In the beginning of the 15th century, a number of independent Islamic khanates[1] emerged from the gigantic Golden Horde. Unlike other subjects, republics are nominally autonomous and each republic has its own constitution, president and parliament. Islam first entered Russia through Dagestan from the mid 7th century it started to spread to the Northern Caucasus. The people of Vainakh are a group of people of the Northern Caucasus including modern Chechens' and Ingushes' ancestries speaking Nakh language. There are believed to be around 20 million Muslims in Russia. As these demographic figures demonstrate, the majority of the inhabitants of the two republics are Tatars and Bashqorts. According to the 2002 Census, Kabardins make up 55.3 percent of the republic's population, followed by Russians (25.1 percent), and Balkars (11.6 Percent).
So how did that happen? On October 15, 1552, after the conquest of Kazan Khanate-which was previously the strongest state in the region-the way for the Russians to occupy the entire Volga region and the Caspian Sea was wide-open. Although the majority of the entire Muslim inhabitants of the regions of Chechens, Ingushes, Balkars and Karachays were deported from their native lands in 1944 to steppes of Kazakhstan, the social and demographic pattern of the region did not undergo major changes. The neighboring republic of Bashqortostan (or Bashkortostan) is situated between the Volga River and Ural mountains with its capital city called Ufa. Currently, the Muslim population constitutes the overwhelming majority in Chechnya, Dagestan, and Ingushetia. Then it was in Kazan, the capital city of Tatarstan, the first President of the Russian Federation Boris Yeltsin (1931-2007) made his oft-quoted statement to Russia's different regions: "Take as much sovereignty as you can swallow". The number of Muslims is increasing, in part because their birthrate is higher. Every republic is meant to be the home to a specific ethnic minority. Unlike other Muslim minorities in Europe, Russian Muslims are not foreign immigrants. It lies between the Volga and Kama Rivers, and extends east to the Ural Mountains. Ingushetia is Russia's smallest federal subject with the population of 467,000. Other parts of Russia including megacities, such as Moscow or Saint-Petersburg, also have significant Muslim populations. Consequently, the Constitution itself, which was adopted on November 30, 1992 by the parliament of the republic, was amended 15 times between 1994-2005.
Russian troops left Chechnya, and for the next three years, the country gained de facto independence. In fact, the small numbers of the Mongols who stayed in the area did not have any significant impact on the fabric of the local society. The International Community did not recognize the independence of Tatarstan too. The ethnically Muslims are predominant in seven republics of the Russian Federation which are the Republics of Bashkortostan and Tatarstan in the Volga-Urals region, and the Republics of Chechnya, Ingushetia, Dagestan, Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachay-Cherkessia in the Northern Caucasus. There are about 20 million indigenous Muslims living in the Russian Federation where the total population is over 140 million (about 15 percent of the total population). So, culture, language, religion, and social life remained the same.