The imperialist explanation for the struggle between Azerbaijan and Armenia lies exclusively in the region of religious enmity. We are told it has been going on for hundreds of years, that the current struggle is merely an extension in the contemporary world context of old animosities.
That is not the way Marxists have always understood the problem. Religious struggles are merely a reflection of economic struggles, of the struggle of classes and of nations that represent ruling classes.
The key to understanding the historical evolution of the southern republics in the Soviet Union is the economic development of the area as it emerged after the victorious socialist revolution.
If the economic causes of the conflict are overlooked, one can be led into the hopeless dead end of supporting Gorbachev's military intervention in Azerbaijan and the havoc it has caused there. This is bound to lead to a downward spiral of economic chaos and dislocation which only the intervention of an independent, revolutionary mass movement in the USSR can halt.
Let us begin not with the so-called ancient animosities but by looking at the Caucasus as a whole — the republics of Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia and a number of smaller autonomous republics and regions. The most important difference between central Russia and the Caucasus is that the latter is a less developed area.
The revolution did much to lift it up by the bootstraps, as is admitted by even the most violent anti-Soviet elements. But when political reaction set in, economic development by comparison with other parts of the USSR slowed down somewhat. Some industries, like oil and other raw materials, thrived. But the goal of equality between the less developed and the more developed parts of the Soviet Union continued to prove elusive.
Political solutions were needed to elevate the area to a higher level of development. This in turn depended on the general policies of the government as a whole. Once revolutionary enthusiasm gives way to reaction, the less-developed areas are at greater risk when sacrifices have to be made as well as when benefits are allocated on a nationwide basis.
The central government plays a key role, especially when it sets in motion an economic plan. What will each republic get? How are the resources to be allocated? Much depends on the political makeup of the leadership. Are they really guided by proletarian internationalism, by fraternal solidarity?
There were thousands of selfless and dedicated Bolsheviks in the early period of the revolution who were keenly aware that czarist Russia had been the oppressor of nations for many, many centuries. They came from the great metropolitan cities of Russia and the Ukraine to try and erase the scars of oppression by helping to elevate the social, political and cultural level of the formerly oppressed nations.
Russia was characterized by Lenin as the prison house of nations; with the revolution, it became almost overnight the liberator of these very nations. It fired the imagination of oppressed peoples everywhere. Moscow became the center of anti-imperialist and anti-colonial agitation. The slogan "Workers of the world unite!" that Marx had made central to the overthrow of capitalism was significantly modified by Lenin to "Workers of the world and oppressed nations unite!"
Considering the area's underdevelopment, the great destruction of lives and property during the Second World War, and the purges of the thirties, one may sometimes wonder how the southern republics survived. How is it that during the entire Stalin era, the administrations that followed, and up to and including the first months of the Gorbachev administration, there were no rebellions, no so-called rioting where troops had to be called in to subdue the population?
Censorship alone cannot account for it. If a struggle of any magnitude had happened, it could not possibly have escaped the notice of the imperialist intelligence services. Whatever the conditions may have been in the republics, whatever hardships and, let us concede, whatever repression, none of the anti-Soviet books written about this area claim that the religious differences in Armenia and Azerbaijan led to armed strife, or that the Soviet government brutally moved in to suppress one or the other in its capacity as so-called arbiter. Nor did they make such a prediction.
Yet all this has come to pass.
Nikita Khrushchev furnished an interesting and revealing description of the situation in Georgia at the time when Stalin was alive. (Khrushchev Remembers, Little, Brown & Co., Boston, pp. 305-306.) Bear in mind that Khrushchev was a Ukrainian and Stalin a Georgian. In some economic aspects, which is what we are concerned with, what goes for Georgia also applies to Azerbaijan and Armenia.
"When young men finished their education," said Khrushchev, "they were unable to find suitable jobs in Georgia, and they didn't want to leave. They would just loaf around or start profiteering. Everyone who had anything to do with Georgia knew all about this, but it was all news to Stalin — bad news. He told me later, `Do you know what's going on in Georgia? The young men are either loafing or profiteering! It's disgusting!' "
Khrushchev claims that Beria, the "boss of Georgia," had "effectively sealed off Stalin from news about the real situation in Georgia. ... There's no question that there really were many defects and deficiencies which had to be combated in Georgia, but by no means do I ascribe them to national faults in the Georgians themselves. No, the problems were the result of conditions of life in Georgia. Georgia is the Soviet Union's corner of paradise. It has a warm climate, ideal for citrus crops and vineyards. There are also many human charms. Naturally it's hard for a Georgian of limited background to leave, and there are many temptations for profiteers. The vices so infectious among the unstable elements of Georgia would be present in any nationality group living in the same conditions. I even hear my guards complaining: 'Georgians are all over the place, profiteering everywhere you go.' I always tell them that if Russians lived in Georgia, they would do exactly the same."
Of course, Khrushchev has his own biases, and it should be remembered that Ukrainians were considered second only to ethnic Russians in their level of cultural development. However, Khrushchev brings out that the young people, even when well educated, lacked the opportunity to go to the big centers like Moscow and Leningrad where opportunities for advancement were considered more desirable. This is a characteristic of some Third World countries as well. In Sri Lanka, for example, many students have a university education but find no outlet for jobs.
The same could be said about Azerbaijan and Armenia. And while the Bolsheviks encouraged self-determination, including instruction in one's own language, Russian is the universal language, so students from other republics would need to be thoroughly bilingual to be able to advance and go to the metropolitan centers. What is needed is what in the U.S. would be called an affirmative action program, so that the younger generation would either be able to utilize their education at home or get equal opportunity in the great metropolitan centers of Russia.
What Khrushchev claims Stalin said about loafing and his own defense of the Georgians are equally denigrating. "Any nation would do the same" is the kind of phrase that is really a dig. After all, he's saying it about the Georgians after Stalin and Beria are both dead.
But even more relevant is what Khrushchev says next about the broader economic problem.
"Naturally, there's always a temptation to try to make a little extra money. That's the basic reason for profiteering. It isn't a matter of nationality but a fact of life. If Georgians are speculating in vegetables, then the State should start growing those vegetables in hotbeds and hothouses so that it will no longer be profitable for speculators to transport these products from Georgia and resell them in Moscow. They will be cheaper if they're produced by state enterprises."
That's the problem — to what extent there should be a free market in consumer goods. Even the liberalizer, Khrushchev, recommended that the way to eliminate it and thereby raise the productivity level was for the state to actively compete with the free market. If the state is allocated sufficient funds to create the proper industrial-technological infrastructure, including transporting the products to their destination, then the problem would gradually be solved. According to Khrushchev, this policy was rejected by Stalin in favor of "administrative measures ... arresting and exiling people."
All this is significant and relevant to the present situation. The Gorbachev administration, instead of pursuing such an economic policy, goes completely in the opposite direction. Instead of trying to eliminate the onerous effects of the free market, the Gorbachev administration is undermining the planned economy.
Liberalism under Khrushchev, whatever else it might have meant, was an attempt to rationalize the planning process and eliminate the bourgeois competition which still existed in the Soviet Union, without resorting to administrative measures. For that he was regarded by many in the West and among the bourgeois dissidents as a liberalizer. But Gorbachev has become the proponent of strengthening the bourgeois free markets and undermining the state-controlled sectors.
Gorbachev's reforms have given so-called greater independence and initiative to a scramble for profiteering. Instead of strengthening proletarian solidarity, the resort to bourgeois norms in the production and distribution process has reawakened old animosities.
Nowhere does such a policy have more onerous effects than in the less-developed parts of the Soviet Union, the formerly oppressed nations, areas vulnerable to ethnic struggles which the Soviet government for many years labored to avoid.
Take the Azerbaijani cities of Baku and Sumgait, where rebellions have occurred. They are centers of the petrochemical industry at a time of a worldwide glut in oil production. On which classes and nationalities has the burden fallen? What job classifications have been affected by the reforms? Which nationalities are in the managerial grouping?
The oil glut in the U.S. has left workers in a devastated position in Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas. Some have been forced to pull up stakes and leave the area. The cutback in oil production is worldwide and has affected the USSR.
Socialist planning in the early days took account of the vicissitudes of the capitalist market, especially in oil. Socialist planning should now enable the Gorbachev government to forestall the dire consequences of a cutback, especially in the satellite industries for oil in Sumgait and Baku. But the bourgeois reforms grant economic independence to many of the enterprises, leaving them to do their own thing. This is the kind of "favor" which capitalist governments, the U.S. in particular, long ago learned how to use to unload economic problems on the states, which then dump them on the communities.
Isn't this one of the considerations which should have entered into the calculations of the Gorbachev administration, particularly since it would have to affect the nationalities, especially in the south?
It is publicly admitted that there is not just economic dislocation but chaos and confusion all over the country. Certainly at the periphery the contradictions are more severe, especially with such a mosaic of nationalities as in the Caucasus.
All of this should have been anticipated from the very first day of the rebellion in Kazakhstan back in 1986. That bloody event was a direct result of the replacement of Party leader Dinmukhamed Kunayev by an ethnic Russian, G.V. Kolbin. The leadership in all these areas has been changed over and over again. The Gorbachev administration should have known that there was a developing rebellion, not merely resentment, in the underdeveloped areas of the Soviet Union.
But of all the developments, the one that should have rung alarm bells was the Armenian demand in February 1988 for the annexation of Nagorno-Karabakh. Such a move would have been unthinkable two decades ago. It was a clear signal that the Party leadership had lost control in Armenia, had in effect been swept away by a bourgeois nationalist wave. The Gorbachev grouping could no longer find Armenian CP leaders with any real authority.
It was altogether inevitable that the Azerbaijanis would view this as a very grave and serious challenge, because of the clear violation of the Soviet Constitution, which prohibits changes of boundaries without the mutual consent of both republics and the central government.
The situation cried out for a thorough reappraisal of the reforms. Just another abstract discussion of the national question, reiterating fundamental law with respect to the rights of the republics, none of this was adequate and had been said many times before. Facing the Gorbachev leadership was the urgent need for a reevaluation of the effect of these bourgeois, anti-socialist, divisive reforms on the nationalities in the Soviet Union. Who got what? Who was left out? Who was getting richer and who poorer?
The issue was taken from one small grouping of top leaders to another. Both sides were heard and Gorbachev gave one of his usual pat speeches in which he scolded both sides but never uttered so much as a word on what ought to be done.
During all this time, the Gorbachev administration failed to take advantage of the unique and highly progressive bicameral aspect of the Soviet government. Had the problem been taken up by the Soviet of Nationalities, the other arm of the Soviet parliament, there might have been an opportunity to arrive at a resolution, even though it was so late in the day. But even going through the formality of consulting the Soviet of Nationalities was neglected by the Gorbachev leadership.
The last chance for a political resolution was the 19th Party Conference in June-July 1988, where the question was scheduled to be discussed. It can now easily be seen in retrospect that Gorbachev staged this conference as an extravaganza to advertise his restructuring proposals, and in particular his democratization, to the world. He was highly successful in winning applause from the imperialist press and media. About that there can be no question. They loved it, as did all the bourgeois elements at the conference.
But what happened to the Azerbaijani and Armenian delegations? In truth, if one reads the record, they were shunted aside, as though they were orphans. Here and there the delegates agreed it was a serious question, but nevertheless it was shuttled back to the Presidium. The end result is the use of an armed occupation force to subdue a fraternal socialist republic.
Of course, Gorbachev has the "understanding" of the imperialist bourgeoisie. But not their sympathy. What they're hoping for is the dissolution of the Soviet Union altogether.
Last updated: 19 February 2018