The Russian Federation Islamic Republic of Dagestan: Curricular Decentralization, Social Cohesion, and Stability

Abstract

This article focuses on the curricular decentralization-sociopolitical stability nexus in the predominantly Muslim Russian Federation Republic of Dagestan, adjacent to war-torn Chechnya. Concomitant with the metamorphoses taking place in the economic and political sectors of society is the overhaul of institutionalized education. A major reform currently being implemented is the decentralization of education from the highly centralized system of the ancien Soviet Union, apparently with little oversight from Moscow. This study suggests that educational decentralization, coupled with new directives from Moscow, could threaten the fragile stability of Dagestan, a republic that is highly pluralistic, severely impoverished, and challenged by extremist trends in Islam. Although Dagestan is not among the republics that have openly challenged the federal curricular mandates, decentralization of curricular decisions coupled with the trends toward conflating religion and public education and the provisioning of both curricular and financial resources to Muslim schools by Middle Eastern countries, the Ministry of General and Professional Education in Moscow should pay careful attention to educational trends in Dagestan and other predominantly Islamic republics to avoid the locus of political identity from becoming oriented more toward the Middle East and away from Moscow, thus posing a potential threat to national sociopolitical stability and cohesion.