"Gha-Ra-Bagh": The Emergence of the National Democratic Movement in Armenia

by Mark Malkasian

Release Date: September, 1996

Edition: Hardcover

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An Objective Eye on a Forgotten Land

The conflict over the Armenian territory of Artsakh, also known as Garapakh (hence the title of the book), has been intractable since the fall of the Soviet Union. Yet few today remember how the conflict originated, how Joseph Stalin's purges and ethnic engineering shaped the region, and how the Mountain Turks (called "Azeris" since WWI), the Armenians, and indeed most of the Soviet Union's subjects were used in the often arbitrary Stalinist decisions. In this mostly objective work, the origins of the conflict are traced in such a way as to explain why feelings in that region of the world are so strong, why the Mountain Turks want Artsakh from the Armenians, and the relation between the Genocide of the innocent Armenians in 1915 by murderous Turkey itself still has ramifications in the present.

Unbiased? No -- Biased? Nope.

The problem with ethnic issues is that often the only people that care about them are people of that ethnicity -- therefore, this author is going to be called biased and unbiased by the 2 sides. I found this book an interesting account of how the issue of Karabagh was used by the National Democratic Movement (a loaded term -- basically, the people who were pro-democracy in the end of the USSR who also happened to all be of the ethnicity) in promoting their own goals. I read this book twice in an academic setting and found it to be one of the best on the subject.