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Racisms in the Southern Caucasus: Multiple Configurations

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Post-Soviet Racisms

Part of the book series: Mapping Global Racisms ((MGR))

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Abstract

Contemporary formations of race and racism across the Southern Caucasus region are intimately connected with racialised histories, the legacy of Ottoman, Turkish and Soviet political projects and making of three new racial states: Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan which came into being in the post-Soviet era. It is in the interface between racial Europeanisation and the resurrection of both Russian racialised modernity and local racial nationalisms that the specificities of racisms in the Southern Caucasus region can be found here at this spatial intersection between Eastern Europe, Russia and Western Asia. The Soviet experience of domination, the knowledge regime of racial science and global circulation of dominant forms of racial discourse, together with multiple configurations of ethnoracial differentiation and division have all influenced these outcomes.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This paragraph draws on interviews carried out with Alexander Iskandaryan, Sergei Minasyan, Hrant Mikaelyan and Marina Saryan, Institute for Caucasus Studies, Yerevan University, Yerevan, 16 September 2014.

  2. 2.

    Interview with Naira Avetisyan, Deputy Head of Council of Europe Office, Yerevan, Armenia, 15 September 2014.

  3. 3.

    See Decree of the President of Azerbaijan on the Genocide of the Azerbaijanis. Bakinskiy Rabochiy, 26 March 1998 (in Russian). The Decree was translated into English and is available online from the official website maintained by the Office of the President of Azerbaijan. The suspected author of the text of the Decree is Vafa Guluzade, former presidential advisor to the Azerbaijani President Heydar Aliyev, best known for his scandalous proposal to establish a NATO military base near Baku (Haji-Petros 2001).

  4. 4.

    The Georgian term for the nation’s essence.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Uppsala, Sweden

    Nikolay Zakharov

  2. Leeds, UK

    Ian Law

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  1. Nikolay Zakharov
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Zakharov, N., Law, I. (2017). Racisms in the Southern Caucasus: Multiple Configurations. In: Post-Soviet Racisms. Mapping Global Racisms. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-47692-0_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-47692-0_4

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