The peoples of the hills between
Russia and the Middle East
by Torben Hansen (historian, m.a.,
University of Copenhagen)
First published in: CONTRASTS AND SOLUTIONS IN THE CAUCASUS. Ole
Hĝjris and Sefa Martin Yürükel (eds.). Copyright: Aarhus University Press and the
author Aarhus 1999.
This contribution will shortly
examine the hybrid political culture of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, i. e. the southern
part of Caucasia, and the region's historic relations with Russia and the Middle East. Physical conditions and the position as a barrier
between the Mediterranean world and the Euro-Asian steppes explain Caucasia's
extraordinary linguistical diversity. Through the centuries scores of micro-ethnies have
taken refuge in the region's rugged hills and preserved their traditions, and Medieval
Arab writers described it as Jabal al ansan - "the mountain of languages".
Since prehistoric times Caucasia has
been economically and culturally connected to Anatolia and Persia, and in terms of state
tradition its southern half was heavily influenced by the older Oriental civilizations.
Then, at the end of eighteenth century Russian conquest heralded radical changes, above
all the politization of ethnicity. The incorporation into the Tsar's empire and even the
seven decades of Soviet power did not, however, bring about Russification or sever the
numerous ties to the rest of the Middle East, and it should be stressed that the present
international border, separating the three independent South Caucasian republics from
Turkey and Iran, does not follow natural divides. It cuts through historic Caucasia,
comprising Iranian (southern) Azerbaijan and the war ravaged kurdish provinces of Turkey, and in many respects
a common cultural heritage and common problems still justify the concept of a wider
Caucasian region.
Loyalty and legitimacy
Applying the well-known concepts of
Almond and Verba to Caucasia we can describe the region's political culture as basically
parochial, since attitudes and expectations vis-à-vis government power are primarily
shaped by the individual's loyalty to relatives and friends and by patron-client
relations. Obviously this tradition reflects a prehistoric organisation of society, but to
complicate things other mechanisms of legitimacy have been added to the substratum of
kinship-oriented politics.
Almost as old as the clan is the image
of sacred monarchy. It was inspired by a Persian ideal and for two millenia served as the
basis of a semi-state order in Southern Caucasia, although it was significantly modified
and moderated by the strength of the aristocrats. Since they were able to resist royal
centralization of power, the "parochial" culture survived.Religion -
Christianity and Islam - was shaped accordingly, approving the established order. At first
the Russian conquest changed little in this respect. For a century Tsarist rule fitted
quite successfully into the Caucasian tradition, although according to Almond and Verba
Russia's political system should be labeled subject, since all components of society were
supposed to obey the autocrat. Thus in the southern part of Caucasia Tsarist rule was even
more stable than the contemporary British "Raj" in India. Then at the end of the
nineteenth century the rot in the empire's center spread to the authorities responsable
for the treatment of the non-Russians, and Tsarism began to destroy its own political
foundation. This was achieved by introducing the Western - in particular German - idea of
ethnicity as a politically relevant issue.
When the Romanov state had disappeared
the successor regime could mould a number of non-Russian into proto-nations. Totalitarian
power thus introduced participation into the political culture of these entities, since
both the party and the nation demanded that the individual should internalize certain aims
unconditionally and obliged her or him to identify with abstract communities.
All three aspects - the parochial, the
subject and the participant - have been at work in Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia during
and after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and this hybrid political culture is the main
obstacle for achieving stability and security in the southern part of the region. Among
the mountaineers - Circassians, Chechenes, Daghestanis etc. – in the northern part
the strength of kinship ties, the clan and its values of honour and mutual obligations has
to this day prevented the realization of the idea of the nation-state.
Caucasia - a "land of
insolence"
The physical conditions of Caucasia
resemble a number of Middle Eastern hill areas, equally known for their warlike
communities (e.g. the Zagros range, Afghanistan and the Lebanon). For centuries they all
deserved the apt Arab designation of the Berber hills of North Africa: bilad as siba -
"the land of
insolence" or
"disorder". With tremendous efforts and a measure of luck emprerors, shahs and
sultans in the centers of the older civilizations were able to conquer such areas, but to
rule the stubborn mountaineers they had to contrive various ways of indirect government,
using bribes, striking deals with local elites and meddling in their endless feuds (cf.
Saddam Hussein's latest maneouvres in Kurdistan). Even so state authority was always
precarious, and Caucasians - in both the region's northern and southern part - were
particularly "insolent", and unlike peasants and city dwellers of the lowlands
they were armed.
The Caucasian "parochial"
concept of politics is connected to a common martial tradition - a result of an
extraordinary strong attachment to narrow communities and of the region's position
between the settled cultures of the
Middle East and the roaming nomads of the immense steppes. Thus peace-loving foreigners
should never forget that Caucasians, regardless of creed, ethnic characteristics and
democratic and patriotic verbosity belong to a common culture of violence - although
modified by the urbanization during the time of the Soviet regime.
It should be noted, however, that this
martial tradition of Caucasia was the opposite of indiscriminate stabbing and shooting,
since it was - and to a large extent still is – deeply rooted in notions of honour
and solidarity. Through the centuries Caucasian men have been the "samurais" of
Western Asia, and like the armed mountaineers of Western Europe in the late Middle Ages -
the Swiss, the Basques and the Scots – living by the values of "loyalty"
and "courage" they have played a major military role in the Middle East. Their
martial qualities were of decisive importance for the construction of dynastic power in
this part of the world. Always in need of expert warriers rulers preferred in particular
Caucasians for their armies. The decisive role of the Kurdish leader Saladin in pushing
out the Crusaders in the twelfht century and later on the Circassian Memluks of Egypt and
the Georgian mercenaries in the service of the Persian shah can be mentioned as examples.
Multi-ethnic states
The past is of tremendous importance
to the collective identity of Armenians, Azerbaijanis and Georgians. It reaches back more
than two millenia, and in this century Caucasian historians have eagerly attempted to
interprete linguistic and archeological evidence in order to justify the drawing of
borders and the construction of nations. Memories of glorious dynasties and pride in
church traditions, established in the beginning of the fourth century at approximately the
same period as the introduction of Christianity in the Roman empire, are crucial to the
Armenian and Georgian patriotic consciousness.
In premodern - largely pre-Russian -
times rulers and priests were able to combine people's loyalty to a small community with a
sense of belonging to a broader entity like the Armenian kingdom in the tenth century or
the wider Muslim "umma". For a very long period throughout the Middle Ages - in
the words of Georgian historian Charachidze - this was achieved by a "dynastic-feudal
order", functioning on mutual respect between princes and local elites - both
Christian and Muslim. Honour and bravery in combat were essential values, since peace was
an exception and war was a rule. In the eleventh and twelwth centuries Armenia was in fact
crushed in the struggle between Byzantion and the attacking Saldjuq nomads from Central
Asia, and with this decisive event Anatolia
and Caucasia received a massive Turkish - and to a certain extent also Kurdish -
immigration.
In Georgia the dynasty managed to
survive, and in Eastern Caucasia Islamic rulers continued to emulate the shahs of Persia.
It should be emphasized that these states were not based on nationality, and religious or
ethnic affiliations were not political issues. The
Russian conquest of southern Caucasia changed little in this respect. During the
eighteenth century Georgian kings and
Georgian and Armenian
ecclestiastical leaders had in vain requested the Tsar to send his army as a protection
against Ottoman and Persian aggression, and finally in 1801 central Georgia was occupied.
Henceforth Tblisi served as the main garrison in several wars against the Turkish sultan
and the Qajar Shah of Iran. Both were severely beaten and forced to cede large provinces -
roughly the territories of southern Georgia and present day independent Armenia and
Azerbaijan. From the very beginning Georgians and Armenians joined the victorious army,
including aristocrats serving as generals, and the local elites collaborated with the new
rulers. The Georgian princes and squires and after a few years also the Muslim
"aghas" - landlords - were accepted into the ranks of the Russian nobility.
Tsarist rule brought peace, and
commercial activity increased considerably during the nineteenth century. Otherwise the
populations of multi-ethnic "Transcaucasia" experienced little change. The
overwhelming majority lived in the countryside, and apart from tax collection and
interference in criminal cases the Tsarist authorities hardly meddled into the affairs of
the villages - i.e. the "parochial" life of the majority.
Ethnogenesis in South Caucasia
In the last decades of the
nineteenth century, however, a potential subversive development began: A tiny
intelligentsiya introduced the discourse of nationalism. This new secular creed was
eagerly embraced by poets, teachers and journalists. At the universities of Kazan, Moscow
and Tartu students from Tblisi and Baku had absorbed Western ideas and associated with
Polish and Finnish patriots and adherents of Pan-Slavism. These young Caucasians wanted to
find an answer to the question: "What is your nationality?"
In the case of the Georgians pride in
language and poetry, a tradition of an independent Orthodox church, founded a thousand
years before the creation of Tsarist Russia, and the memory of brave queens and kings
constituted a collective identity, and gradually the idea of a Georgian "people"
emerged. When at the end of the century the Russian authorities launched a massive
campaign of slander and repression against the Georgian language this nationalist idea was
suddenly expanded and made a political issue.
Armenian nationalism emerged from
different conditions. For centuries the Armenians of the vast Ottoman empire had lived as
a recognized "millet" - a religious community enjoying a certain autonomy. The
Sunni Muslim rulers duely recognized the service and talents of the crafty Armenians (in
particular its urban elite), and after the Greek war of liberation in the 1820'es this
non-Orthodox and non-Catholic Christian minority earned the honorific designation
"the loyal community".
The decay of the empire, however,
meant serious trouble for the Armenians, particularly those living in Eastern Anatolia
– their historic homeland. Since the disasters of the Middle Ages this population of
peasants, craftsmen and small shopkeepers had managed to survive incessant wars and
nomadic raids, and in the last decades of the nineteenth century they still made out
approximately half of the population between the city of Erzurum and the Persian border.
Following another Turkish military
defeat in 1878 and further humiliating surrender of territories to Russia the situation of
non-Muslims in the Ottoman empire deteriorated dramatically. Abdul Hamid - the
"bloody sultan" - decided to crush the political forces in favour of
constitutional change. He did so by launching a religious campaign and encouraging fanatic
mobs to kill potential "Westernizers" and "traitors" – mainly
Christian Armenians. This first wave of persecution and annihilation - more were to follow
in the next century - hit the wealthy bourgeoisie in the cities and the peasants of
Anatolia. The result was the beginning af a huge exodus, to be repeated in the last years
of the empire. Abdul Hamids "Islamic" assaults provoked armed Armenian
self-defence and eventually the emergence of Armenian terrorist movements. Particularly
the socalled "Dashnak" - which is still very active today - organized killer
squads and operated secretly on both Ottoman and Russian territory. Thus the common
perspective of humiliation and death united students from wealthy families of Tblisi and
Constantinople with illiterate peasants from the Taurus hills. The ruler of the Ottomans -
the khalif of all believers - had unwitting created the Armenian nation!
What was the national identity of the
"Transcaucasian" Muslims? To the Russians they were all "Tatars"
regardless of language and occupation. But this designation was considered derogatory, and
the wealthy families of Baku and Elizavetpol - the Ganjé in pre-Russian and post-Soviet
times - and in particular their educated élite evidently belonged to the Persian culture.
Persian was the language of poetry and connoted a refined style of life, but a Turkish
dialect was the vernacular of the masses.
For political reasons the Muslim intelligentsiya had to
reject the idea of a Persian or an Ottoman collective identity when at the end of the
nineteenth century it rallied to a programme of secularization and progress. Writers and
teachers wanted to enlighten and modernize the people. But what was the people? It was
certainly not Armenian and not Russian, mainly because it thought of itself as part of the
Muslim "umma". But neither was it Kurdish, nor did it comprise the rob bers of
the Daghestan moun tains! Following the way indicated by J. G. Her der, the German writer
of the eighteenth century, a talented dramatist Mirza Fath–Ali Akhundzadé (it is
difficult to find a more Persian sounding name!) in vented the "Azeri"
nationality by pointing to the Iranian province of Azerbaijan. Since the vernacular of the
majority was the same on both sides of the border Akhundzadé and his followers wanted the
people to assume an Azerbaijani or Azeri national identity.
At the census of 1897 the patriots who still considered themselves the Tsar's loyal
subjects finally had the designation "Azeri" recognized by the authorities. Thus
at the turn of the century the minds of Westernized Caucasians had created the Georgian,
the Armenian and the Azerbaijani nationalities. The emergence of class hatred –
particularly in the proletarian masses of the booming oil industry of Baku – and the
collapse of the old order during the turmoil of the world war transformed these concepts
into mass movements.
World War and revolution
With the fall of the Romanov dynasty and the Bolchevik coup
d´etat in October 1917 Caucasia plunged into chaos. Disaster had already hit the
Armenians of the Ottoman empire. In 1915 at least a million of them peris hed when a
coterie of "Young Turks" organized a systematic holocaust, which has not been
forgotten. Many of the survivors fled to Russian Caucasi a, but they did not escape
violence for long. In 1918 the independent states of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan were
proclamied. They began fighting each other immedeately, and soon the region was invaded by
Ottoman, German and finally by British forces. These fightings were particularly fierce
and bloody because of the semi–military character of communities and the strong
traditions of revenge. In the Northern half of Caucasia the Russian army had crushed the
Muslim tribes in the middle of the nineteenth century, and when the Tsarist regime dis
integrated resent ment among the surviving Chechens, Karachais and Circassians burst into
armed action against the Cossacks of Kuban and Terek and other "White" forces.
In the Southern part Armenians and
Azerbaijanis were seized by intense fear and hatred, generated by the extermination
campaign against the Armenians in Anatolia and the Ottoman invasion of 1918. Generally
these tragic events implied plunder, massacres and "etnic cleansing". Not only
Armenians and Azerbaijanis were dragged into this abyss. In the autumn of 1918 Armenians
and Georgians started a war. The two independent states fought over the small border area
of Borchalo, and in Tblisi a substantial number of the city's Armenian majority fled after
bloody mob violence (leftist agitation encouraged Georgians of the lower classes with a
rural back ground to assault the Armenian bourgeoisie).
Again: nothing of this was forgotten
during the offi cial silence of the follo wing seven decades!
The killing finally stopped, when
exterior forces intervened. In 1920 the Communists from the North and the
"Kemalist" Turkish army from the South took the initiative and finally took
control and reached an agree ment. Caucasia was reabsorbed into a Russian empire, except
for the Armenian districts in the south west, ceded to Turkey (Ardahan, Kars and Surmalu
with the mountain Ararat). Both powers had allies in the region. The Azerbaijanis
collaborated with the Turks, and the Chechens and the
circassians supported the "Reds" against the "Whites". So did
the Ossetians and the Abkhazians, when the Communist Army invaded independent Georgia in
1921.
Stalin's program of "korennisatziya".
In December 1922 the Soviet Union was formally established on the
principle of equality between the nationalities of the restored empire. The Communist
party's basic understanding was that ethnic conflicts had been caused by
"feudalism" and "capitalism". It was decided, that more than a hundred
different ethnic groups should acquire a new collective identity in a socialist society by
what was called in Russian the sblizheniye – "the drawing together". But
before this proletarian brother hood was achieved the party had to build its power
structures among the non–Russian populations in Central Asia and Caucasia by
recruiting a suffi cient number of local cadres.
Stalin's solution of the administrative
problem was to introduce a new criterion: A national identity could only be recognized if
it was founded on a territory. Linguistic, his toric and religious reasons were generally
considered irrelevant. A number of nationalities – later dubbed "titular
nationalities" by Western researchers – were equipped with their respective
Soviet republic. In some cases smaller groups were entitled to administrative units of a
lower level: Autonomous republics, territories and "oblasts" inside a Soviet
republic. The Party decided that the "titular nationalities" in each republic
should "sink roots" – i. e. create a cultural basis.
This was called korennisatziya. Its nationalist ideology
and the corresponding national structures has had decisive importance in Caucasia and
Central Asia to this day. So it would be a misleading oversimplification to characterize
Armenians, Azerbaijanis and Georgians simply as clans men or tribal warri ers. On the
other hand it would be a serious error to neglect the strength of clientelism and clan
mentality, although the intelligentsiya of the three republics generally attempt to deny
its relevance.
Litterature
Almond, G.A.: & Verba, S.: "The Civic Culture", Boston, 1963 (Little, Brown
& Co.)
Burney, C. & Lang, D.M.: "The Peoples of the Hills", London, 1971.Carrre
d'Encausse, H.: "L'empire eclate", Paris (1978).
Charachidze, G.: "Introduction l'etude de la fodalit gorgienne", Paris, 1971.
Pankhurst, J.G. & Sacks, M. P. (ed.): "Contemporary Soviet Society", New
York, 1980. Sarkisyanz, E.: "Geschichte der orientalischen Volker Russlands bis
1917", München, 1961.
Saroyan, M.: "Beyond the Nation–State: Culture and Ethnic Politics in Soviet
Transcaucasia", Soviet Union/Union Sovitique, 15, 2–3, 1988.
Schwartz, D.V. & Panossian, R. (ed.): "Nationalism and History. The Politics of
Nation Building in post–Soviet Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia", University of
Toronto, 1992. (Printed in Hĝyris, O. &
Yürükel, S. M. (eds.): "Contrasts and Solutions in the Caucasus", Aarhus
University Press, 1998; reproduced here with the kind permission of the editors)
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