COLLECTIVE MEMORY IN ETHNOPOLITICAL CONFLICTS: HE CASE OF NAGORNO-KARABAKH
Abstract
There is a general agreement among those who study ethnic conflicts that collective memory may fan them, quench violence, or even prevent such conflicts,1 but it rarely becomes a subject of political studies. Strange as it may seem collective memory and its role in creating or settling ethnopolitical conflicts attract even less attention.
It seems that the concept is too vague and multifaceted to serve as an analytical category. Collective memory frequently includes such notions as “bad histories” of the groups involved, historical myths, “ancient hatreds,” or is identified as the aggregate of individual memories. The absence of clear-cut differentiations is probably responsible for the researchers’ excessively cautious treatment of collective memory issues. Naturally enough the researchers want to avoid any accusations of abusing the “old ethnic hatreds” thesis. We all know that public opinion is prone to use it to explain ethnic conflicts, while experts invariably criticize this approach.
Those who study ethnic conflicts often point out that it is wrong to explain conflicts by “ancient hatred” between the sides, “bad” stories about one another, past atrocities, and dreams of revenge. This is a simplified approach, since “ancient hatred” per se does not necessarily cause conflicts. This is amply confirmed by numerous examples, former Yugoslavia being one of them: it is thought that the ethnic conflicts there were politically induced by the elites. Finally, there is a widely shared opinion among experts that it is very hard to prove that it is “centuries-old ethnic hatred” that cause ethnic conflicts in the first place. They say that conflicts are fanned by many different causes, old grudges being pushed to the fore a posteriori after the conflict has been raging for some time. As a result, the idea that collective memory may play an important role in an ethnic conflict is often reduced to simply stating that it was merely one of the factors among others.
Despite this I remain convinced that collective memory is an important, or even the key, factor in an ethnic or national conflict. The inability to track down and discern the specific role collective memory may play in an ethnopolitical conflict has undoubtedly infringed on our ability to prevent or resolve such conflicts. This makes it important to supply political scientists and politicians with a collective memory model to be applied to conflict analysis.
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See: R.R. Garagozov, “Collective Memory and the Russian ‘Schematic Narrative Template’,” Journal of Russian and East European Psychology, Vol. 40, No. 5, 2002, pp. 55-89; R.R. Garagozov, Metamorfozy kollectivnoi pamiati v Rossii i na Tsentral’nom Kavkaze, Nurlan Publishers, Baku, 2005; R. Garagozov, “Collective Memory and Memory Politics in the Central Caucasian Countries,” Central Asia and the Caucasus, No. 6 (36), 2005, pp. 51-60.
See: J.V. Wertsch, Voices of Collective Remembering, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2002.
Ibid., p. 62.
The author offers his own idea of the elements that together form the narrative template: 1. The original situation …
the Russian people are living peacefully without threatening others” is cut short: 2. by difficulties or aggression of an ex-ternal force or an agent that leads to: 3. a crisis and suffering, which: 4. are overcome by the triumph of the Russian peo-ple fighting heroically on their own” (ibidem).
See: R.R. Garagozov, “Collective Memory and the Russian ‘Schematic Narrative Template’.”
A.L. Kroeber, C. Kluckhohn, “Culture: a Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions,” Papers Peabody, Mus.,Vol. 47, No. 1, 1952, ðp. 181-198.
See: S.P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, Touchstone Books, New York,1996.
See: D. Senghaas, The Clash within Civilizations. Coming to Terms with Cultural Conflicts, Routledge, London,2002.
See: Ch. Kaufmann, “Possible and Impossible Solutions to Ethnic Civil Wars,” in: Nationalism and Eth-nic Conflict, ed. by M.E. Brown, O.R. Cote, S.M. Lynn-Jones, and S.E. Miller, MIT Press, Cambridge, Mass., 2000,pp. 265-304.
Ethnopolitical mobilization is a process, in the course of which an ethnic group driven by collective interests be-comes engrossed in political developments and organizes itself into a collective subject wielding resources adequate to political action (see: M. Esman, Ethnic Politics, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York, 1994, p. 28).
Information is taken mainly from the book by Thomas de Waal Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War, New York University Press, 2003 and verified, as closely as possible, with other sources.
See: T.R. Gurr, Minorities at Risk: A Global View of Ethnopolitical Conflicts, USIP Press, Washington D.C.,1993.
The meetings, especially the earlier ones, were organized by clandestine or semi-secret Armenian nationalist or-ganizations that had been stepping up their political involvement for some time (see: Th. de Waal, op. cit.). At the same time,they were not strong enough either organizationally or administratively and had no information facilities to mobilize the people within a very short period.
In an article about the Karabakh events Pravda wrote: “What forced tens of thousands of Armenians in Stepana-kert (former name of the Karabakh capital.—R.G.) and Erevan to pour into the streets? Tens of thousands of Armenians took to the streets of Stepanakert not only because they wanted to unify with Armenia. They were pushed into the streets by the inadequacies of Karabakh’s socioeconomic development and infringements on their national and other rights” (“Emotsii i razum. O sobytiakh v Nagornom Karabakhe i vokrug nego,” Pravda, 21 March, 1988).
See: S.E. Cornell, Conflict Theory and the Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict: Guidelines for a Political Solution? Tri-ton Publishers, Stockholm, 1997.
Ibidem.
See: Th. de Waal, “Konflikt vokrug Nagornogo Karabakha: istoki, dinamika i rasprostranennye zabluzhdenia,”available at [URL http://www.c-r.org/our-work/accord/nagorny-karabakh/russian/index.php] 14 August, 2006.
Th. de Waal, Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War, p. 272.
This context is presented in detail in J. MacCarthy, C. MacCarthy, Turks & Armenians. A Manual of the Armeni-an Question. Committee on Education. Assembly of Turkish American Association. Washington D.C., 1989.
See: R.R. Garagozov, Metamorfozy kollektivnoy pamiati v Rossii i na Tsentral’nom Kavkaze.
Ibidem.
See: S.E. Cornell, op. cit.; E.M. Herzig, “Armenia and the Armenians,” in: The Nationalities Question in the Post-Soviet States, ed. by G. Smith, Longman, London, 1996.
An Armenian respondent admitted to de Waal that “Fear of being destroyed, and destroyed not as a person, not individually, but destroyed as a nation, fear of genocide, is in every Armenian” (Th. de Waal, Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War, p. 78).
See: D.A. Lake & D. Rothschild, “Containing Fear: The Origins and Management of Ethnic Conflict,” in: Nation-alism and Ethnic Conflict, pp. 97-131.
See: Nagorny Karabakh. Istoricheskaia spravka, ed. by G.A. Galoian, K.S. Khudaverdian, Academy of Sciences of the Armenian S.S.R. Publishers, Erevan, 1988.
I have not set myself the task of discussing whether the arguments are correct or erroneous. I shall limit myself to saying that since it was written to justify the claims of one side on Nagorno-Karabakh, it, as any other work of the same sort, is one-sided, tendentious, and selective when it comes to the information offered and the interpretation of events.
The only table found in the work is called “Size and National Composition of the Autonomous Region’s Popula-tion,” in: Nagorny Karabakh. Istoricheskaia spravka, p. 47.
A relevant example is the book by Armenian journalist Z. Balaian Ochag published in 1987 in Erevan that re-minded the Armenians about “their enemies, Turks”; the same applies to 10,000 leaflets distributed on 12-13 February,1988, on the eve of the rallies in Stepanakert (see: Th. de Waal, Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War).
See: Th. de Waal, Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War, p. 22.
J.R. Gillis, “Memory & Identity. The History of Relationship,” in: Commemorations: the Politics of National Iden-tity, ed. by J.R. Gillis, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1994, pp. 3-24.
Identity Politics and Women: Cultural Reassertions and Feminisms in International Perspective, ed. by V.M. Moghadam, Westview Press, Boulder, 1994; E.E. Sampson, “Identity Politics. Challenges to Psychology’s Understand-ing,” American Psychologist, Vol. 48, No. 12, 1993, pp. 1219-1230.
See: S. Van Evera, “Hypotheses on Nationalism and War,” in: Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict, pp. 26-60.
See: E.H. Dance, History the Betrayer: A Study in Bias, Hutchinson, London, 1960.
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