Azerbaihani Historiography on the question of South Azerbaijan

JOKUBAUSKAS, Vytautas. [Review of: МЕЛЬТЮХОВ, Михаил. Прибалтийский плацдарм (1939–1940). Возвращение Советского Союза на берега Балтийского моря. Москва, 2014]. Lithuanian Historical Studies, 2015, vol. 20. Vilnius, 2016, pp. 237–242., 2016

Активизация коллективной памяти происходит большей частью под влиянием значимых общественно-политических событий современности. Такие явления, как национальное пробуждение, всплеск интереса к национальной истории, унаследованные из прошлого нерешенные национальные задачи, эскалация межэтнического конфликта и пр. являются катализатором пробуждения памяти. Активизация коллективной памяти в свою очередь в значительной степени предопределяет направленность в выборе исследовательских топиков. Но постмодернистская интерпретация, делая акцент на сознательность и целеустремленность исторических процессов, зачастую отводит мало места тому, насколько в недрах самого общества существовал общественный заказ. Ведь нельзя ставить под сомнение и тот факт, что до коллапса СССР практически было невозможно репрезентировать многие фундаментальные исторические проблемы советских народов, включая проблемы между ними, в паттерне национального мышления. Это не значит, что общество не имело более или менее адекватного отношения к историческим событиям и прежде, просто оно находилось под сильным идеологическим прессингом. Коллапс СССР, вооруженный конфликт в Карабахе (1991-1994 гг.) и до сего времени не прекращающееся армяно-азербайджанский конфликт создали потребность в глубоком и всестороннем исследовании событий исторического прошлого. Все эти трансформации, естественно, нашли свое отражение в национальных историографиях постсоветского периода. В данной статье представлен процесс репрезентации истории столкновений между армянами и закавказскими татарами (эволюционировавших позже в современных азербайджанцев) на Южном Кавказе в 1905-1906 гг. в контексте новых потребностей армянского и азербайджанского социумов, потребностей, на формирование которых большое влияние оказали освобождение исторической науки от советского идеологического пресса, а также общественно-политические события постсоветского периода. The activation of collective memory occurs mostly under the influence of serious contemporary socio-political events. Collective memory could be catalyzed by such phenomena as the national awakening, a burst of interest towards national history, the unresolved national issues inherited from the past, and the escalation of an interethnic conflict. The activation of collective memory, in its turn, significantly predetermines the choice of research topics. Nevertheless, the postmodern interpretation, emphasizing the consciousness and purposefulness of historical processes, often devotes little space to the consideration of a social demand. After all, until the collapse of the USSR it was practically impossible to discuss many fundamental historical issues of the Soviet ethnic groups, including the problems between them in the pattern of their national thought. The fall of the USSR, the armed conflict in Karabakh (1991-1994) and the hitherto ongoing Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict created the necessity for a profound and multilateral research of the historical past. All these transformations were naturally reflected in the post-Soviet national historiographies. This article considers the process of historical representations of the clashes between Armenians and Transcaucasian Tatars (who later became modern day Azerbaijanis) in the South Caucasus during 1905-1906 within the context of the new needs of Armenian and Azerbaijani societies and the liberation of historical science from the Soviet ideological pressure.

This academic article explains why and when the national identity in Soviet Azerbaijan was altered from Turkic to Azerbaijani (i.e. from ethnic to territorial definition of national identity). It makes use of previously unknown archival sources and challenges the current scholarship in the history of Azerbaijan.

Wiener Zeitschrift für die Kunde des Morgenlandes, 2019

Review of: Röhrborn, Klaus: Uigurisches Wörterbuch. Sprachmaterial der vorislamischen türki-schen Texte aus Zentralasien. ‒ Neubearbeitung ‒ II. Nomina ‒ Pronomina ‒ Partikeln. Band 2: aš ‒ äžük

Monuments and Identities in the Caucasus: Karabagh, Nakhichevan and Azerbaijan in Contemporary Geopolitical Conflict, 2023

The present study aims to reconstruct the origins and the shaping of revisionist historiography of the South Caucasus developed in Azerbaijan. The first of the historiographic theses criticised relies on the idea that the Azerbaijani Turkophone people descends directly from the inhabitants of the ancient kingdom of Caucasian Albania; the second thesis maintains that all the Christian monuments situated on the territory of Nagornȳĭ Karabakh, as well as those situated on the territory of Azerbaijan, are Albanian monuments. After an overview, in Section 1, of the relations existing between Caucasian Albania and Armenia in the light of historiographic sources, archæological discoveries and linguistic data, I analyse, in Sections 2–6, how the Soviet policy governing nationalities fostered the formation in Azerbaijan of a new national identity conceived as an ethnic and racial category. The Soviet conception of nationhood ignored self-determination, whilst privileging the origins—of both the individual and the nation—which were to be uncovered in genetic descent, archæological finds or ancient chronicles. Over the expanses of the USSR, that policy gave rise to vast manipulations of ancient and mediæval history. In Sections 7–9, I observe how the new historiographical doctrine, whose elaboration in Azerbaijan was prompted by the Soviet authorities, prepared the ideological ground for ethnic and cultural erasure and expansionist ambitions. In Sections 8–10 I discuss how that historiographical doctrine was fabricated in complete disregard of the historical sources on Caucasian Albania and Christian settlements on its territory during later centuries. The ‘primordial’ notion of nationhood shaped in the USSR is not only at the origin of the lasting conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia; it also underlies the rhetoric of Russia’s leaders during the years preceding the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. The investigation of the genesis of extreme forms of nationalism in Azerbaijan thus affords a key for the understanding of a much vaster phenomenon characterising post-Soviet geopolitics. Contents 1 Armenia and Caucasian Albania --- p. 241 2 Ethnic Descent as a Political Factor; the Moscow Treaty of 1921 --- p. 247 3 Territorial and Individual Nationhood in the ussr --- p. 255 3.1 ‘Psychological’ Markers of Territory --- p. 255 3.2 Ethnic Descent as a Juridical Category --- p. 262 4 The Azerbaijanis: A New Soviet Nation --- p. 266 5 Infantilising the Nations --- p. 271 6 Nation as a Biological Category --- p. 276 7 Creating a Deterministic Historiography --- p. 280 7.1 ‘Cultures in the Reduced Sense of the Word’ --- p. 280 7.2 Celebrating Autochthonous Historiography --- p. 282 8 Caucasian Albania and the Azerbaijanis --- p. 288 9 The Primordial Roots of a Modern Autocracy --- p. 296 10 Caucasian Albania and the Udis. Excursus --- p. 299 11 Conclusions --- p. 301

В статье впервые в историографии предпринимается попытка дать анализ публицистики и научной литературы США второй половины 1940-х гг. – 1975 г. о судебных процессах над промышленной элитой Третьего рейха. Взгляды авторов этих работ рассматриваются в русле идеологической борьбы времен «холодной войны». Автор пришел к выводу, что американские публицисты и исследователи, выступившие в защиту нюрнбергских принципов и разоблачавшие создаваемые маккартистами и их сторонниками представления о германском крупном бизнесе, внесли вклад в борьбу по предотвращению новой мировой войны. The author undertakes an attempt to conduct the analysis of the social and political essays and scientific literature of the USA of the second half of the 1940s - 1975 on the Third Reich industrial elite legal processes for the first time in historiography, considers the views of these works authors as a part of the ideological struggle of the “cold war” period, and comes to the conclusion that the American political essays writers and researchers, who spoke in defense of Nuremberg principles and disclosed the ideas about the German big business, which were created by McCarthyism supporters, contributed to the struggle for the prevention of another world war.

Acta Poloniae Historica, 2022

The author synthesises the most recent discoveries of the dynamic fi eld that is Early Islamic History, and arranges them in a coherent and explicit analytical model, borrowing key concepts from Pierre Bourdieu: the early Islamicate world is foremost understood as a new social world, with an original set of categories, representations and forms, born from a cultural revolution. By focusing her attention on the western part of the Islamic world, the author also shows the specifi c role of al-Andalus, the Maghreb and Ifriqiya in the social and cognitive processes. The book contains 225 pages, arranged in four chapters preceded by an introduction, a conclusion, an annotated bibliography and a lexicon. In the introduction, Annliese Nef shortly presents the recent developments in the fi eld of early Islamic Studies, namely the detailed surveys into the birth of both Islam as a religion and of Arabic identity. As both took form after the conquests and birth of the Empire (thus being more its products than makers), the author frames her subject as the revolutionary emergence of a new social world. Chapter one details those recent re-evaluations of the early history of Islam as a religion, 1 the birth of Arabic identity, and the link

Східноєвропейський історичний вісник, 2021

The purpose of the article is to explore the paradigm of the relationship between a national minority and a state in which an authoritarian and totalitarian model of government is formed. This analysis is conducted by the author on the relationship between the state and a national elite. The research methods: realization of the specified purpose demands from the researcher use of historical-system, historical and biographical, comparative methods, the complex approach. Main results, brief conclusions: At the beginning of the 20th century, Georgia became a center not only for the emigrant and refugee masses of the Assyrians, but also for the national and political elite. The years of Georgian state-building coincided with an active stage in the implementation of the Assyrian national issue in the field of international law. The Soviet government radically changed the methodology for resolving the Assyrian national issue. Markers of a national statehood were replaced by the Soviet loyalty artificially. Elites who became the generator of solutions to the national issues were repressed and replaced by loyalists to the existing system. The issue of obtaining various formats of statehood had long been removed from the agenda. The practical significance: the results of the study can be used for further scientific research on the history of the Soviet totalitarianism and the history of the Assyrians in the USSR in the 1920s and 1930s. The scientific novelty: the research is formed on the basis of a wide range of historical sources. The author presents the material stored in the archives of the

Austrian History Yearbook, 1992

Istoriâ i sovremennoe mirovozzrenie, 2023

The purpose of the research. The article analyzes the activities of the All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries (VOKS) to strengthen ties with Iran through the policy of book exchange. Book exchange was an important part of the work of VOKS, since it made it possible to statistically track the nature of ties, and also made it possible not only to inform the interested layers of Iranian society about the USSR, but also to receive informative publications from them within the framework of book exchange. Based on the materials of domestic archives - the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF) and the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI), it is demonstrated that the exchange of printed publications with Iranian institutions and individuals was an important component of the VOKS policy to expand cultural relations with Iran. The paper presents statistical data on book exchange and the addressees to whom the literature was sent. Results. Correspondence between authorized VOKS in Iran and the central office made it possible to identify the main problems associated with book exchange: firstly, the unequal ratio of sent and received publications in exchange - VOKS always sent more and received less. Secondly, the poor-quality selection of literature, both in terms of language, for example, books were sent in Uzbek and Ukrainian, and in thematic - overtly political brochures were sent that could not be used in Iran due to censorship. On the basis of archival materials from the National Library and Archives of the Islamic Republic of Iran, it is demonstrated how Iranian officials were afraid to accept donated Soviet literature. Thirdly, the low quality of the literature. However, in addition to problems, there were also positive aspects. Directly in Iran, representative of VOKS sent out literature, taking into account its thematic scope and target audience. Important Soviet-Iranian cultural and scientific events in the 1930s - the millennium of Ferdowsi, the Third International Congress on Iranian Art and Archeology, the centenary of the death of A. S. Pushkin - were used as occasions for the transfer of relevant literature.