Deconstructing Soviet Kurdish Policies: the Kurds between Moscow, Baku and Yerevan

Authors

  • Angelika O. Pobedonostseva Saint-Petersburg State University

Abstract

Soviet Kurdish policies were a product of parallel or even conflicting courses of action pursued by actors most of whom acted far from Moscow. This paper investigates the history of the Soviet Kurdish projects by focusing on the agency of relevant non-central players–especially the Soviet republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan which interacted, cooperated and clashed among themselves, with Moscow and with Kurdish activists. The Union member republics were for a long time dismissed in terms of foreign relations despite known cases of their engaging in intra-Union (e.g. the role of Soviet Armenia in developing Kurdish-Yezidi separate identity in Transcaucasia) and extra-Union external relations or even something resembling foreign policies (the role of Soviet Azerbaijan in establishing Azerbaijani and Kurdish autonomies in Iran as well as in Soviet interaction with the Iraqi Kurdish rebels). The paper focuses on the competition and cooperation between Armenian and Azerbaijan Soviet Republics in the context of the policies towards Kurdish ethnic groups pursued by the Soviet Union central government and constituent Union republics in the 1920s-1960s. To clarify the actual trajectory of the Soviet Kurdish policies I leave out the demonstrative aspects of Soviet policies and analyse more how these policies interacted with the life of respective societies, scholars, and activists. To explore the issue, I have examined publications of the time, official records in archives, and memoirs.

Keywords:

Kurds, Yezidis, Soviet Armenia, Soviet Azerbaijan, Karabagh, Red Kurdistan, decolonisation

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Published

2025-05-20

How to Cite

Pobedonostseva, A. O. (2025). Deconstructing Soviet Kurdish Policies: the Kurds between Moscow, Baku and Yerevan. Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University. Asian and African Studies, 17(1). Retrieved from https://aasjournal.spbu.ru/article/view/21728

Issue

Vol. 17 No. 1 (2025): Vestnik of St. Petersburg University. Asian and African Studies

Section

History and source studies

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Articles of "Vestnik of Saint Petersburg University. Asian and African Studies" are open access distributed under the terms of the License Agreement with Saint Petersburg State University, which permits to the authors unrestricted distribution and self-archiving free of charge.