CONTEMPORARY EURASIA VOLUME VIII (1) ContemporaryEurasia81 | Page 91

NAREK SUKIASYAN
Historical roots
The roots of the conflict can be traced to the beginning of the 19 th
century, when the Treaty of Gulistan between Imperial Russia and Persia
brought most of the contemporary South Caucasus under Russian
jurisdiction. 1 The significance of this event can be seen in the demographic
shifts that came thereafter. 2 In the beginning of 20 th century, West of the
Caucasus, around a million and a half Armenians were killed in the Ottoman
Empire and hundreds of thousands were displaced. 3 The implications of the
1915 Armenian Genocide are of paramount importance not only for its
political and humanitarian impact but also for their influence on the
formation of Armenian identity, later nation and state building and
demographic shifts in the region. These imprints were yet to surface in
national struggles that broke out during the dissolution of the Soviet Union,
which will be elaborated upon in detail in later sections.
In 1918, the Caucasus was politically consolidated around the short-
lived Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic, which in the same
year fell apart into the independent states of Georgia, Armenia and
Azerbaijan. This period was marked with an armed revolt of the Armenians
in Karabakh against the Turkish and British-backed Azeri authorities in 1918
and 1919. 4 After the extension of Communist rule to the Caucasus, on July
3, 1921 the Soviet Azerbaijani government ceded the disputed Karabakh
along with Nakhichevan and Zangezur (regions to the west of Karabakh) to
the Soviet Republic of Armenia. 5 Two days later, upon the decision of the
Caucasian Bureau of Soviet Russia’s Communist Party Central Committee,
Karabakh was reattached to the Azerbaijani Soviet Socialist Republic 6 ,
received the status of autonomous region 7 , and became the Nagorno
Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO). The committee justified this self-
contradicting move as a matter of the “necessity of national harmony
between Muslims and Armenians, [considering] the economic linkage
between upper and lower Karabakh, and its permanent ties to Azerbaijan”. 8
1
Suzanne Goldenberg, Pride of Small Nations: The Caucasus and Post-Soviet Disorder
(Chicago: Zed Books, 1994), 157.
2
Ibid, 157-58.
3
Christopher Walker ed., Armenia and Karabakh: The Struggle for Unity (London: Minority
Rights Publications, 1991), 24.
4
Ibid, 91.
5
Gerard J. Libaridian ed., The Karabakh File (Cambridge: Zoryan Institute, 1988), 34.
6
Hrand Avetisyan, “The Communist Youth League of Transcaucasia under the Flag of
Proletarian Internationalism” in The Karabakh File ed. (Cambridge: Zoryan Institute, 1988),
36.
7
Gerard J. Libaridian ed., “Committee of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan finalizing the
incorporation of Karabakh into Azerbaijan” in The Karabakh File, (Cambridge: Zoryan
Institute, 1988), 37.
8
Avetisyan, “The Communist Youth League of Transcaucasia under the Flag of Proletarian
Internationalism”, 36.
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