Ismail Gasprinsky’s cultural autonomy: between loyalty and self-determination

The problem of this study lies in the lack of a convincing justification in historiography for the reasons behind the transformation of the loyal educational movement of Jadidism into carriers of political demands that destabilised the legal framework of the Russian Empire. The object of the study is the project of cultural autonomy for Russian Muslims, formulated by Ismail Gasprinsky, while the subject is the influence of Islamic legal doctrine and cultural Pan-Turkism on the evolution of his legacy, as well as the methodological potential of the Islamic studies paradigm of Meccan and Medinan legal logics. The aim of the research is to prove that the evolution of the thinker's concept from advocating loyal enlightenment and the autonomy of Turkic Muslims within a federal state to demanding political self-determination during the revolutionary period is correctly interpreted through the specified paradigm, as well as to substantiate the inevitability of the politicisation of the cultural pan-Turkism project, stemming from its supra-ethnic nature. The methodological basis consisted of historical-legal, comparative-legal, and theoretical-dogmatic methods. The specifics of Islam as a holistic religious-legal system have been examined. The program of Jadidism has been analysed as a strategy for the legal adaptation of the Muslim minority in a multi-confessional state. It is substantiated that the cultural Pan-Turkism of I. Gasprinsky objectively contained the potential for transformation into a model of political independence not bound by the territorial borders of the Russian Empire. It has been proven that the central authority's refusal to legislatively enshrine equality and cultural autonomy served as a factor in the radicalisation of Jadidism, which inevitably transformed the Meccan strategy of adaptation into the Medinan logic of political subjectivity and self-determination. It is concluded that ignoring demands for real participation in governance and legal guarantees of collective rights creates a fertile ground for filling the legal vacuum with separatist projects. Field of application of the results: legislative activities in the sphere of state national policy, expert-analytical work on assessing the development vector of ethnoconfessional movements, educational courses on the history of law and comparative jurisprudence, prevention of extremism. The goal of the research has been achieved, demonstrating the heuristic value of the paradigm of Meccan and Medinan legal logics as a tool for historical-legal analysis and typologization of conflicts related to the politicisation of Pan-Turkism among Russian Muslims.