Becoming Muslim in Imperial RussiaIn the nineteenth century, the Russian Empires Middle Volga region (todays Tatarstan) was the site of a prolonged struggle between Russian Orthodoxy and Islam, each of which sought to solidify its influence among the frontiers mix of Turkic, Finno Ugric, and Slavic peoples. The immediate catalyst of the events that Agns Nilfer Kefeli chronicles in Becoming Muslim in Imperial Russia was the collective turn to Islam by many of the regions Krshens, the