Soviet nationalities policy in Azerbaijan and Armenia SSR

What is it about?

The essay examines the effects of Soviet nationalities policy on Armenians living in Baku, the capital of the Azerbaijani SSR, and on ethnic Azerbaijanis in Kyzyl-Shafag, an Azerbaijani village in the Armenian SSR. A series of interviews were conducted with members of these two communities to explore some of the results of Soviet nationalities policy. Although the residents of Baku emphasized the multinational character of the city, they nevertheless conceded that ethnicity played an important role in their lives, even at the level of everyday practices. The same also applies for the Azerbaijanis in the far less cosmopolitan Armenian countryside, where ethnic boundaries remained largely impenetrable. Soviet language, with its essentialist categories that separated people into internally homogeneous groups, could not have been more appropriate for this purpose.

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