Arsene Saparov, lecturer in history, U-M

The Soviet leadership often stands accused of deliberately drawing internal frontiers in the Caucasus so as to create leverage against union republics. Violent conflicts that broke out in the 1990s in Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and South Ossetia seem to prove this assertion. In this talk, an attempt will be made to understand the logic of Bolshevik boundary-making in the South Caucasus. The speaker will investigate to what extent the Bolsheviks were concerned with controlling the peripheral borderlands through a divide-and-rule policy, and to what extent they were genuine in their claim to solve the conflicts.

Sponsors: ASP, CREES