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Opinion Article - October 9, 2023

Caucasus War:

Under the command of British Petroleum, Azerbaijan launched an offensive against the Armenian people in Nagorno Karabakh. In the fratricidal war only the imperialist powers win and the workers of Armenia and Azerbaijan, who have the same demands for decent work and wages, lose…

The attack of Azerbaijan against the Armenian population, on behalf of imperialism, must be stopped!

Out with the Turkish occupation of Azerbaijan, the Russian military base in Armenia and its occupation troops in Nagorno Karabakh!

Out with imperialism from the Caucasus!

Full autonomy for Nagorno Karabakh!

For the restoration of the Federation of Transcaucasian Soviet Socialist Republics, without capitalist parasites and Stalinist bureaucracy!

On September 19, Azerbaijan launched a military offensive to recover Nagorno-Karabakh, a region with an ethnic Armenian population in Azerbaijani territory, annexed by Armenia after the fratricidal war of 1994. Already in 2020, new military confrontations developed in the region, which had been kept in suspense since the signing of the "cease-fire" that, with Russian troops as guarantor, returned control of Nagorno Karabakh to Azerbaijan and Turkey to ensure the plundering of British Petroleum and imperialism.

Since the end of September of this year, the offensive has deepened and a heartbreaking exodus took place, claiming new victims and forcing more than 100 thousand Armenians to abandon their land, their home, pushed to be drifting adrift, seeking refuge in Armenia and the region. Azerbaijan seeks to impose an "ethnic cleansing" and even the president of Nagorno Karabakh himself has hastened to vote for its dissolution stating that Nagorno Karabakh will cease to exist at the beginning of 2024.
Until now, Russia and Turkey were the guarantors of imperialism's business in the region, with a pact in which only British Petroleum won and the big losers were the peoples of Azerbaijan and Armenia, sunk in a fratricidal war and misery. Now, with the Russian gendarme weakened after its bogging down in the war in Ukraine, the imperialist pirates are taking advantage of the situation to get it out of the way and remain without intermediaries with this region that Is very rich in hydrocarbons. U.S. imperialism has already secured direct control of Latvia, Lithuania, etc. Now it is the turn of the Caucasus, where the U.S.A. also wants it all, without sharing any slice, and has come for it, subjecting the peoples to a bloodletting.

However, it is impossible to understand how the present situation has come about and even less to put forward a Marxist vision and a revolutionary program to find a way out of this crisis without understanding the origin of this national problem, which could only be solved in a revolutionary way and in favor of both the Azeri and Armenian people with the triumph of the proletarian revolution and the seizure of power. So it happened in 1921, when the Federation of Soviet Republics of the South Caucasus resolved that the territory of Nagorno Karabakh be integrated as an autonomous region into the territory of Azerbaijan, giving its eminently Armenian population the right to self-determination (SEE BOX).

And it is also essential to know what are the interests of imperialism in this region that is rich in gas, oil and minerals, bathed by the Caspian Sea, close to Russia, Iran and Kazakhstan. Also there they run the oil and gas pipelines with which the big oil companies, with British Petroleum at the head and under the command of Anglo-American imperialism, plunder these areas of the planet.

2020: the Caucasus war. A war to secure the interests of imperialism in the region.

The Caucasus region is a rich zone of imperialist dispute. Baku, capital of Azerbaijan, is known as the oil capital. In 2020, with a new war in the Caucasus, in a pact between Russia and Turkey, British Petroleum was the big winner in the plundering of this region which concentrates one of the largest reserves and production of oil and through which run, as we have said, the oil and gas pipelines that feed the imperialist machinery, one of the supply routes of hydrocarbons to Maastricht Europe, through which not only the gas and oil of these countries, but also of Russia, is sucked. This advance of British imperialism was to the detriment of France and Germany, which withdrew from the region. The US, for its part, ensures a safe passage and stability in the region to plunder the rare minerals of the coasts of the Caspian Sea and Kazakhstan in particular, at the same time as it advances in encircling Russia, on the road to its recolonization.
In 2020, the Armenian and Azeri workers were dragged into a new fratricidal war -one which today we see twofolding with a real ethnic cleansing of Nagorno Karabakh-, for the interests and business of the transnationals and their hated governments and regimes, lackeys of imperialism. The exploited have left thousands of dead, their cities were devastated and the river of bood between the brotherly workers of Armenia and Azerbaijan deepened.

For to achieve their demands, to put an end to imperialist exploitation and plunder, and to conquer even the autonomy of Nagorno Karabakh, the exploited need to defeat imperialism and settle accounts with their junior partners, the cynical native bourgeoisies. Ot could be seen it after the 1991-1994 war, with the Armenian masses subjected to their bourgeoisie, which took Nagorno Karabakh and granted it self-determination without respecting the Azeri territories, fomenting the national hatred of the Azeri masses, which was the ember on which the fratricidal war of 2020 was ignited, under the leadership and to the pleasure of the Biritsh Petroleum. After that "Azeri success", which the Armenian masses paid for with unheard-of sufferings, the Azerbaijani government and regime was strengthened and given free rein to continue starving and martyring its own people. The bloodletting among these peoples only has ensured and still ensures imperialist plunder and is paid for by the masses, both Armenian and Azeri ones, with hunger and despair and an ever-increasing subjugation of their nations to imperialism.

The working class of the imperialist powers, and of Europe in particular, must rise up against their imperialist bourgeoisie to prevent the peoples of the Caucasus from drowning in a bloodbath no behalf of imperialist plunder.
The attack of Azerbaijan against the Armenian population, on behalf of imperialism, must be stopped! Out with the Turkish occupation of Azerbaijan, out with the Russian military base in Armenia and its occupation troops in Nagorno Karabakh! Out with imperialism in the Caucasus!
The exploited in Azerbaijan, Armenia, Russia must rise up against the same enemies that guarantee with their boot the misery of the people: the lackey bourgeoisies, the gendarmes of imperialism like Putin and the imperialist pirates. The war that imperialism and the capitalists have imposed on them, will be paid by the masses with greater hardships... therefore, the internationalist unity of the workers of the entire Caucasus is an immediate necessity. It is a question of life and fest for the workers of the region: one same class, one same enemy, one same struggle across borders!

Unity of the working class of the Caucasus! For a living wage, for work, for giving the land to the poor peasant, and for the self-determination of the Armenian people in Nagorno Karabakh, without occupation of Azeri territory. But this can only be conquered by expropriating imperialism, the transnational corporations, their bankers and their partners, involved in thousands of businesses, such as the native capitalists, by returning to the road of socialist revolution. War on imperialism, for the self-determination of Nagorno Karabakh!
Down with the lackey regimes and governments of the counterrevolutionary pact of Russia-Turkey under the command of the U.S. and British Petroleum in Baku!
Expropriation of the transnationals, the banks and the imperialist oil companies without compensation and under workers' control throughout the Caucasus!
Full autonomy for Nagorno Karabakh!
For the restoration of the Federation of Transcaucasian Soviet Socialist Republics, without capitalist parasites or Stalinist bureaucracy!

Eliza Funes and Nadia Briante

Burial of an Armenian fighter who fell in the Azerbaijani offensive, in the city of Stepanakert, Nagorno-Karabakh

Russian “peace” troops on the Armenian border

Turkish soldiers in Azerbaijan

Karabakh Armenian refugees near Goris, Armenia

The constitution of nations and states of Armenia and Azerbaijan

Armenia and Azerbaijan, like many nations of the Caucasus region and Eurasia, came late to the formation of states. That is to say, they did not manage to constitute their borders and nations, because they were previously invaded and annexed by the great Tsarist Russia, which plundered their wealth (agricultural production and hydrocarbons, especially oil) in association with the big English and French capital.
As there were no clear borders, the Armenian and Azeri populations settled according to their work or where they found land. And so it developed, from the end of the 19th century, in a territory where the Azeris were located, an area of fertile land with a majority Armenian population.

In 1917, with the triumph of the Russian Revolution, this prison of nations that was the Empire of the Tsars fell. The bourgeoisie and imperialism tried to maintain control in the oppressed nationalities such as Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. Even a military confrontation began between Armenians and Azeris over their borders and over the territory of Nagorno Karabakh. That conflict came to an end in 1920, when the working class took power in Baku-Azerbaijan, crushing the Azerbaijani army and the bourgeoisie, which had led the workers into a fratricidal war with their brothers in Armenia.
That same year, following the path of the revolution, the "Trans-Caucasian Soviet Socialist Republic" was created, the Federation of Soviet Republics of the Southern Caucasus, formed by what today we know as Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia. In 1921, after its congress, the USSR was able to resolve the confrontation between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno Karabakh in a revolutionary way: the territory belongs to the Soviet workers' republic of Azerbaijan, but is integrated as an autonomous region, self-organized by the Armenian workers and poor peasants. That is to say, it granted its Armenian population the right to self-determination, creating a province with full autonomy.

But Stalinism once again turned the USSR into a prison of nations, with nationalities crushed and oppressed as before by Tsarism. And with the capitalist restoration and the surrender of the workers states, the clashes between the peoples of Armenia and Azerbaijan returned, subjected to the interests of their own bourgeoisies, tied with political and military pacts with Moscow (like Armenia) or else associated in the plundering of British Petroleum (like Azerbaijan). Thus Nagorno Karabakh lost its autonomy crushed by the Azerbaijani bourgeoisie, and in 1994 the Armenian bourgeoisie took back Nagorno Karabakh and other territories of Azerbaijan after the war.