Islamic Peoples of the Soviet Union
A Historical and Statistical Handbook

Akiner's survey stresses the diversity of the 45 million Muslims living in the Soviet Union: "Soviet Muslims are found as far west as the borders of Poland, as far east as the borders of China; they are found in Siberia to the north and Central Asia and Transcaucasia to the south." They speak ten Iranian languages, fifteen Turkic ones, and thirty Caucasian ones, "not to mention Chinese, Mongol, and an obscure form of Arabic." In short, the Muslims of the Soviet Union have no historic corporate identity, but are only slowly gaining one after decades under Soviet rule. Akiner's useful work presents a great assembly of demographic information on nearly one hundred Muslim ethnic groups. Sources of information being what they are, the author must necessarily rely on Soviet census figures; still, one wishes she had applied a more critical eye to the statistics, or at least offered guidelines for judging their credibility.