An Average Azeri Village (1930): Remembering Rebellion in the Caucasus Mountains

Abstract

In this article, Bruce Grant advocates an anthropological perspective for understanding resistance to early Soviet rule, given that not all anti-Soviet rebellions operated by the same cultural logic. Combining oral histories and archival evidence to reconstruct highly charged events in rural northwest Azerbaijan, where as many as 10,000 men and women joined to overthrow Soviet power in favor of an Islamic republic in 1930, Grant examines moral archetypes of banditry, religious frames of Caucasus life, magical mobility, and images of early nationalist struggle against communism. Exploring what it means to have been “average” in the Soviet Union of the 1930s, Grant invites readers to consider classic narrative framings of periods of great tumult.