others are starkly and perilously different, making the current moment in global affairs dangerous for both Russians and the rest of us. He describes how the Kremlin dominates Muslims in the Russian Federation, exerts a deep influence on the Muslim-inhabited states on Russia{u2019}s southern frontiers, and has lunged militarily and politically into the Middle East. Foreign Muslims, he shows, do not value the leadership in Moscow except as a means to an end; Putin{u2019}s pose as a friend of the Islamic world is no more than a pose--and a hypocritical one at that."--Provided by publisher.