CREES Noon Lecture. “Arbitrary Borders? The Logic of Bolshevik Boundary-Making in the South Caucasus, 1921-25.”

Arsene Saparov, Alex and Marie Manoogian Foundation Post-doctoral Fellow, U-M. <br>Sponsor: CREES.

The Soviet leadership often stands accused of deliberately drawing internal frontiers in the Caucasus in order to create leverage against union republics. The violent conflicts that broke out in the 1990s in Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and South Ossetia seem to prove this perception. In this presentation, Dr. Saparov will try to understand the logic of the Bolshevik boundary-making in the South Caucasus. Was this a deliberate policy of "divide and rule," or did the economic considerations of the Soviet leadership prevail when creating boundaries?

Manoogian Post-doctoral Fellow Arsène Saparov’s research focuses on post-Soviet developments, conflicting relations, territorial disputes in the South Caucasus, and problems of secession and autonomy. He received his Ph.D in International Relations from the London School of Economics in 2007 and subsequently spent two years conducting his post-doctoral research at CERCEC (Centre ’études des mondes Russe caucasien et Centre-Europeen). Saparov has published a number of articles in English, French, and Russian in academic journals and currently is working on his first book entitled Why Autonomy? The Bolsheviks and the Creation of Ethnic Autonomies in the South Caucasus: 1918-1936.