ABSTRACT
National identity in modern times is intertwined with the possession of territory regarded as the historic land of one's people, the nation. The national movements in Caucasia during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries linked national identity to territory as the German and Italian national movements had done in Europe. Similar Russian rhetoric and tactics were applied in the longest-lived national conflict in the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which was the bloody war between Armenians and Azerbaijani Turks over Mountainous Karabagh, the case constitutes an important example of national conflict and Russian rule. Russian political aims have included control of Caucasia since the seventeentn century. Azerbaijani Turks' relationship to the Russians continues to be problematical. As national consciousness has impinged on religious identity a process evident in the nineteenth century, the Azerbaijanis in the north grew increasingly critical of Iran and moved closer to their ethnic kin, Russia's great nemesis, Turkey.
