Abstract
By the beginning of the twentieth century, the Turkic-Muslim peoples as a whole were in the early stages of transition from a traditional, agrarian society to a civil, industrial one. The social structure of the Turkic-Muslim population of Russia testified to the slow dynamics of modernization processes in its environment. In addition, traditionalism among the Turkic Muslims was based on a strong religious consciousness, the collectivist psychology of the Muslim Ummah. Simultaneously with the Islamic reformation, the secular trends of philosophical thought-enlightenment, focused on the values of the European Enlightenment, were growing stronger in the Turkic – Muslim society. The synthesis of the basic ideas of Muslim reformism and enlightenment has become the conceptual basis of a special form of national religious, cultural and socio-political movement among Russian Turkic Muslims-Turkism. Turkism as a movement was aimed at creating a national secular school , reforming confessional education and the entire lifestyle of the Turkic-Muslim peoples in a European way. The need to achieve this goal required them to participate in the all-Russian political struggle and create their own political elite. It was formed, as a rule, from representatives of the educated "upper classes"- the elite strata of the population (the nobility, the clergy, the intelligentsia). Among the ideological and political views of the Turkic-Muslim political elite, moderately oppositional views dominated, due to both the social well-being of their bearers and the ethno-religious mental traditions of the peoples on whose behalf they spoke. The socio-political movement of Turkic Muslims, led by the national elite, was in opposition to the Russian government. This opposition was provoked by the religious and national policy of the Orthodox state.