Soviet Union §

Empire that froze disputes rather than solving them

The Soviet Union inherited the wars of 1918–20 and converted them into internal borders, autonomies and party decisions. Its settlement was not random. Soviet Armenia, Soviet Azerbaijan and Soviet Georgia were union republics, while Nagorno-Karabakh and Nakhichevan were placed in different forms of autonomy inside Azerbaijan. The 1921 Caucasian Bureau decision on Karabakh and the Treaty of Kars on Nakhichevan were foundational.

Soviet rule reduced open warfare but did not remove the underlying claims. It repressed nationalist mobilisation, managed migration, set education and language policy, and made census categories politically meaningful. Armenians in NKAO could point to demographic majority and cultural grievance; Azerbaijanis could point to republican borders and constitutional legality. Both claims survived because the Soviet system did not require final consent. It required silence. editorial

The Soviet collapse turned internal administrative claims into international disputes. The 1988 NKAO vote for transfer to Armenia, the pogroms in Sumgait, Kirovabad and Baku, and the abolition of NKAO by Azerbaijan in 1991 unfolded inside the disintegrating Soviet legal order. The Soviet Union thus functions in the atlas as both suppressor and incubator: it prevented full-scale war for decades while preserving the borders and institutions through which war later became possible. editorial