War with Armenia, 1991
The war Azerbaijan had with Armenia (officially over in 1994, but the tension continues) is one of the many legacies of “Stalin’s chessboard”. Stalin moved entire populations all over the map, in order to uproot and disorient them, as well as punish them. He created illogical borders. He surrounded certain populations he hated with their sworn enemies. Stalin made sure that he would never die, that his memory would live on. Not just in the history books, but in the confusion and hatred and warfare breaking out all over the Caucausus and Central Asia at almost all times. This is mostly his doing. The thought would have pleased him.
This war between the two countries is over a place called Nagorno-Karabakh. It is officially part of Azerbaijan, yet it is basically an ethnic Armenian enclave. Completely cut off from any access to Armenia proper. The ethnic dispute over this small bit of land hastened the breakup of the Soviet Union.
In the early 1920s, the Bolsheviks conquered the Caucasus, and made Nagorno-Karabakh an autonomous region within Turkic Azerbaijan. The population was something like 95% Armenian, so these kinds of “autonomous region” solutions never make any sense, but this is what the Bolsheviks did. Stalin knew damn well that Nagorno was ALWAYS going to be an issue between Turks and Armenians. He wanted to insure that chaos and hatred and darkness would not just exist in the present, but would stretch out into the future. So he did not unite Nagorno with Armenia (which would have made sense ethnically), but left it in the middle of Azerbaijan, under Baku (the capital of Azerbaijan) control.
So Nagorno became this teeny island of frightened Christianity surrounded by Turks. Don’t forget, either, that just in 1915, the 20th century welcomed its first ethnic genocide. The Turks slaughtered over a million Armenians to “cleanse” the area so Armenians had good reason to fear the Turks. This entire area of Nagorno was surrounded by Azeri militia and Red Army troops, with no way in or out. This situation existed for seven decades. A complete DISASTER created by Stalin.
Then along comes Gorbachev, and glasnost and perestroika. By this time, the Armenian population in Nagorno had shrunk a bit and they were afraid that one day they would be minorities in this enclave. In 1988, Armenians started demonstrating in Yerevan for unification, at the very same time that Azeri authorities began a crackdown on Armenians. Armenians are always being “cracked down” upon. So the Soviet troops are sent to crack down on everybody, but ethnic violence kept breaking out…Azerbaijan blockaded all the Armenian communities in Nagorno, and Armenia is shouting about how Nagorno is and always has been a part of Armenia.
1991 comes. The Soviet Union collapses. Full scale war erupts between Armenia and Azerbaijan. In 1994 the war ends, with Armenia the clear victor. They drove out all the Azeri forces and annexed other areas, so that Armenia and Karabakh could be joined by a thin corridor. Oh, and by the way, the outside world “recognizes” none of this. And by that I mean, if you look on a map, you will see no evidence of “Nagorno Karabakh” as being anything other than part of Azerbaijan.
