You Shall Not Forget Who Protected You! Russia’s Politics Of Deference Towards Armenia In The Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict [before doctoral defense]

Kivonat, rövid leírás

Nagorno-Karabakh is a mountainous enclave that, while located within Azerbaijan’s internationally recognized borders, was governed by its ethnic Armenian majority with support from Armenia from 1994 to September 2023. That month, the Azerbaijani army launched a swift and decisive offensive that swept away their decades-long pursuit of independence in just 24 hours, triggering their mass exodus to neighboring Armenia and bringing to an end what had long been regarded as the longest-running conflict in post-Soviet Eurasia. On September 28, Samvel Shahramanyan, the elected president of the self-proclaimed Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh/Artsakh, signed a decree dissolving the entity, effective January 1, 2024. In the wake of these events, observers have turned their attention to an actor involved in the dynamics of this dispute since the 18th century and, in certain respects, played a decisive role in its resolution: the Russian Federation. In particular, many have wondered why Russian peacekeepers, tasked with protecting the local Armenian population under the terms of the ceasefire agreement that ended the war between Yerevan and Baku in 2020, failed to prevent Azerbaijan's military operation in Nagorno-Karabakh. This dynamic reflects a broader tendency in the existing literature to interpret Moscow’s involvement in the Armenian-Azerbaijani dispute primarily through the lens of its strategic interests and physical security practices. By comparison, comparatively little attention has been devoted to examining how the Kremlin constructed and sustained the meaning of its (dis)engagement in the conflict. Such a neglect is particularly puzzling given the substantial body of literature on Russian foreign policy discourse, which has examined how the Kremlin articulates and communicates its self-identity in international politics and in relation to neighboring states (Laruelle 2009; Clunan 2014; Tsygankov 2014; Morozov 2015; Hansen 2016; Reshetnikov 2017; Curanović 2021; Kanet & Moulioukova 2022; Götz & Ekman 2024). Two interrelated reasons suggest that this body of literature should begin to explore Russia's involvement in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The first concerns the Caucasus and its centrality in Russian imperial history and collective memory (Gammer & Kaplan 2014; Oskanian 2014; De Waal 2019). Russian rulers took two centuries to establish control over this region. Russia’s expansion into the Caucasus began in the late sixteenth century and largely secured control over its southern territories by the early nineteenth century. Furthermore, consolidating authority over the entire region required more than thirty years of continuous military campaigns against the North Caucasian mountaineers (Henze 1996, 389). Meanwhile, writers, poets, ethnographers, military figures, and chroniclers helped establish the Caucasus's prominence in Russian popular consciousness (Gammer & Kaplan 2014). They contributed to the image of Russia as a civilization bridging Europe and Asia and to a sense of exceptionalism that has persisted through the Tsarist, Soviet, and post-Soviet periods (Layton 1995; Gammer & Kaplan 2014; Morozov 2015; Oskanian 2017; Curanović 2021). The second factor concerns Russia’s historical relationship with Armenia. A significant yet often overlooked dynamic revealed by the events of September 2023 was the erosion of the long-held belief that the Kremlin would protect Armenians (Hess 2022; Atasuntsev 2023; Zolyan 2023; Shahverdyan 2024). While scholars have long recognized that Armenia’s economic, energy, and security vulnerabilities have shaped its generally favorable orientation toward Russia since the Soviet Union’s collapse (De Waal 2013; Minasyan 2013; De Waal 2019; Iskandaryan 2019; Broers 2023; Çakmak & Özşahin 2023), its relationship with Moscow is also firmly grounded in identity and historical memory, most notably in the enduring image of Russia as a protector.