treated better than the Russian Orthodox Church, which Bolsheviks regarded as a center of the "reaction", and other religions. In the declaration "Ко всем трудящимся мусульманам России и Востока" (To All Working Muslims in Russia and the Orient) of November 1917, the Bolshevik government declared the freedom to exercise their religion and customs for Muslims "whose beliefs and customs had been suppressed by the Czars and the Russian oppressors". In the second half of 1920s and in 1930s, state repressions, suppression and atheist propaganda against all religions increased. E.g. in 1930, out of the 12,000 mosques in Tatarstan, more than 10,000 were closed, from 90 to 97% mullahs and muezzins were deprived of the right to exercise their profession. During the Great Patriotic War, the restrictions on religion were erased somewhat. In 1943 the Spiritual Administration of the Muslims of Central Asia and Kazakhstan was established. In 1949, 415 registered mosques functioned in the Soviet Union. In the late 1980s, Islam had the second largest following in the Soviet Union: between 45 and 50 million people identified themselves as Muslims. But the Soviet Union had only about 500 working mosques, a fraction of the number in prerevolutionary Russia, and Soviet law forbade Islamic religious activity outside working mosques and Islamic schools. All working mosques, religious schools, and Islamic publications were supervised by four "spiritual directorates" established by Soviet authorities to provide government control. The Spiritual Directorate for Central Asia and Kazakhstan, the Spiritual Directorate for the European Soviet Union and Siberia, and the Spiritual Directorate for the Northern Caucasus and Dagestan oversaw the religious life of Sunni Muslims. The Spiritual Directorate for Transcaucasia dealt with both Sunni Muslims and Shia Muslims. The overwhelming majority of the Muslims were Sunnis. Soviet Muslims differed linguistically and culturally from each other, speaking about fifteen Turkic languages, ten Iranian languages, and thirty Caucasian languages. Hence, communication between different Muslim groups was difficult. In 1989 Russian often served as a lingua franca among some educated Muslims. Culturally, some Muslim groups had highly developed urban traditions, whereas others were recently nomadic. Some lived in industrialized environments, others in isolated mountainous regions. In sum, Muslims were not a homogeneous group with a common national identity and heritage, although they shared the same religion and the same country. In the late 1980s, unofficial Muslim congregations, meeting in tea houses and private homes with their own mullahs, greatly outnumbered