THE CAUCASUS THROUGH THE EURASIAN PRISM

Farkhad ALIEV

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Farkhad Aliev, Post-graduate student, State Administration Academy under the President of the Azerbaijanian Republic (Baku, Azerbaijan)

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The Region’s Geopolitical Specifics

Historians are convinced that the Caucasus has always been an object of close attention of the European states and Oriental Eurasian empires. Throughout the last twenty centuries, the Roman Empire, Persia, Byzantium, and the Ottoman Empire tried to establish their control over the region. Tamerlane, Genghis Khan, Shah Abbas, and Mamai invaded the Caucasus at different times.

The founders of a virtual ethnographic museum pointed out: “The Caucasus is a small part of Eurasia, therefore we cannot but marvel at the variety it displays. Its natural conditions range from subtropical to polar; there are large cities and mountain villages comprising a single house-fortress. Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and numerous other very specific beliefs have been living together there.”

According to Russian political scientist Alexander Dugin, the Caucasus has been a sphere of strategic rivalry between Russia and the West (the British Empire in the past and the United States today) for three centuries now. Russia was seeking an outlet to the warm seas and the south in order to establish itself in India and the Indian Ocean; Britain, in turn, has been doing its best to stem Russia’s southward thrust. The Caucasian wars, Crimean War, and all Russian-Turkish and Russian-Persian wars were caused by these opposing geopolitical movements. At all times, Britain stood opposed to Russia.

Anatoly Gromyko says the same: “In the last few years the region where, according to Kipling, the Great Game unfolded in the 19th century has undergone amazing changes. In the………………..

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