The idea of the ethnic and cultural supremacy of one people over all the others is the basis of every nationalist movement, and separatism is its practical dimension. Over the past few years I’ve asked my Armenian colleagues many times: how could Azerbaijan, absolutely loyal to Soviet ideology, disregard the ethnic rights of its Armenian residents? No one could give me a conclusive answer. Unless, of course, Armenians of Azerbaijan wanted to join the Armenian SSR solely by the “right of blood”.
Were there any problems with Armenian ethnic identity rights back in 1988? Even my Armenian colleagues can’t cite any specific examples. No oppression of Armenian education, no restrictions on the use of Armenian language, no prohibition of visits to Armenia…
It is also important to understand that the term ‘Azerbaijani’, unlike ‘Armenian’ or ‘Georgian’, isn’t an ethnonym. It is rather a designation of a civic nation that values all its ethnic and confessional components equally.
I travelled a lot to Baku and Yerevan in that era, and I’ve noticed that a Russian-speaking USSR citizen felt much more comfortable in the former. Baku was an international city at its very heart and, like Azerbaijani people, equally welcomed all ethnicities of the USSR. Azerbaijani people were more integrated into the USSR (i.e. Russian) cultural space: unlike Georgians and Armenians, they spoke Russian amongst themselves, at home, and not only with representatives of other Soviet peoples. Many considered Russian to be their mother tongue. And it is this devotion to common Soviet culture that made Azerbaijan the only place where the idea of a united Soviet nation actually came true.
This idyll, however, was destroyed by a violent outburst of nationalist separatism. The collapse of the USSR changed the whole geo-political picture of the South Caucasus. The nations of the region had to seek out their identities once again, but if, in the pre-Russian period, these identities were based on religion, now they had to be built on ethnic grounds.
In these conditions almost mono-ethnic Armenia became a powerful factor of influence in the region, hampering the development of ‘civic goal’ states (in the European sense of the word) in Azerbaijan and Georgia as well as of the very principle of inter-state interaction based on practical mutual benefits.
The general strategic interests of all three South Caucasian states are the same – it is not a subjective conjecture, it’s a fact of life. This interdependence is conditioned by centuries of co-existence and division of labor. The only factor preventing international processes that would do only good to all the peoples of the Caucasus is an irrational and yet intense Armenian nationalism, adopted by the country’s government, that poses chauvinistic ideas of racial supremacy over the needs and desires of ordinary Armenia people.
In fact, each and every nationalist policy, no matter how successful it is in achieving its goals, is always harmful to the country’s general population. Nationalist ideology is even more dangerous, as it destroys the very foundations of a healthy civic society.
So it is Armenian nationalist ideology that prevents healthy and stable development of the whole region and creates potentially explosive situations, not only in Armenia itself, but also in Azerbaijan and in Georgia.
The problem of the South Georgian region of Javakheti, populated by Armenians, recently became topical: Armenia claimes that, historically speaking, this region is a part of Armenia, while extremist organizations within Javakheti don’t even try to hide their separatist intentions and threaten to disrupt major transport routes.
Armenia, with its creative and active population, could have been a great asset to the process of the region’s reintegration; however, instead it turned into the main disruptive power driven by ambitions of ethnic and cultural superiority.
Georgy Kalatozishvili, Tbilisi, exclusively to VK
