October 8th, 2020

Part One The origin of the Nagorno Karabakh conflict in the 19th and 20th centuries From the oppression of the Caucasus nations by the tsarist autocracy, to their national liberation with the victory of the Bolshevik revolution of 1917         A new and fierce military clash unfolds today between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno Karabakh. A conflict that, due to the formation of these nations, could only be resolved under the victory of the socialist revolution in the USSR, and in a particular way, as we shall see, with the 1922 agreement of the Soviet worker republics of the Caucasus and their federation. The Caucasus region and the oil and gas riches Armenia and Azerbaijan are located in the Caucasus Mountains, which lie on the border between Europe and Asia. There, in the South Caucasus there are also Georgia and Ossetia, while in the North of the Caucasus there are nations totally oppressed and massacred by Putin and the capitalist restoration like Chechnya, Dagestan, etc. It is important to note that Azerbaijan has the Caspian Sea to the east. Russia and Iran are also on its coasts. This area is a source of gas and oil. The capital of Azerbaijan, Baku, has been one of the major oil capitals of the world since oil has been known. From there, as can be seen on the map, there are gas and oil pipelines that pass overhead bordering Armenia, and go to Georgia and then to Turkey, where the fuel is taken over by the big oil companies that take it out to the Mediterranean, mainly towards the US. Through Turkey all gas and oil pipelines pass that leave not only from Azerbaijan, but also from the nations of the Middle East. Although Turkey does not have oil, it is the guardian of the gas and oil pipelines of the imperialist oil companies. In Baku, it is British Petroleum that pumps the "black gold" and is behind, under the command of Anglo-American imperialism, the extraction of all the wealth of the region. Turkey is its guardian. The dispute over Nagorno Karabakh, located in Azerbaijan with an Armenian population A conflict that, in the conditions of nations oppressed by imperialism, has no solution The Nagorno Karabakh area, i.e. the area disputed today, is also an area of ​​reserves and extraction of hydrocarbons. It is located within the territory of Azerbaijan, but between 90% and 95% of its population is of Armenian origin. To understand why this has happened we will go back to the beginning of the 19th century. At that time, Armenia and Azerbaijan were not the countries with the borders they have today, but there were two peoples –among others in the Caucasus- without forming nations yet, each with its own culture and its own language. They did not come to constitute borders and nations, as was already the case in Europe with the rise of the bourgeois nations, but were invaded by the great Russia of the tsars. At that time (between 1800 and 1830) the autocracy of the Russia of the Tsars was developing large industry at the rate that capitalism developed. Therefore it needed sources of raw materials and oppressed other peoples and nations. It did so with dozens of them, annexing them, including the area that today is Armenia and Azerbaijan, from where it took advantage, for almost a century, of agriculture and also, as we have said, oil. Greater Russia was built as a great prison of nations, looting and sucking their riches, associated with the big English and French capital. There was then no dividing border between the territory of Armenians and Azeris. Thus the populations settled in the territories where they carried out their work or where they found land. At that time it was normal for an Armenian originating from what is now Armenia to go to work the great fertile land of Nagorno Karabakh, and then this particularity occurred that in the territory where the Azeris were, there was an area with an abundant majority of Armenian population. The fall of the tsarist regime that oppressed the Caucasus This ruling regime imposed by the Russia of the tsars in the Caucasus lasted precisely until the fall of the tsarist regime with the Russian Revolution of 1917. The seizure of power was done by the proletariat in Moscow and Petrograd, that is, in the main cities and large industrial centers, with a strong proletariat. Power was not seized immediately in Azerbaijan or Armenia, but the control of the tsarist autocracy fell in all nations oppressed by "Greater Russia", which later became, following the route of revolution, Soviet republics federated by the Revolutionary USSR. In the South Caucasus at that time a power vacuum opened. Then, the incipient bourgeoisie there had declared the independent republics of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan, in the period between 1918 and 1920. During these two years, the bourgeoisie wanted to constitute those nations, delimiting a market, but it never could as they were occupied by the imperialist armies that advanced on the USSR. When they were defeated, Armenia and Azerbaijan began to militarily confront each other -in the same way we see it today- for the territory of Nagorno Karabakh and to delimit their borders. Thus, with the emergence of imperialism and its control of the sources of raw materials on the planet, the setting up of independent bourgeois nations could no longer be solved, just as the agrarian question and land tenure could not be solved as they were in very few hands of landlord lords tied to the old autocracy. So the attempt of these bourgeoisies to create those nations only led to a dispute between the two for the market, sending the workers to kill each other for their interests. The victory of the socialist revolution and the resolution of the question of Nagorno Karabakh There was a resolution to the Nagorno Karabakh question in 1920, just when the working class took power, first in Baku, in May of that year. There a workers uprising took place and the Red Army went there and crushed the Azerbaijani army and the Azerbaijani bourgeoisie, which had sent the workers to kill each other with their Armenian brothers for the interests of their business. By doing so, the Red Army ended that confrontation between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno Karabakh. They also put an end to the invasion of foreign troops, like those commanded by England in 1919. That is, it was with the October Revolution that all the imperialist armies that had gone to occupy all those nations were swept away. It was thus that the Soviet socialist workers republics of Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia could be conquered, expelling imperialism, defeating it in civil war. With the triumph of the revolution in 1920 in Azerbaijan and also in Armenia and Georgia, a resolution was taken to create a Federation of Soviet Republics of the South Caucasus, called the “Trans-Caucasian Soviet Socialist Republic”. The republics of the Caucasus thus federated with the USSR. Its still weak industrial production was articulated and developed with the nationalization of the productive forces and the branches of production that resulted from the Soviet revolution. The resolution of the agrarian question represented an enormous forward impulse for these nations. A key engine of the struggle for the construction of the Soviet republics of the USSR was also the decisive fight to give the right to self-determination of all nations that were oppressed by the tsars. In this way, the Bolsheviks in power demonstrated that no one was going to oppress any people. In 1921, after a congress of the republics of the Caucasus, with the participation of delegates for the nationalities of the USSR, a revolutionary agreement was signed for the region. It solved the issues that led to the clash and confrontation: that Nagorno Karabakh was in Azerbaijani territory and its population was almost entirely Armenian. In workers' and Soviet republics, both the expropriation of territory and the national oppression of sectors of the exploited were inadmissible. The unity of the proletariat had to be guaranteed across borders. The resolution, approved by all parties, was concrete and precise, and the only one that resolved this historical crisis: Nagorno Karabakh belongs to the Soviet workers' republic of Azerbaijan -a question that it resolved as it was within its territory- but it did so as an autonomous region, self-organized by the Armenian workers and poor peasants. In other words, the population, which is Armenian, was given the right to self-determination, creating what in Russia is called Oblast -a province- with full autonomy. Thus, all together, they were federated in the "Trans Caucasian Republic", within the USSR. This is how the national question, the Nagorno Karabakh question, as well as the question of nations was resolved... thanks to the revolution. The production was even intertwined. Azerbaijan was a great center for hydrocarbons and sources of raw materials. In Armenia, imbricated industries were installed in the local market in the Caucasus and throughout the USSR. It was a huge advance for the economies of nations to federate into a common market, with the workers producing as siblings. Only the working class could solve the question of the nations taking power. The Armenian, Azerbaijani and Georgian bourgeoisies only wanted one nation to exploit the poor workers and peasants instead of the Tsars. And if the imperialists had managed to defeat the power of the Soviets in the civil war, they would once again have changed the Czars for a new figure, but always under the boot and oppression of the bourgeoisie, of imperialism. The Stalinist bureaucracy once again turned Russia into a prison of nations With the retreat of the revolution the Nagorno Karabakh question re-emerged Then, from 1921 to 1936 the aforementioned federation functioned. But starting in 1936, with Stalin's bureaucratic clique perched in power in Moscow, already sold and passed to the counterrevolutionary camp, he commanded his gang, his people to directly control all the nations previously oppressed by tsarism. The Stalinist bureaucracy settled in "Greater Russia" to control from there,  manu military and through its direct agents, all the nations that made up the USSR. That is to say, it trampled on the right to self-determination of nations and once again transformed Russia into a prison of nations. Nothing different was Stalinism in relation to Tsarism in terms of the oppression of nations. The Caucasus was no exception. For years there were mobilizations in the Caucasus and in all its republics to try to get rid of the various bureaucrats appointed by Moscow to preside, as centurions, over those nations. They demanded from the central Kremlin bureaucracy - not just Stalin, but also those who came after, like Khruschev - that the People's Commissar or the Economic Commissar be someone local, not a Muscovite. Obviously the bureaucracy rejected this and the national question deepened. So much so that already in the 1980s, under the government of Gorbachev, who began to prepare the capitalist restoration with his Glasnost ("democratic opening") and Perestroika ("economic opening"), the oppressed peoples of the Caucasus began a process of uprising. Armenia resumed the national struggle against Stalinist oppression. The masses rebelled in the 1980s against a Stalinist regime that was decomposing to an extreme degree the bases of the workers' state, handing it over to imperialism, and through a bureaucracy that, by leaps and bounds over the ruin, misery and demoralization of the working class, advanced to the capitalist restoration that would be consummated in the period 1989-1991 / 92 Stalinism, with its policy of "socialism in one country", confining the revolution only in Russia, was destroying all the conquests of the revolution, including also the right to self-determination and the resolution of national questions that had been resolved by the revolution. This was the case until the fall of the workers' states in 1989, where, with the capitalist restoration this problem only worsened more and more, as we can see today. From then on, in the hands of the Azerbaijani, Armenian and Georgian national bourgeoisies, tied either to political and military treaties with Moscow or partners in the sacking by British Petroleum, there was only a total breakdown of fraternal relations between oppressed peoples. The question of the autonomy of Nagorno Karabakh was crushed by the Azerbaijani bourgeoisie, while the Armenian bourgeoisie, after the war of '94, not only retook it for its territory, but also occupied territories of Azerbaijan itself. As we said, far from solving the national question, capitalist restoration sharpened it to extreme degrees. The former USSR today continues to be doubly a prison of nations... either those that are oppressed by "Greater Russia" in the Commonwealth of Independent States at the point of bayonets - such as with the Chechen genocide- or those that are under control and oppressed -equal to or worse than a prison- by imperialism directly such as Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia... With one peculiarity: There is no imperialist army that can exert an stable control on the bourgeois businesses throughout Eurasia enormous region. This is what the role of Putin's and its military bases as hitman and guardian of imperialism's business in all that area of the planet is about.

Azerbaiyan during tsarist ruling   Russian revolution Congress of Baku of the Eastern Peoples Congress of Baku of the Eastern Peoples     Armies of Armenia y Azerbaiyan today