Contested spaces: the use of place-names and symbolic landscape in the politics of identity and legitimacy in Azerbaijan

ABSTRACT

This article deals with the political manipulation of symbolic landscape, using post-Soviet Azerbaijan as a case study. In particular, it looks at the practice of toponym changes as an element of political legitimization and national identity-making. The political use and manipulation of place-names and symbolic landscape is a relatively recent phenomenon that became particularly widespread in the twentieth century. It is widely used for ideological or nationalist purposes throughout the world – from Iran to Israel, from former Yugoslavia to the USSR. However, I argue that post-Soviet Azerbaijan represents an unusual case where one can clearly see strikingly different patterns of place-name manipulation in the pursuit of political legitimacy. It argues that while questions of political legitimacy and nationalism found their reflection in the policy of place-name manipulation, their uses followed clearly different routes and were confined to separate areas.

KEYWORDS:

• Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict
• Karabakh
• Caucasus
• nationalism
• place-names
• political legitimacy
• personality cult
• ethnic conflict

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. For example: Svod statisticheskikh dannykh o naselenii Zakavkazskogo kraia izvlechennykh iz posemeinykh spiskov 1886 goda (Tiflis 1893) contains a number of alternative names for the territory of Karabakh. Kavkazskii Kalendar, published annually since 1846 (Kavkazskii Kalendar' 1846), also contained lists of place-names; Pagirev (1913) is another detailed gazetteer that contains double names.

2. Karta Kavkazskogo Kraia. Sostavlena i litografirovana v mashtabe 1:420 000 pri general’nom shtabe otdel’nogo Kavkazskogo korpusa (Tiflis 1847).

3. http://www.msk.gov.az./az/elections/milli-meclise-seckiler/, accessed 2 November 2015.

4. Azerbaijani map from 1992 and Soviet map General Staff map from 1980 (General'nyi shtab 1980).

5. Cornell (2011) mentions the following elements of political power in Azerbaijan: that included such components as Ideology, paramilitary forces, Regionalism, Personality, External Players, Population, Financial resources.

6. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/14/russias-first-monument-to-ivan-the-terrible-inaugurated, accessed 18 October 2016.

7. http://www.msk.gov.az./az/elections/milli-meclise-seckiler/, accessed 2 November 2015.

8. Towns with Heydar Aliyev avenues are Shirvan, Mingechaur, Evlakh, Qusar, Kurdamir, Neftichala, Saatly, Sabirabad, Jalalabad, Astara, Agdjabedi, Geoichai, Agdash, Tartar, Gedabek, Kazakh, Beilaghan, Khyrdalan, Gobustan, Sumgait.

9. Towns with Heydar Aliyev streets are Imishli, Shemakha, Ujar, Oguz, Barda.

10. A number of ethnic groups lost their political status in the 1930s after they lost their cultural status of a unique group. One such group is the Iranian speaking Talysh people living in southern Azerbaijan. They were recognized as a separate group in the 1920s but in the early 1930s they lost that status and subsequently the Talysh-language schools and publications disappeared.

11. Armenian National Archive, Fund 1, List 25, File 42.

12. http://www.regnum.ru/news/polit/1573723.html, accessed 24 April 2017.

Additional information

Funding

Part of this research was completed with the help of a 2016 grant from the University of Southern California, Institute of Armenian Studies, that allowed me to collect the relevant toponymic information. Without this generous help this research would not have been completed.