The book explores the aftermath of the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the effects of war and nationalism in the South Caucasus. While the Soviet Union’s dissolution seemed to promise democracy and liberalization, the rise of nationalist movements in Armenia and Azerbaijan led to those countries becoming undemocratic monoethnic states, which ethnically cleansed their largest minorities.
During the violence of the first Karabakh War (1992-1994), Armenians were expelled from Azerbaijan, and Azerbaijanis were expelled from Armenia. The persistence of this violent conflict through the Second (2020) and Third (2023) Karabakh Wars has led to competing, incompatible national narratives and an entrenched imagination of the other as the enemy. Explaining these events’ historical context by tracing them back to specific Soviet and Tsarist policies, the contributors of this volume examine the impact of the Karabakh conflict on ordinary people’s lives in Armenia and Azerbaijan by analysing fiction, film, and other forms of public memory. Ultimately, they show how “eternal enmity” is a myth and point to potential solutions to the conflict.
This study will be useful to students and scholars of Soviet and Post-Soviet History, Nationalism, Empire and Conflict Studies.
The book explores the aftermath of the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the effects of war and nationalism in the South Caucasus.
Introduction, Broken Chains: Mapping the Transition from Diverse
Authoritarianism to Homogeneous Autocracy
Part I Historiography, Politics, and Memory: A Historians' War
1. "An obsession with the remote ancestors: Politics of Ethnogenesis as a
Legitimization of New Nation-States in the Southern Caucasus"
2. "Collective Narratives of an Enduring Rivalry: Memory, History, and Peace
in the Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict"
Part II Reel Rivalries: Depicting the 'Other,' Past and Present
3. From Reel to Real: Exploring National Identity in Soviet Azerbaijani
Cinema"
4. "The Construction of the Other: The Depiction of Azerbaijanis in
Contemporary Armenian Cinema"
Part III Literature in Search of Peace and Mutual Understanding
5. "At the Dawn of the Conflict: Jafar Jabarlys In 1905 in Search of an
Elusive Peace
6. "Monuments and Everyday Moments: National Literature, Three Poets, and the
Future of Azerbaijan
7. "Yemen, or the Face of the World"
Instead of Conclusion: Is there light at the end of the tunnel?
8. Surviving the Storm: Moments of Peace for Armenians and Azerbaijanis in
Georgia
Mikail Mamedov, of dual Armenian-Azerbaijani heritage, explores the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict through personal and scholarly lenses. Educated at Moscow Lomonosov State University (Diploma), George Washington University (MA), and Georgetown (PhD), he teaches and writes on Caucasus history. Despite health challenges, he continues his work, including Zoom roundtables on the conflict since 2023.
Peter Orte is a visiting professor in Russian at Williams College. He received his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and spent three years as an English teacher in Baku, Azerbaijan. His research focuses on 19th-20th century Russian literature and the South Caucasus. He has published articles on the work of Tolstoy, Lermontov, Nijinsky, and Akram Aylisli.
Nona Shahnazarian is a Senior Researcher at Armenias National Academy of Sciences and leads the Center for Independent Social Research Armenia. She has conducted fieldwork across the Caucasus and Russia, focusing on gender, war, migration, and memory. A former visiting fellow at Stanford and Michigan, she directs the Women in War Think Tank in Yerevan.
Ulvi Ismayil is an independent historian and researcher based in Washington, DC. Originally from Baku, he earned a Masters degree in Public Policy from the University of Minnesota in 2005. His published research explores common stereotypes in Azerbaijani rhetoric regarding the conflict with Armenia, the role of writers, literary depictions of the pursuit of peace, and misguided efforts at heroization.
