A Paradox of Soviet Multiculturalism: Armenian and Azerbaijani Minority Intellectuals in the Shadow of Druzhba Narodov

• In Event: Homeland in Exile: Navigating Belonging in the Soviet Union

Abstract

This paper addresses these questions by analyzing the works of two intellectuals: Markar Davtyan (1909–64), an ethnic Armenian novelist, translator, and editor from Baku, and Akbar Suleymanov (1921–82), an ethnic Azerbaijani writer and researcher from Yerevan. Their writings emerged against a backdrop of shared historical violence, reflecting both the potential and limitations of Soviet policies on national identity and cultural integration. Drawing on their fiction and non-fiction works from the 1950s and 1960s, this study explores how these multilingual, multicultural figures negotiated their identities and sense of belonging—both in relation to one another and in response to the central Soviet government.

Author

• Ararat Sekeryan, Columbia U