Marxism and the National Question: Nagorno-Karabakh in Context
Below is a copied and pasted version of a paper I published on Academia.edu (here) in which I attempt to apply Marxist dialectics and Lenin’s theory of the right of nations to self-determination to the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh. For the full bibliography, please visit my Academia.edu page. (Featured image source: https://karabakhfacts.com/nagorno-karabakh-republic-artsakh-map/) In the late 1980s and early 1990s, social disintegration and political instability caused by the overthrow of the Soviet Union sparked numerous ethnic and territorial conflicts in many newly independent Soviet republics. Some of these conflicts never ended but became “frozen”… Read More
Soviet Nationalities Policy and Territorial Delimitation: “Divide at impera” or something else?
Have you ever looked at a map of Central Asia and the Caucasus? If you answered ‘yes’, then you have more than likely wondered why the borders of many of the now independent states in these regions of the former Soviet Union are so confusing and seemingly irrational. The strategic and fertile Ferghana Valley, for instance, appears to be haphazardly divided between Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan, while in the Caucasus Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia and Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan are de facto independent, and Nakhchivan is totally separated from Azerbaijan by… Read More
