The First Congress of the Muslims of Russia (1905)

The 1905 revolution gave the Turkic Muslim peoples of the Russian Empire their first chance of open political activity. Tatar, Azerbaijani and Crimean intellectuals decided to hold a common congress and, to avoid the authorities' attention, timed it to coincide with the Nizhny Novgorod fair in August.

Because the authorities refused permission for a meeting, the congress was held on 15 August 1905 aboard the river steamer Gustav Struve on the Oka. Among the participants were İsmail Gaspıralı, Alimardan bey Topchubashov, Yusuf Akçura and Abdurreshid Ibrahim. The congress decided to found Ittifaq al-Muslimin, the Union of the Muslims of Russia.

Two more congresses followed in 1906 in St Petersburg and Nizhny Novgorod, the Ittifaq took shape as a political party, and a Muslim faction appeared in the State Duma. These congresses brought together for the first time the intellectuals of the Turkic peoples from the Volga-Urals to the Caucasus and Turkestan.