Modern History of the Caucasus

Syllabus

Modern History of the Caucasus

(JTB 241)

Associate Professor Adrian Brisku, PhD

Doctoral Student, Lamiya Panahova

Department of Russian & East European Studies, Charles University https://cuni.academia.edu/adrianBrisku [e-mail]; [e-mail]

Annotation

Particularly since the ‘long nineteenth century’, the peoples, nationalities, and nations in the Caucasus region – comprised of the North Caucasus, small republics at the southern border of the Russian Federation and of the South Caucasus, the nation-states of Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia adjacent to it – have had a shared history in terms of tsarist and Soviet Russian occupation, control and co-option, interethnic conflict and cooperation as well as social (under)development. Starting with a conceptual discussion of the region, its linguistic, ethnic, and cultural diversity as well as its pre-Tsarist political history, this course traces political, economic, and cultural processes that the North and South Caucasus have undergone during the tsarist, Soviet and post-Soviet periods, underscoring factors, discourses and legacies that have shaped its past, still impact its present and potentially orient its future.    

A.    COURSE DESIGN   1.     Conceptualising the Caucasus, Discussing its Peoples, Languages and Lore (Brisku) 2.     The Early Christian and Muslim Caucasus (Brisku) 3.     The Political History of Caucasus from the Medieval to Early Modern Periods (Brisku) 4.     The Caucasus under Tsarist Rule in the Long Nineteenth-Century (Brisku) 5.     The First Transcaucasian Political Union, April-May 1918 (Brisku) 6.     Three Independent South Caucasus Republics, 1918-1920(1) (Brisku)/Lamiya 7.     The Caucasus in the Soviet Union, 1921-1991 (Panahova) 8.     Post-Soviet Azerbaijan (Panahova) 9.     Post-Soviet Georgia (Panahova) 10.  Post-Soviet Armenia (Panahova) 11.  Post-Soviet North-Eastern Caucasus: Dagestan, Chechnya, and Ingushetia (Panahova) 12.  The Post-Soviet North-Western Caucasus: Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachaevo-Cherkessia and Adygea (Panahova)

Annotation

Particularly since the ‘long nineteenth century’, the peoples, nationalities, and nations in the Caucasus region – comprised of the North Caucasus, small republics at the southern border of the Russian Federation and of the South Caucasus, the nation-states of Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia adjacent to it – have had a shared history in terms of tsarist and Soviet Russian occupation, control and co-option, interethnic conflict and cooperation as well as social (under)development. Starting with a conceptual discussion of the region, its linguistic, ethnic, and cultural diversity as well as its pre-Tsarist political history, this course traces political, economic, and cultural processes that the North and South Caucasus have undergone during the Tsarist, Soviet and post-Soviet periods, underscoring factors, discourses and legacies that have shaped its past, still impact its present and potentially orient its future.