The Soviet Union and the Construction of Azerbaijani National Identity in the 1930s

Bibliographic Data

ID9978086
AuthorsHarun Yılmaz (0000-0002-0956-9717, University of Oxford, corresponding author), Harun Yilmaz
Year2013
Volume46
Issue4
Pages511-533
Publication date2013-04-28
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueIranian Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-0862 • E-ISSN: 1475-4819
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1080/00210862.2013.784521
OpenAlexW2061757816
LanguageEN
Citations received13
References cited37

Although the titular nation of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic was Turkic speaking and had strong cultural and historical ties with Iran, the Soviet regime constructed a national identity that was divorced from its Turkic and Iranian past. The current literature cannot provide the exact period when this construction was put forward and generally argues that the Azerbaijani identity was artificially created as part of a broader “divide-and-rule” policy that was applied to all the Turkic nations in the Soviet Union. However, this thesis by itself does not explain why this change from a Turkic identity to an Azerbaijani one happened seventeen years after the Bolsheviks assumed power in Baku, and its simple causation makes it sound more like a conspiracy theory, which had a certain popularity in the Cold War era, than a scholarly argument. By presenting a broader view, the paper explains why and when the national identity in Soviet Azerbaijan was altered from Turkic to Azerbaijani. It argues that there were many factors that induced the Bolsheviks to take this extraordinary step in 1937. In fact, the change in defining national identity in Azerbaijan was a result of a combination of developments in the 1930s in Turkey, Iran, Germany, and the Soviet Union. The article concludes that these developments left Soviet rulers no choice but to construct an independent Azerbaijani identity

Argument (complex analysis · Causation · China · Development economics · Economic history · Economics · Identity (music · National identity · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Popularity · Sociology · Soviet union · History · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Law · Philosophy · Soviet and Russian History · Turkey's Politics and Society

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub