Caucasus Survey最新文献

{"title":"The Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic (TDFR) as a “Georgian” responsibility","authors":"Adrian Brisku","doi":"10.1080/23761199.2020.1712902","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23761199.2020.1712902","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article looks at the historical perspectives and positions of key Georgian political figures – mostly leading Social Democrats such as Noe Zhordania and Akaki Chkhenkeli, as well as National Democrats such as Niko Nikoladze – on the making and unmaking of the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic (TDFR) by analyzing their reflections on the most heated political concepts of the first two decades of the twentieth century: nationality, nationalism, the nation-state, federation, economic development, and socialism in the Georgian, Transcaucasian and imperial contexts, given the rapidly shifting geopolitics of the region triggered by the onset of the Great War and aggravated by the Bolshevik Revolution of November 1917. The article demonstrates that already having conceptualized the socio-economic and cultural needs of the nation as developing outside of the framework of the nation-state, Zhordania and Chkhenkeli viewed these instead within a regional federative context under a revolutionarily transformed imperial centre, while assuming that the Social Democrats would hold the commanding political position in Georgia. This prepared them to take responsibility for establishing de facto federative political institutions for Transcaucasia. That responsibility facilitated the making and unmaking of the short-lived, independent TDFR.","PeriodicalId":37506,"journal":{"name":"Caucasus Survey","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2020-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/23761199.2020.1712902","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41990944","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Ideology meets practice in the struggle for the Transcaucasus: Stepan Shaumyan and the evolution of Bolshevik nationality policy","authors":"Timothy K. Blauvelt","doi":"10.1080/23761199.2020.1712907","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23761199.2020.1712907","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The Tiflis-born Stepan Shaumyan (1878–1918) was one of the most active revolutionaries in the Transcaucasus and a prolific theorist about the “national question” who corresponded regularly with Lenin and other leading Bolsheviks. In a crucial moment in the spring of 1918, as the Russian Empire was disintegrating and the Russian Civil War was breaking out, Shaumyan, appointed by Lenin as Commissar Extraordinary for the Caucasus, attempted to create a compelling internationalist and “Soviet” appeal to challenging the emerging nationalist paradigm in the Transcaucasus. Shaumyan’s efforts to consolidate Bolshevik rule in the “Baku Commune” in 1918 contributed to a bloody ethnic massacre, and his attempts to spread Soviet Power in the region failed, resulting in his execution together with the other “26 Baku Commissars” in September of that year. Making extensive use of Shaumyan’s writings, including his early work held in manuscript form in the Georgian Party Archives in Tbilisi, this article examines Shaumyan’s conceptions of the “nationality question” and their implementation in the Transcaucasus under his leadership in 1918, and the lessons that the Bolsheviks may have drawn from failure of his program for the later formulation of Soviet nationality policy.","PeriodicalId":37506,"journal":{"name":"Caucasus Survey","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2020-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/23761199.2020.1712907","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42723655","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Pragmatism and expediency: Ottoman calculations and the establishment of the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic","authors":"Stefano Taglia","doi":"10.1080/23761199.2020.1712903","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23761199.2020.1712903","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article interrogates Ottoman sources from the period leading up to and following the creation, in 1918, of the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic (TDFR) to shed light on the reasons behind Istanbul’s initial backing for this Caucasian state. Despite the suggestion that Ottoman Unionist policies were informed by pan-Turkist ideals, it emerges that Istanbul considered, first and foremost, the geopolitical interests of the Empire. Whether this entailed using foreign Muslims to control a strategic area or favouring the creation of a political entity that was not considered fully feasible, Ottoman self-interest was paramount. Controlling the Caucasus, limiting German, British and Russian influence, and re-gaining lost territory were the only considerations that guided Ottoman policies. This explains Ottoman ambivalence in supporting the emergence of the TDFR, as well as Ottoman willingness to pursue further territorial claims which undermined the very existence of the TDFR itself. The conclusions reached in this article have significance for the larger understanding of Ottoman policy in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, as too often pan-Turkism and pan-Islamism are used to explain the policies of Istanbul, while the Ottoman political elite was more usually guided by pragmatic considerations.","PeriodicalId":37506,"journal":{"name":"Caucasus Survey","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2020-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/23761199.2020.1712903","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46509790","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Ukraine and the Transcaucasus in 1917–1918: parallels, interactions, influences","authors":"Timothy K. Blauvelt, Stanislav Tumis","doi":"10.1080/23761199.2020.1712910","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23761199.2020.1712910","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT While the state of communications technology, the vicpen issitudes of war and revolution, and vast distances created obstacles to communication and interaction on the territory of the former Russian Empire during 1917–1918, very often during these revolutionary years, events in one region of the periphery were profoundly shaped by similar things taking place in others. Through a cross-regional and comparative analysis, this article considers the parallels between the situations in the Ukrainian and Transcaucasian theatres, and also the interactions that took place between the independent Ukrainian governments and the Transcaucasian Seim and Federation during this period, and also the ways in which the similar experiences and challenges facing the actors in these spaces, particularly among the ultimately victorious Bolsheviks, influenced their longer-term perspectives towards issues of nationalism, national sentiments, autonomy and federation in the minority regions of the periphery.","PeriodicalId":37506,"journal":{"name":"Caucasus Survey","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2020-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/23761199.2020.1712910","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47655481","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The German perspective on the Transcaucasian Federation and the influence of the Committee for Georgia’s Independence","authors":"L. Bakradze","doi":"10.1080/23761199.2020.1714877","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23761199.2020.1714877","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT At the onset of the First World War in August 1914, a group of Georgian émigrés in Europe and the Ottoman Empire offered their cooperation to the German side. Intent on weakening the Entente through supporting uprisings among those states’ colonized nations, the German government was interested in such cooperation. In September 1914 the “Committee for Georgia’s Independence” was formed, which up until 1918 maintained close relations with various state agencies of Germany and its allies, as well as with the anti-Russian forces of the Caucasus and the Russian Empire. The Committee for Georgia’s Independence aspired to present itself as a firm pillar for Germany among what the Germans referred to officially as the “revolutionizing” of the Caucasus. What vision of the future for Georgia and the Caucasus did this Georgian Committee harbour? To what extent did these visions influence German policies? And did the Committee play any role in the events that unfolded in the Caucasus in 1917–1918?","PeriodicalId":37506,"journal":{"name":"Caucasus Survey","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2020-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/23761199.2020.1714877","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60112662","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Turning towards unity: a North Caucasian perspective on the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic","authors":"Sarah Slye","doi":"10.1080/23761199.2020.1714882","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23761199.2020.1714882","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article traces the efforts of the Union of Allied Mountaineers (UAM) to uphold the indigenous North Caucasians’ right to self-determination from March 1917, when the organization hoped for Russia’s restructuring as a federal republic wherein the Mountaineers (gortsy) would enjoy full political autonomy on their own territory (national-territorial autonomy), to May 1918, when the Mountaineer leaders attempted to join the Transcaucasian Federation. After the Bolshevik coup d'état in October 1917, the Mountain leaders declared the autonomy of the Provisional Mountain Government on 2 December 1917 and later the independence of the Mountain Republic on 11 May 1918 – in order to join the newly independent Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic (TDFR). Since the UAM had been resistant to the idea of administrative unity with Transcaucasia for most of 1917, this article clarifies the logic behind the Mountain leadership’s reorientation away from Russia and towards Transcaucasia in early 1918. And considering the Mountain Republic declared independence at the very moment when the anti-separatist Terek People’s Republic insisted that it represented the political will of both the settler and native populations of the North Caucasus, this article also evaluates these two rival republics’ claims to popular legitimacy among the autochthonous Mountaineers.","PeriodicalId":37506,"journal":{"name":"Caucasus Survey","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2020-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/23761199.2020.1714882","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41717601","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"In memoriam. Amri Rzaevich Shikhsaidov (20 March 1928–21 September 2019)","authors":"M. Kemper, A. Alikberov, V. Bobrovnikov, M. Gadzhiev, S. Shikhaliev","doi":"10.1080/23761199.2019.1687181","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23761199.2019.1687181","url":null,"abstract":"With great sadness we feel the loss of Professor Amri R. Shikhsaidov, the patron of Arabic studies in Russia’s North Caucasus. A native from the Lezgi areas around Derbent in southern Dagestan, in 1946 Shikhsaidov went to Leningrad State University to pursue Oriental Studies; there he belonged to the last student generation that had classes from the USSR’s foremost Arabist of the time, Ignatii Krachkovskii (1883–1951). While at Leningrad University, the young Shikhsaidov met his future wife, Reia Sergeevna (née Davydova, b. 1928), who had just experienced the horrors of the German blockade; Reia Sergeevna would be Shikhsaidov’s companion for the rest of his life. After graduation Shikhsaidov briefly worked as a school teacher in Makhachkala, Dagestan’s capital, but then made a career at what is today the Institute of History, Archeology and Ethnography in the Dagestani Federal Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, in the same city. In 1963 he defended his doctoral dissertation on the study of regional Islamization narratives (Islam in Medieval Dagestan, printed as a monograph in 1969), followed in 1976 by his habilitation thesis, Dagestan in the 10th to 14th Centuries: An Attempt at a Social and Economic Evaluation (published in book form already one year earlier). From 1973 to 1998 Shikhsaidov directed the Institute’s Department of Oriental Studies, known for its growing manuscript collection. He also taught throughout his career at Dagestan State University and other institutes of higher education. While the study of Islam and Muslim culture in the North Caucasus was a sensitive issue in Soviet times, Shikhsaidov managed to sideline some official taboos by focusing on medieval historiography in the Arabic language. Before him Krachkovskii had already emphasized Arabic’s role as a written lingua franca for the many small nations of Dagestan. Yet Arabic also linked the North Caucasus to the wider Muslim world. Shikhsaidov developed this research agenda considerably further by organizing yearly expeditions to Dagestani villages for the study of Arabic manuscripts in private collections that had survived Stalin’s terror and Soviet modernization. He discovered (and published in Russian translation) numerous historical narratives from the medieval period, including the famous Dagestani chronicle of Islamization (Ta’rikh Daghistan). Starting in the 1980s he also edited and translated Arabic manuscripts produced during the long nineteenth-century Caucasian War when Dagestan entered tsarist Russia (in particular the memoirs of Imam Shamil’s son-in-law, ‘Abdarrahman al-Ghazighumuqi, 1994), and even Arabic works from the early Soviet","PeriodicalId":37506,"journal":{"name":"Caucasus Survey","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2019-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/23761199.2019.1687181","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42441989","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Navigating between international recognition paradigms: prospects and challenges for Nagorno Karabakh","authors":"Vahram Ter‐Matevosyan, Edita Ghazaryan","doi":"10.1080/23761199.2019.1666231","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23761199.2019.1666231","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The Nagorno Karabakh conflict remains a perplexing challenge for the regional security of the South Caucasus. In spite of decades of negotiations under the auspices of the OSCE Minsk Group, the final resolution of the conflict remains a distant goal. Against this background, since 2012 several US and Australian states as well as the Basque Parliament started to support the right of the people Nagorno Karabakh to self-determination. The resolutions passed by these states were not only unprecedented but were also inconsistent with the foreign policies of their federal governments. The present paper examines the underlying reasons for nine US states (California, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Michigan, Georgia, Hawaii, Maine, Louisiana, and Colorado), and the most populous state of Australia, New South Wales, to have recognized the right of the people of Nagorno Karabakh to self-determination. The paper also looks at the legal and political implications deriving from these resolutions as well as possible prospects for this pattern of recognitions. The paper argues that recognition of de facto states by federal sub-states is a new, albeit isolated, phenomenon. It may potentially enhance visibility of de facto states and help them to gain more support for their pursuit of international recognition.","PeriodicalId":37506,"journal":{"name":"Caucasus Survey","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2019-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/23761199.2019.1666231","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49526359","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"A. M. Topchibashi: the Paris archive (1919–1940)","authors":"S. Alieva","doi":"10.1080/23761199.2019.1674497","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23761199.2019.1674497","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":37506,"journal":{"name":"Caucasus Survey","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2019-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/23761199.2019.1674497","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44484551","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Understanding the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict: domestic politics and twenty-five years of fruitless negotiations 1994–2018","authors":"A. Gasparyan","doi":"10.1080/23761199.2019.1674114","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/23761199.2019.1674114","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict negotiations have been continuing for more than two decades now, but a settlement still remains elusive. This paper is an exploration of the reasons for that failure, and it argues that the real obstacle for the peaceful settlement in Nagorno-Karabakh was the domestic politics of the parties to the conflict. By clarifying and testing alternative perspectives, this paper seeks to resolve an important debate about the causes of the OSCE Minsk process failure.","PeriodicalId":37506,"journal":{"name":"Caucasus Survey","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2019-09-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/23761199.2019.1674114","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43323803","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}