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The Road to Karabakh Is Paved with Good Intentions: to What Extent Did Soviet Ethnofederalism Cause the Armenian- Azerbaijani Conflict Between 1988-1991?

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The Road to Karabakh Is Paved with Good Intentions: to What Extent Did Soviet Ethnofederalism Cause the Armenian- Azerbaijani Conflict Between 1988-1991? The road to Karabakh is paved with good intentions: to what extent did Soviet ethnofederalism cause the Armenian- Azerbaijani conflict between 1988-1991? UU History: Bachelor’s thesis MAY 3, 2020 GEORGE L.A. VAN EESTEREN 6222196 George van Eesteren 6222196 Abstract Most Nagorno-Karabakh War literature emphasises the role of underlying nationalism and ineffective central government intervention within Soviet Armenia and Azerbaijan as the primary causes of ethnic conflict over the disputed territory following 1988; becoming a full interstate conflict as the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. The suddenness with which nationalist surges in both Soviet republics mobilised both countries populations - then citizens of the same country - to kill each other has caused the prevalence of “Pandora’s Box” explanations. Whereby, violent nationalist radicalisation had emerged through a “double vacuum” of state power and ideology during Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika reforms. Although the determinism behind such reasoning - problematic in what is still an under-documented conflict –ensures questions remain surrounding how 70 years of ethnic coexistence rapidly transformed into ethnic conflict. Rather than compartmentalising the war as the result of failed leadership or ethnic hatreds, this study proposes an understanding of the conflict within its Soviet social context. The USSR’s ethnofederal institutional structure had produced conditions in soviet Transcaucasia that proved crucial enablers of Armenia and Azerbaijan’s contemporary enmity. Adopting a sociological lens, this study identifies vital areas of contention within political and social life in both Soviet Republics that played a direct role in causing ethnic violence following 1988. This implicates the very structure of the Soviet system as the chief cause of war while also explaining why Soviet collapse in the region was exceptionally violent compared to elsewhere. Utilising recently available primary evidence, it then demonstrates the applicability of this perspective through analysing Gorbachev’s failure to halt escalation despite the state still being strong in until late 1989. The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict was not pre-determined, but the very systemic inertia and contradictions Gorbachev’s leadership had sought to reform created a situation whereby Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict was almost impossible to avoid, and likely to turn violent. Table of Contents Introduction..................................................................................................................................................... 3 1. The Soviet origins and historiography of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict ......................................................... 6 Background: ethnofederalism & ethnic conflict .............................................................................................. 6 2. Soviet ethnofederalism & Transcaucasia ...................................................................................................... 16 Ethnofederalism & the conditions for conflict .............................................................................................. 16 Ethnofederalism & Nationalist Mobilisation ................................................................................................ 20 Balkanised historiography; Soviet Transcaucasia and Yugoslavia ................................................................. 23 3. Ethnofederalism from a sociological perspective: sowing the seeds for destruction .......................................... 25 Soviet developmentalism & the roots of late-20th century violence in Transcaucasia ........................................ 25 Nagorno-Karabakh & competitive social struggle ........................................................................................ 29 4. Addressing the Soviet leadership’s failure to prevent Armenian-Azerbaijani ethnic conflict ............................. 35 General Secretary perplexed ....................................................................................................................... 36 “A crisis of methods” ................................................................................................................................. 39 Decision points: Timing and structure ........................................................................................................ 43 Conclusion & Implications ............................................................................................................................. 46 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................................. 48 1 George van Eesteren 6222196 Cover image: On January 19th, 1990, in the Azerbaijani region of Khandlar, nationalist activists block a column of Soviet BTR 80 armoured personnel carriers, part of a force sent to quell ethnic rioting - Reuters/Bettmann. For the sake of overall formatting, captions for further images appearing between chapters are located in at the final page of the bibliography (pp. 51). List of acronyms and terms: USSR: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics SSR: Soviet Socialist Republic AmSSR: Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic AzSSR: Azerbaijani Soviet Socialist Republic NKAO: Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast CPSU: Communist Party of the Soviet Union APF: Azerbaijani Popular Front ANM: Armenian National movement KGB: Soviet Committee for State Security (“Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti,” Комитет Государственнои Безопасности, КГБ) MVD: Soviet Interior Ministry (“Ministerstvo Vnutrennikh Del,” Министерство внутренних дел, МВД) Kavburo: Caucasian Bureau of the Central Committee tasked with national delimitation in Transcaucasia. (“Kavkazskoye Byuro Tsentral'nogo Komiteta,” Кавказское Бюро Центрального Комитета) 2 George van Eesteren 6222196 Introduction Between 1988-1991, a dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan - then members of the Soviet Union - over possession of the Nagorno-Karabakh region became the first instance of ethnic conflict to emerge during the USSR’s final years, becoming a full interstate war following its collapse. By the 1994 ceasefire, 25,000 had been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced.1 Although regular armed clashes along the border and an ongoing war of words between Yerevan and Baku still threaten to reignite the “frozen conflict” with devastating consequences for the South Caucasus region (Transcaucasia). With a final settlement remaining elusive after nearly three decades of unsuccessful international mediation, and Azerbaijan reserving the right to retake the now Armenian-controlled territory by force, an enhanced understanding of the origins of the conflict remains vital. What is remarkable is that the emergence of armed conflict between Soviet Armenia and Azerbaijan took most observers, the Soviet government, and even both peoples, completely by surprise. Unlike the Yugoslav Wars, conflict began as the state was still strong with both populations remaining loyal Soviet citizens. Though Moscow only appeared ever more powerless to stop conflict from escalating to the point where both countries rejected Soviet rule entirely. All despite 70 years of peaceful coexistence as citizens of the same country. Historians have since struggled to come to a firm conclusion over how war started. The most recent study of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict notes: 'Armenian–Azerbaijani conflict in [1988-1991] is both over-determined and under-documented. One complication is that the dispute is both inseparable from the wider unravelling of the Soviet Union... yet exceptional as an example where conflict became violent.'2 These complications mean even the most widely agreed upon informed conclusions attract significant scholarly critique, alongside the indignant dismissals of Armenian and Azerbaijani nationalists. Representing the mainstream view of the conflict in both countries, they reject any notion of shared guilt. However, the predominant academic view of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict sees both sides’ embrace violent nationalism as co-dependent, enabled by the vacuum of power and ideology during the Gorbachev’s perestroika. The central issue that this study identifies with this standpoint is that is too 1 De Waal, Thomas. Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War. New York University Press, 2003, pp. 285. 2 Broers, Laurence. “A Violent Unravelling” in Armenia and Azerbaijan: Anatomy of a Rivalry. Edinburgh University Press, 2019, pp. 17. 3 George van Eesteren 6222196 deterministic, relying heavily on the notion that ethnic conflict would break up in the sudden absence of central authority. This study argues though that the that above shared responsibility, both Armenia and Azerbaijan’s embrace of ethnic conflict was the pre-structured result of their shared experience under Soviet rule. Instead of compartmentalising the Nagorno-Karabakh War as a purely separate case, it explores the broader Soviet context it emerged from. While being equal “union republics” of the same ethnofederal structure, the long-term effect of Soviet ethnofederalism in Transcaucasia was the creation of the very conditions for ethnic conflict. Ironically, Soviet communism ultimately reinforced national differences between Armenia and Azerbaijan. A direct link between ethnofederal institutions is established through analysis of the Soviet social structure, which allows for an understanding of how certain areas of the USSR saw
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