In September 2023, tragic events took place that became just another chapter in the decades-long Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. At the centre of the conflict is Nagorno-Karabakh, the (until then) Armenian-populated enclave within Azerbaijan, which Armenians mention to as Artsakh. The conflict started in 1988, erstwhile both Armenia and Azerbaijan were part of the russian Union and Armenians in the region demanded unification with the Armenian republic. Inter-communal force followed. As the USSR collapsed, the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh declared independency in 1991, with sporadic force turning into full-scale war.
With the support of Armenia, the de facto Nagorno-Karabakh Republic won the First Karabakh War. However, in 2020 the Azerbaijani government launched a military operation that ended in a humiliating defeat for the Armenians. Russian peacekeepers were subsequently stationed in the region. A fewer years later, erstwhile the Azerbaijani government launched a fresh operation against the Armenians of the region in September 2023, the Russian peacekeepers were unwilling, or unable, to halt it. The full Armenian population of the region, which at that time numbered around 100,000 people, was forcefully displaced.
Protectors no more
The present-day forced displacement of Armenians reactivated a deep-seated trauma within Armenia’s historical memory. About 100 years ago, in the aftermath of the 1915 Armenian genocide in Ottoman Turkey, Armenians had to flee the territory of what is present east Turkey. Following the withdrawal of Russian imperial forces from the area, Armenians were left at the mercy of advancing Ottoman troops. Although they took place over a century ago, these events inactive have immense importance for Armenians. This is due to the geopolitical continuity between the Russian Empire, the USSR and post-Soviet Russia on the 1 hand, and a akin geopolitical continuity between the Ottoman Empire and president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey on the another (Ankara being Azerbaijan’s main ally in the current conflict). However, what seemed remarkable about the events of 2023 was not only the velocity of the demolition of an full community, but besides the complete inaction of the Russian peacekeeping forces stationed in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Armenian perceptions of Russia have been changing since the Armenia-Azerbaijan war of 2020. These changes have affected not only Armenia’s abroad policy choices but besides the place and importance of Russia within the collective memory of Armenians. In the “44-day War” of 2020, Russia failed to support its conventional ally Armenia erstwhile a war broke out with Azerbaijan, which was supported in turn by Turkey. This deficiency of direct support, which in Armenia was perceived as Russia’s tacit approval of Azerbaijani actions, repeated itself across respective more armed clashes after 2020 in Nagorno-Karabakh itself and on the Armenia-Azerbaijani border. This all formed a pattern that culminated in the events of September 2023. The complicity of Russian troops came as a shock to many Armenian inhabitants of the region, who, like many generations before them, had been told that Russia was there to save them from attacks by their neighbours.
The image of Russians as “protectors” and “saviours” has been profoundly embedded in Armenian political mythology throughout the past 2 centuries. This served in turn as a justification for the domination of the Russian Empire, then Armenia’s “Sovietization”, and, finally, Armenia’s neo-colonial dependence on the Russian Federation. This mythology has been mostly based on events connected to the regulation of the Ottoman Empire, where Russia frequently positioned itself as the defender of the region’s Christian population, peculiarly Armenians.
This communicative was constructed through authoritative discourse but frequently contradicted by actual historical developments, leading to severe disappointment and anger among Armenians erstwhile Russia either ignored their calls for aid or sided with Armenia’s enemies. Over time, Armenian intellectuals, dissidents and politicians of different generations have challenged this acquiescent attitude towards Russia, deconstructing its imperialist origins and showing the harm that it had done and continued to inflict on Armenians. Yet, in the last 200 years, each time Russia temporarily withdrew its support, it nevertheless someway managed to reconstruct its political influence over Armenia, renewing the very mythology that constructed the image of Russia as the country’s protector. Will the tragic events of 2020-23 turn the tide and become the final nail in the coffin of Russia’s mythological image as the “protector of Armenians”?
Conflict, narratives and empire
The conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh is closely connected to the heritage of the Russian Empire and russian Union, as well as the policies of Russia after the collapse of the USSR. From the point of view of the peoples of the South Caucasus, the russian Union can be seen as the continuation of the Russian Empire in a fresh form, and Russia’s policies can be seen as neo-colonial in nature. While empires commonly prosecute a “divide and rule” policy in their territorial conquests, the applicable reality of colonial regulation is frequently more complicated. Conflicts and differences are indeed exploited by imperial powers to impose and perpetuate their regulation over their subjects. However, any of these conflicts and differences predate the imperial imposition and are not necessarily created artificially by the empire itself. This convoluted relation between colonial order and social fracture is best described by the words of Maulana Mohammed Ali, a Muslim Indian student and activist. Commenting on how Hindu-Muslim antagonism had been exploited by the British Empire, he stated: “there is simply a division of labour: we divide, you rule.”
Imperial policies frequently exploit differences and heighten conflicts that already exist. This is done in order to first conquer and then realize the domination of the periphery. Furthermore, empires exploit these conflicts to service their interests, while at the same time engaging in conflict management, or in certain cases, conflict resolution. Thus, empires not only exploit conflict, but can besides supply a certain kind of conflict resolution (“Russkiy Mir” or “Pax Sovietica” in our case). This function of conflict mediator is utilized by those actors who prosecute colonial or neo-colonial policies to accomplish the continuity of their post-imperial or colonial geopolitical influence, legitimizing political meddling and diplomatic authority.
This kind of conflict exploitation, management and resolution structured the complicated relation between the Russian Empire and the Armenian-Azerbaijani situation and, on a larger scale, between Armenians and their various Muslim neighbours. By the late 17th century, the Armenian lands were divided between 2 major Muslim empires, the Ottoman and Persian, which were administered locally through feudal lords of Persian or Turkic origin.
Among the uncommon exceptions were the Armenian meliks (i.e. semi-independent princes of the Karabakh region). religion was not just a social marker of identity but besides a political category that determined the place of indigenous populations in the imperial hierarchy. As a result, this made Christian Armenians inferior in relation to their Muslim rulers and neighbours. This situation created resentment among Armenians, which was articulated predominantly by the educated representatives of Armenian communities in Armenia and across the Armenian diaspora. Time and again, Armenians rebelled against their Ottoman rulers, while missions were besides sent to European countries, which asked for aid in liberating the Christian Armenians from their Muslim overlords.
The Russian Empire as the “saviour” of Armenians
This inter-ethnic and inter-religious tension opened the door to European imperial powers. In the Caucasus the most active was the Russian Empire, which positioned itself not just as the disseminator of modern civilization in the East but besides as the defender of east Christianity. The precarious position of Armenians, Georgians and another Christian communities vis-à-vis their Muslim rulers and neighbours became political tools that were utilized by the European powers to justify their meddling in the affairs of the Caucasus and eventual territorial conquest. These concerns were put forward by Russia in its confrontation with the Persian and Ottoman Empires, peculiarly the 2 Russian-Persian and the Russo-Turkish wars that took place in the 19th century. After absorption into the empire, Russian regulation supposedly solved existing contradictions between various spiritual and cultural groups, a claim that became the framework for the imperial cultural communicative and the ideological basis for continuing Russian domination. The cultural-political aspects of imperial conquest thus invitation various analogies from another imperial/colonial contexts characterized by divided cultural and spiritual groups. While it would be naïve to see these differences and conflicts as artificially created, they were nevertheless utilized by the empire to advance its goals.
After the Russian Empire was replaced by the russian Union, the erstwhile tsarist communicative of protecting Christians gradually transformed into the russian communicative of the “voluntary accession” of Armenia into Russia. In this narrative, not only was the inclusion of Armenia into the Russian Empire viewed as a affirmative event, but Russia besides took on the function of the defender of the Armenians who remained oppressed within the Ottoman Empire, an oppression that culminated in the Armenian genocide of 1915. As is usually the case with specified cultural narratives, the Russian saviour function was loosely based on any historical events, while being contradicted by many others.
This communicative was, however, a useful 1 during russian times, both for the russian centre and the local Armenian elites. It crucially underscored the peculiar compromise between Armenian nationalism and russian hegemony, which was formed by the late russian period. Armenians were allowed expressions of national identity, and even of a nationalist agenda, as long as it was not aimed against Russia/USSR. This communicative faced severe criticism by the end of russian rule, erstwhile this compromise began to unravel due to perestroika and the Karabakh conflict.
The emergence of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict
The short interregnum of 1918-1920, between the break-up of the tsarist empire and its re-emergence in the form of the russian Union, was marked by the formation of independent republics in Georgia, Armenia and elsewhere in the South Caucasus. These fresh republics, though short-lived, ensured that erstwhile Russia returned to the region, it had to accommodate the fresh political and social realities on the ground. This is how Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan became russian republics, as political units with many attributes of statehood, alternatively than simple provinces of Russia.
Today, all 3 countries, though in different forms, consider these short-lived independent republics, alternatively than the subsequent quasi-autonomous russian republics, to be the origins of their modern nationhood. At the same time, in the case of Armenia and Azerbaijan, the conflict that started in 1918-1920 was frozen, alternatively than resolved by the advent of russian power. As a result, after a forced pause of over six decades, this conflict reignited as the USSR became weaker in the late 1980s.
The russian annexation of the South Caucasus in 1920-21 had a two-fold effect for the existing Armenian-Azerbaijani rivalry. On the 1 hand, there was a certain resolution to the conflict, at least for the time being. Nagorno-Karabakh was awarded to Azerbaijan but an autonomous unit was created there to satisfy any of Armenia’s demands. Yet, the way it was resolved effectively institutionalized the conflict and, in effect, froze and perpetuated it.
In the post-war decades, as both Armenia and Azerbaijan were engaging in covert nation-building processes, the contradictions between the interests of the Armenian population of the region and those of the Azerbaijani leadership in Baku appeared again. The Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh complained about cultural discrimination and encroachment on their cultural and linguistic rights. They claimed that the Azerbaijani leadership was pursuing a policy that aimed to transform the demographic balance in the region, and pointed to the example of another autonomous region in Azerbaijan, Nakhchivan, where Armenians had constituted almost half of the population in the 1920s but only 1 to 2 per cent by the end of the russian period.
In the eyes of Karabakh Armenians, the most apparent solution to their grievances was not the pursuit of civilian rights, only possible in a democratic system, but alternatively the transfer of the region from russian Azerbaijan to russian Armenia. Representatives of the Armenian population of the region, including prominent communists and intellectuals, repeatedly sent requests to Moscow for the transfer of the region during the russian period. These requests were usually supported by Armenian Communist organization bosses in Yerevan and opposed by the leadership of the Azerbaijani Communist organization in Baku. These requests were denied and the general public knew small about them.
Movement for independency
The last time specified a request was sent to Moscow, however, things got out of control. This happened in the age of perestroika launched by Mikhail Gorbachev. An crucial part of these policies was glasnost, the practice of making issues open and public. Thus, erstwhile the request was one more time denied, Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh made it public. In February 1988, thousands of Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians demonstrated in support of the request in Stepanakert, the capital of the autonomous region. These local protests prompted rallies in Yerevan and Baku both in support of, and against, the request. specified large-scale rallies were unprecedented for the russian Union, indicating how the regional equilibrium, achieved through imperial-style rule, was now compromised.
At the beginning of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Armenian society as a full was overwhelmingly under the influence of the conventional communicative that pictured Russia (in this case the russian Union) as the protector and saviour of the Armenian people. However, as the Armenian national movement was becoming stronger, this communicative was increasingly questioned by Armenian intellectuals. Among the most influential voices was Rafael Ishkhanyan, who deconstructed this idealizing communicative to point out that it besides implied that Armenians are doomed to extermination by Turkey without Russia’s protection. He argued that Armenians needed alternatively to take their destiny into their own hands and become political subjects, dealing with their neighbours on the basis of their own national interests.
These ideas were shared by many in the leadership of the Armenian National Movement, the main opposition party. As a consequence of the first democratic elections in 1990, the organization came to power as the USSR collapsed. However, the ongoing Karabakh conflict shed light on the contradiction at the heart of the agenda, between the challenges in solving disputes with neighbouring states and the request to establish independency from Moscow. In the early stages of the conflict this contradiction was not so obvious, as Moscow was perceived as an ally of Azerbaijan. However, upon Armenia’s independence, part of the fresh political elite, led by the first president Levon Ter-Petrosyan, realized that in the longterm this contradiction needed to be resolved. Their solution was to find a compromise with their Azerbaijani neighbours while at the same time building a pragmatic relation with the erstwhile imperial metropole.
Balancing independency and security
Yet, a satisfactory compromise was hard to find. Azerbaijan and Turkey were not open to the overtures by the Armenian National Movement, while internally the proposal was unpopular among the public in Armenia. This was especially actual among the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh, who worried that Ter-Petrosyan was going to subordinate their interests in order to find a compromise with Azerbaijan.
The seemingly impossible resolution of the conflict turned the government towards Russia, one more time to fulfil the function of safety ally. The very people who had led Armenia to independency yet concluded an alliance with Russia out of necessity, which included outsourcing crucial elements of Armenia’s safety to Moscow. Of course, at the time of the decision, the majority of Armenians did not realize it as something that could compromise Armenia’s independency and sovereignty.
Meanwhile, the Armenian government did not abandon its efforts to find a compromise with Turkey and Azerbaijan. However, Ter-Petrosyan’s approach was not shared by many, even in his own team. interior contradictions yet emerged in February 1998 erstwhile Ter-Petrosyan was forced out of power by his own associates. Eventually, he was replaced by Robert Kocharyan, the erstwhile leader of the Karabakh Armenians. He rejected Ter-Petrosyan’s approach as “defeatist”, claiming that he could have gotten a better deal. In reality, the change in political leadership meant that uncovering a compromise with the country’s neighbours was going to be harder, since neither Baku nor Ankara seemed peculiarly curious in making concessions. On the contrary, Azerbaijan’s leadership was openly stating that its goal was to take back Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding territories at any cost, including military means, and was arming at a fast pace. Hence, Armenia’s dependence on Russia was set to grow during this time.
As the balance of power between Armenia and Azerbaijan tilted in favour of Baku, Armenia’s dependence on Russia increased. In the 2000s and especially 2010s, this diplomatic alliance increasingly came to look like a neo-colonial dependency. Armenia’s reliance on Russia in terms of safety gave Moscow crucial political leverage, which was utilized to grow Moscow’s influence in Armenia across various sectors including the economy, mass media and culture. Armenia had small choice but to join Russian-dominated safety and economical organizations. For example, it joined the CSTO (Collective safety Treaty Organization) in 2002 and then, in 2015, the Eurasian economical Union. All this was happening in spite of the Kremlin’s parallel strategical partnership with Azerbaijan, which included massive sales of Russian weapons to that country. Obviously, Russia’s military exports to Azerbaijan angered the Armenians but these concerns were dismissed by Russian officials. Successive Armenian governments were frequently incapable or unwilling to rise the issue with Moscow, at least publicly.
The Russian protection myth
As Armenia found itself one more time under Russia’s hegemony, the cultural communicative of Russia as protector was renewed erstwhile again. By the second half of the 2010s a consensus formed within Armenia’s political and intellectual elites about the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which considered the preservation of the position quo the most desirable result for Armenia. The consensus entrenched Russia’s function as Armenia’s main safety ally, with the alliance viewed as a viable warrant of safety for Armenia and Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh.
It is worth noting that this consensus was never openly articulated, but was besides seldom challenged by influential actors. Even the revolution of 2018, which brought down Serzh Sargsyan’s authoritarian regime, did not initially challenge this consensus. Even though the fresh Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and his civilian Contract party, while being in opposition, had been critical of Armenia’s relation with Russia, they changed course after coming to power. While the Armenian elite was unwilling to get free of the mythologized communicative of Russian protection, the course of events one more time shattered these illusions in ways that proved painful and dramatic. A large-scale war started in 2020 as Azerbaijan attacked the de facto Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh, which prompted Armenia to step in to defend it. In what became known as the “44-day War” Armenia suffered a humiliating defeat. Over the course of this conflict, Russia maintained a comparatively neutral position, while Turkey full and openly supported Azerbaijan. Eventually, erstwhile an Armenian defeat became obvious, Russia mediated a ceasefire agreement on November 9th 2020, which included the stationing of Russian peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh. These soldiers were besides to take control over the alleged Lachin corridor, the only road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia.
Once again, reality demonstrated that reliance on Russia as sole guarantor of safety was not adequate to solve Armenia’s issues. As Armenian society was slow recovering from the shock and trauma of defeat, voices calling for a reappraisal of Russia’s function in the conflict became hard to ignore. Russia’s position in the aftermath of the 2020 war increased public criticism, since in many ensuing episodes of force Russian peacekeepers effectively let down the Armenian side, failing to prevent or halt Azerbaijani attacks on Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh or on Armenia itself. However, there was small that Armenia could do about this, as it seemed that Russia’s influence and military were the only things that stood between the defeated and weakened Armenians and fresh Azerbaijani attacks.
The situation dramatically changed in 2022 erstwhile Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which besides led the West to pay importantly more attention in the region, including the South Caucasus. In fact, western mediation efforts in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict started before the invasion of Ukraine although, at the time, it was apparent that Russia was the most influential force. With Russia overstretched in Ukraine in 2022, western engagement in the Caucasus meant that Armenia was yet getting a chance to decision beyond its dependence on Russia. The watershed minute in the Armenia-Russia relation came in September 2022, a year before the latest clash in 2023, erstwhile Azerbaijan launched a large-scale attack on the borders of the Republic of Armenia. At the time neither Russia, nor the Russian-dominated CSTO, did anything to aid Yerevan. On the contrary, Armenia received diplomatic support from the West, as diplomatic force on Baku from the United States and the European Union helped cease Azerbaijani advances. Soon, an EU monitoring mission was placed on the Armenian side of the border with Azerbaijan. Since then, Armenia has begun a process of geopolitical re-orientation. This has included not only changes in abroad policy but besides a reappraisal of the Armenia-Russia relationship.
Nevertheless, this change of course in the state of Armenia was not reflected among the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh, where the majority continued to pin their hopes on Russian protection. Since November 2020, the presence of close to 2,000 Russian peacekeepers on the ground came to represent the only force preventing a military takeover of the region by Azerbaijan. While there were reservations about their conduct among Karabakh Armenians, the majority of the Karabakh Armenian political elite considered these troops as the only warrant that the Azerbaijanis would not attack. Hence, Yerevan’s drive to reduce its dependence on Russia was not shared by the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh, who hoped that the Russians would aid them keep their de facto independency from Azerbaijan.
The events of the following months dissipated the hopes that Karabakh Armenians placed on Russian peacekeepers. In December 2022, Russian peacekeepers did nothing to prevent an Azerbaijani blockade of the Lachin corridor. For respective months the Karabakh Armenians lived under a partial and then complete blockade, a dire situation which Russian peacekeepers simply observed. Finally, on September 19th 2023, Azerbaijan launched a military attack on the positions of the Karabakh Armenians, as the Russian peacekeepers one more time looked on. A day later, the de facto president Samvel Shahramanyan was forced to sign what was effectively a capitulation agreement. Within a fewer days, about 100,000 remaining Karabakh Armenians fled the region for Armenia. erstwhile again, Armenians who had pinned their hopes on Russian protection ended up being forced out of their homes.
What is next?
Will the cultural cleansing of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh in 2023, carried out with Russia’s tacit approval, be the final chapter in this sad saga? Will Armenia be able to break not only its economical and military dependence on Russia, but besides the cultural and ideological narratives that sustain this dependence? There are signs that the Armenian elites and society are, indeed, going through a process of deep reappraisal regarding the political reasoning that has brought Armenians to this catastrophe. Today, in the context of the large-scale invasion of Ukraine, there is hope that countries like Armenia will yet be able to break their dependence on Russia, which has lasted for centuries.
Today, Russian imperialism and colonialism have one more time become a subject of global discussion. In this context, societies that have historically been under Russian cultural hegemony are uncovering the language to talk about their experience, as well as the cultural tools to deconstruct the narratives that have served that hegemony. However, as Armenia’s experience of the last 200 years shows, Russian imperial domination has been amazingly resilient, as it has been able to re-invent itself in many ways. What is more concerning is the fact that each time it was the contradictions and conflicts between Moscow’s erstwhile imperial subjects that allowed imperialism to return in a fresh form. erstwhile again, “there is simply a division of labour, we divide, you rule.” possibly it is time for “us”, the people who have been subjected to imperial hegemony, to halt dividing ourselves, so that “they” can no longer regulation us.
This text was originally published in the framework of the Confronting Memories task of the civilian Society Forum.
Mikayel Zolyan is simply a social investigator and political analyst from Yerevan, Armenia. His areas of expertise include issues of politics of memory, nationalism, national identity, abroad policy and regional conflict, as well as social and political movements and democratization in a post-Soviet context. After the revolution in 2018, Zolyan entered parliament as a associate of the ruling bloc “My Step”. In 2021, he returned to academia and civilian society, doing investigation on the politics of memory and working as a consultant with Armenian and global NGOs. He is besides the host of a tv show on the Armenian educational channel Boon TV.
