Black Garden : Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War

Divisions 
A Twentieth-Century  Story 
O N   T H E   B O R D E R  
between Soviet Armenia and Azerbaijan, between 
the towns of Ijevan and Kazakh and just south of Georgia, there used to 
stand a monument of a tree. At its crest it blossomed into a flower, 
whose petals symbolized the friendship of the three Soviet republics of 
the South Caucasus. 
In Soviet times probably no one paid much attention to this exotic 
tree-flower, but that was probably because for most people its message 
appeared self-evident. Most inhabitants of the Caucasus insist that right 
up until the late 1980s they lived in friendship with their neighbors of 
all nationalities and thought of themselves as loyal Soviet citizens. For 
seventy years there was almost no instance of mass violence between 
Armenians and Azerbaijanis. They lived side by side, traded with each 
other and intermarried. 
Yet the dispute between Armenians and Azerbaijanis in 1988 was 
more than just a misunderstanding that got out of hand. It was a deep 
rupture that completely split them apart and played a leading role in 
breaking up the Soviet Union. Why and how did mass peaceful coexis­
tence turn so suddenly into conflict? 
A tentative answer to this all-important and troubling question 
should begin with the fact that although there was coexistence, trade, 
and intermarriage between Armenians and Azerbaijanis, there was also 
astonishingly little dialogue. To hear leaders on either side talk about 
the origins of the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict is to hear two narratives, 
each hermetically sealed from the other. Many Azerbaijanis, for exam­
ple, reject the idea that there is such a thing as a “Karabakh question” at 
all. They say that they were the victims of a dangerous Armenian idea, 
which had almost nothing to with Nagorny Karabakh as such. The 
Azerbaijani opposition politician Isa Gambar argues for instance that 
the events of February 1988 in Karabakh were an irredentist movement, 
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imported from Armenia, and it could have been suppressed by prompt 
action from the Azerbaijani leadership in Baku: 
The initiative was on the Armenian side. They began to make terri­
torial claims on Azerbaijan, and they stood behind the beginning of 
the separatist movement in Nagorny Karabakh. So there is no doubt­
ing the responsibility of the Armenian ultranationalists in this ques­
tion. At the same time, we believe that the then leadership of Azerbai­
jan bears its share of responsibility in the sense that had they taken a 
more tough and decisive position, then the question could have been 
resolved within the first few days.
1 
The Armenian leader Robert Kocharian proposes a completely 
opposite argument, that conflict in Karabakh was historically inev­
itable: 
In 1917, the Revolution happened. When central Russian authority 
ceased to exist, this problem arose in its most acute form. There was a 
war for three years and then in effect Soviet troops joined Karabakh to 
Azerbaijan. So this problem was always there and it was completely 
obvious that when central authority weakened or ceased to exist, then 
we would get what we now have. To all Karabakh Armenians, that 
was completely obvious. There was no doubt about that—and it seems 
to me that it was obvious to the Azerbaijanis too.
2 
The mutually exclusive alternative views of recent history show how in 
the Soviet era, Armenia and Azerbaijan ran on separate political, eco­
nomic, and cultural tracks, which rarely intersected and had built into 
them a strong contempt and fear of the other. 
A TWENTIETH-CENTURY  DISPUTE 
In untangling the roots of the Karabakh conflict, we should first of all 
dismiss the idea that this was an “ancient conflict.” Both the form and 
the content of the Armenia-Azerbaijan dispute date back little more 
than one hundred years. The central bone of contention, Nagorny 
Karabakh, was fought over in 1905 and in 1918–1920, was allocated to 
Azerbaijan in 1921, and had its borders drawn in 1923. As two Ameri-

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can scholars put it, “[O]ne might say, the origins of the current conflict 
are ‘shrouded in the mists of the twentieth century.’”
3 
The ideological framework of the dispute is also quite modern. Na­
tionalist ideology—the belief that an ethnic group is entitled to some 
kind of statehood within certain borders—was not a strong factor in the 
region until the end of the nineteenth century. So what follows is a 
twentieth-century history. 
The roots of the dispute can be traced back to the period when the 
Ottoman and Russian Empires were in their dying phases and both 
Armenians and Azerbaijanis discovered the idea of national self-deter­
mination. The Armenians began to be inspired by the example of inde­
pendence movements in the Balkans and eastern Europe. The major 
Armenian nationalist party, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation 
(better known as the Dashnaktsutiun or Dashnaks) was founded only 
in 1890. At the same time Azerbaijanis began to discover their “Turkic 
brothers,” forged closer links with Turkey, and militated to secede from 
Russia. 
The catastrophic events of 1915 transformed and accelerated the 
whole process. The collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the mass 
slaughter of its Armenian population ended centuries of Armenian life 
in Turkey and turned Russian Armenia into a land of refugees. Then, 
with the end of the Russian imperial regime in 1917, the main national­
ities of the Caucasus had independence thrust upon them. In May 1918, 
the three principal nations of the Caucasus became separate states. In-
dependence was most to the advantage of Georgia because neither the 
Armenians and the Azerbaijanis were in full control of their states. On 
28 May, the Azerbaijanis proclaimed an independent Azerbaijan whose 
temporary capital was Ganje, in that Baku was still controlled by the 
Bolshevik Commune. The Armenians declared independence on the 
same day and, with great reluctance, in the Georgian capital Tiflis. They 
had just staved off total conquest by the Turks at the Battle of Sar­
darabad and within days had to sign a humiliating peace treaty. 
The two nationalist regimes that took over Armenia and Azerbaijan 
in 1918, led by the Musavat and Dashnaktsutiun parties, quarreled over 
where their common borders lay. They fought over three ethnically 
mixed provinces, lined up on the map from west to east, like dominoes 
leaning against one another: Nakhichevan, Zangezur, and Karabakh. In 
Nakhichevan, the westernmost, Azerbaijan consolidated control that 
year, with Turkish support, driving out thousands of Armenians. In 

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Zangezur, across the mountains to the east, the ferocious Armenian 
guerrilla commander known as Andranik swept through the region, 
burning Azerbaijani villages and expelling their inhabitants. In the 
mountains of Karabakh, the situation was more complex: the local as­
sembly of Karabakh Armenians tried to declare independence but had 
almost no contact with the Republic of Armenia across the mountains. 
When World War I ended that November, Turkey capitulated to the 
Allies and withdrew from Azerbaijan. Great Britain moved in, and in-
dependent Azerbaijan effectively spent its first year under a British 
mandate. Chiefly interested in Azerbaijan as a bulwark against the Bol­
sheviks and a source of oil, the British made only half-hearted attempts 
to resolve the border disputes. In December, a British mission estab­
lished itself in Shusha and stayed for eight months. (Two British sol­
diers—a Lancashire rifleman and a Pathan from the North West Fron­
tier—are buried somewhere outside Shusha’s walls.) General William 
Thomson, who led the expedition, imposed a hated Azerbaijani gover­
nor, Dr. Khosrov-Bek Sultanov, on Karabakh and persuaded the guer­
rilla leader, Andranik, to go back to Armenia. Thomson said this was a 
temporary arrangement and all outstanding territorial questions would 
be settled at the upcoming Paris Peace Conference.
4 
But the Paris peace conference did not adjudicate the border dis­
putes. The British pulled out of Azerbaijan in August 1919, leaving be-
hind unfulfilled expectations and unresolved quarrels.
5 
In Karabakh, 
the Armenian community was split between the age-old dilemma of co­
operation or confrontation. There were those—primarily Dashnaks and 
villagers—who wanted unification with Armenia, and those—mainly 
Bolsheviks, merchants, and professionals—who, in the words of the Ar­
menian historian Richard Hovannisian, “admitted that the district was 
economically with eastern Transcaucasia and sought accommodation 
with the Azerbaijani government as the only way to spare Mountainous 
Karabagh from ruin.”
6 
The latter group was mainly concentrated in 
Shusha, but both groups were killed or expelled when an Armenian re­
bellion was brutally put down in March 1920 with a toll of hundreds of 
Shusha Armenians. 
In April 1920, the British journalist C. E. Bechhofer, traveling in Ar­
menia, was depressed by the scenes of chaos, extremism, and violence: 
You cannot persuade a party of frenzied nationalists that two blacks 
do not make a white; consequently, no day went by without a cata-

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logue of complaints from both sides, Armenian and Tartar, of unpro­
voked attacks, murders, village burnings and the like. Superficially, 
the situation was a series of vicious circles. Tartar and Armenian at-
tacked and retaliated for attacks. Fear drove on each side to fresh ex­
cesses. The Dashnaks remained in power because conditions were 
such as they were; and conditions were such as they were to no small 
extent because the Dashnaks in power.
7 
Bechhofer’s proposed solution has a strange resonance eighty years 
later: he was persuaded that the only way to “cut the knot” was for all 
sides to agree on Armenia’s borders and for there to be an exchange of 
Armenian and Azerbaijani populations across the new frontiers—as 
happened in 1988–1990. Shortly after Bechhofer’s visit, however, the 
old imperial power, Russia, returned, wearing a new army uniform. 
The Bolsheviks took control of Baku and deposed the Musavat govern­
ment. In May 1920, the 11th Red Army marched into Karabakh and six 
months later took power in Armenia. 
The Bolsheviks initially decided to award all the disputed territo­
ries to Armenia, apparently as a reward for its conversion to Bolshe­
vism. In December 1920, the Azerbaijani Communist leader Nariman 
Narimanov welcomed “the victory of the brotherly people” and an­
nounced that the three disputed provinces, Karabakh, Nakhichevan, 
and Zangezur would from now on be part of Soviet Armenia. The dec­
laration was obviously made under duress and was not acted upon. In 
the spring of 1921, the balance of forces changed, and an anti-Bolshevik 
uprising in Armenia soured relations between Yerevan and Moscow. 
All previous agreements were declared void. By then the fate of Zange­
zur and Nakhichevan had been decided by force of arms. The Dashnak 
leader known as Njdeh had taken possession of Zangezur, driving out 
the last of its Azerbaijani population and effecting what one Armen­
ian author euphemistically calls a “re-Armenianization” of the region.
8 
The Azerbaijanis were in full control of Nakhichevan, and this status 
was confirmed by the Treaty of Moscow, signed with Turkey in March 
1921. The same treaty gave Kars, formerly a mainly Armenian region, 
to Turkey. 
This left only the fate of the highlands of Karabakh up in the air. The 
final decision on its status was to be made by the six members of the 
“Kavburo,” the Bolsheviks’ committee on the Caucasus that was under 
the watchful eye of Commissar on Nationalities Joseph Stalin. On 4 July 

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1921, the bureau voted to attach Karabakh to Soviet Armenia, but Na­
rimanov objected strongly. A day later, it decided that “proceeding from 
the necessity for national peace between Muslims and Armenians and 
the economic ties between upper and lower Karabakh, its constant links 
with Azerbaijan, Nagorny Karabakh remains within the Azerbaijani 
SSR, having been awarded wide regional autonomy, with its adminis­
trative center in the town of Shusha.”
9 
The Soviet authorities created the 
Nagorny Karabakh Autonomous Region in July 1923 and drew its bor­
ders a month later. The Armenian village of Khankendi was made the 
regional capital and renamed Stepanakert after the Baku Bolshevik 
commissar Stepan Shaumian. The new border gave the region an over­
whelmingly Armenian population—94 percent of the total—but did not 
link it to Armenia. 
Gallons of ink have been expended in discussing why Nagorny 
Karabakh was made part of Soviet Azerbaijan in 1921. The arguments 
for and against the move go to the heart of the politics of the Karabakh 
question: the economics and geography of Azerbaijan on one side are 
ranged against Armenian claims of demography and historical conti­
nuity on the other. Put simply, a region populated overwhelmingly by 
Armenians and with a strong tradition of Armenian self-rule was situ­
ated on the eastern side of the watershed dividing Armenia and Azer­
baijan and was economically well integrated within Azerbaijan. 
In 1921, the Bolsheviks were partly swayed by short-term strategic 
considerations. A major priority was to make secure their conquest of 
Azerbaijan, whose oil fields alone made it of far greater importance 
than Armenia. Moreover, in 1921 Azerbaijan was still formally an inde­
pendent Bolshevik state, closely allied to Turkey. It had its own Com­
missariat of Foreign Affairs, diplomatic representatives in Germany 
and Finland, and consulates in Kars, Trebizond, and Samsun. The new 
rulers in Moscow hoped that the new Muslim Soviet republic would be, 
in the words of the local Bolshevik Sultan Galiev, a “red beacon for Per­
sia, Arabia, Turkey,” spurring them to join the worldwide revolution. 
The Armenian Communist leader Alexander Miasnikian complained 
later of Narimanov’s threat that “if Armenia demands Karabakh, we 
will not deliver kerosene.”
10 
The creation of the Autonomous Region of Nagorny Karabakh in-
side Azerbaijan is often adduced as an example of the politics of “Di­
vide and Rule” in which Moscow imposed its authority by setting one 
subject people against another. This is also simplistic. Of course, the 

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Bolsheviks were reestablishing an empire with all means at their dis­
posal. Yet if they had wanted merely to “divide and rule,” it would 
have been more logical to allocate the enclave of Nagorny Karabakh 
to Armenia, leaving an awkward island of sovereign Armenia inside 
Azerbaijan. 
In fact, the longer-term considerations behind the Kavburo’s deci­
sion were probably as much economic as colonial. Lenin and Stalin cre­
ated Nagorny Karabakh as one piece in a new complex mosaic of au­
tonomous regions and republics designed to replace the old tsarist sys­
tem of standardized gubernii. The new regions were intended to be 
economically viable territories, with all other considerations taking sec­
ond place. So in the North Caucasus, for example, people from the 
plains and the mountains, such as the Kabardins and the Balkars, were 
brought together in one region. They had no ethnic relationship, but it 
was planned that they would work together to build a new socialist 
economy and drag the mountain tribes out of their backward ways. 
Leaving Karabakh inside Azerbaijan followed the same kind of eco­
nomic logic. It especially suited the thousands of Azerbaijani and Kur­
dish nomads who regularly drove their sheep to the high pastures of 
Karabakh in the summer and down to the plains of Azerbaijan for the 
winter.
11 
In this sense, the creation of Nagorny Karabakh could more ex­
actly be called the politics of “Combine and Rule.” And the Soviet 
brand of combination was just as dangerous in its own way because it 
incited intense competition between new partners. 
LITTLE EMPIRES 
An unforeseen by-product of Lenin’s new territorial arrangements for 
the Soviet Union was that by maintaining a link between land and na­
tionality, they conserved nationalism in a latent form inside the new 
system. The USSR was constructed as a federation of republics, desig­
nated by their nationality and ethnicity. Each of the “Union Republics” 
—four in 1922, fifteen after 1956—retained elements of sovereignty, in­
cluding the formal right to secede. They had their own flags, crests, an­
thems, and political institutions. 
Most of the features of sovereignty were merely decorative and 
counted for little within the restrictions of a one-party authoritarian 
state. Even so, they pointed up perceived differences in nationality, 

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which were formalized in the system. The Soviet Union was not a melt­
ing pot. Aged sixteen, every Soviet had to state his own ethnicity, which 
was recorded in the infamous “ninth line” of his Soviet internal pass-
port. This meant that everyone in the USSR had at least a dual affilia­
tion, and that some minorities—an Azerbaijani or a Kurd in Armenia, 
for instance, or an Armenian, a Lezgin, or a Russian in Azerbaijan—had 
a triple affiliation: they belonged first to the nationality recorded in their 
internal Soviet passport (Kurds, Azerbaijanis, Armenians, or whatever); 
second to the Union Republic of Russia, Armenia, or Azerbaijan; and 
last to the Soviet Union and the “Soviet people” as a whole. 
In the postwar years, the Soviet Union had already acquired its su­
perficial look of gray uniformity. All of its citizens had only the one