Russians experienced Muslims first as subjects and then as rulers

Evidence

The fact that Russian elites came to see Muslims and Jews through very similar lenses in the late imperial era appears all the more remarkable when we consider the very different historical trajectories of these communities before the second half of the nineteenth century. One crucial factor was the antiquity of Russian contacts with Muslims, first in the Russians’ role as subjects of one of the successor states to the Golden Horde (whose elites had converted to Islam), and then as rulers of Muslim subjects. — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 512

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: the inverter relationship — formerly ruled by Muslim elites, then ruling them — as a distinctive psychological source of Islamophobia in Russia.