by Comrade Harold

The de facto, but unrecognized, state of Artsakh is, as of today, no more. It’s government organs agreeing to officially dismantle by the end of the year.  The capital city of Stepanakert, named for the the prominent Armenian bolshevik and Baku commune founder Stepan Shaumain, is a ghost town, having been ethnically cleansed of it’s historic Armenian population through the recent ceasefire-breaking military actions of Azerbaijan. 100,000+ Armenians, the vast majority of the population, have been displaced from Nagorno-Karabakh.

Since late last year the Lachin corridor, the single point of connection between Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia, supposedly maintained by Russian peacekeepers since the conclusion of the last military conflict in 2020, who have not intervened meaningfully throughout this nine month period, has been blockaded under the guise of “environmental protests”.

These “environmentalists” are really nationalist representatives of Azerbaijani NGOs, with close ties to the Azerbaijani government, or the Heydar Aliyev Foundation, more often carrying signs or chanting slogans such as “Karabakh is Azerbaijan” than anything related to environmentalism.  Since then supplies like gasoline, food and medicine have been inaccessible with rationing in place for months alongside closure of all government services and mass unemployment.  This siege laid the ground for a quick and overwhelming offensive by Azerbaijan on September 19th.  The Revolutionary Maoist Coalition and The Masses sees these actions as a clear instance of ethnic cleansing which arises from the always toxic reactionary, bourgeois nationalism.  Stalin makes clear in his Marxism and the National Question that “the proletariat has its own tried banner and has no need to rally to the banner of the bourgeoisie” which feigns a common national interest. We always stand on the side of the people before the nation, we accept the nation, which is inherently a structure of capitalism, as a dangerous but invaluable tool for achieving internationalist ends.  

Although the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh is seemingly quite final, we will continue to print analysis on this issue as it has important and deep implications that we can learn valuable lessons from in regards to a modern Marxist-Leninist-Maoist understanding of the national question.