ABSTRACT
In Azerbaijan it took somewhat longer for dissident forces to coalesce into what would eventually become the Azerbaijani Popular Front (APF). The APF quickly grew as a force to be reckoned with, one that the Azerbaijani Communist Party authorities could not ignore if for no other reason because of its capacity to cripple the economy and humiliate the government by starting as well as terminating strikes. The rise of Azerbaijani nationalism, previously a notion entertained mainly by the intelligentsia was very much an awakening spurred by conflict in Mountainous Karabakh and a response to the threat of Armenian expansionism. Nothing did more to mobilize Azerbaijan's population and spur the Azerbaijani national movement than the issue of Mountainous Karabakh. But if Karabakh had been a recurring preoccupation in Armenia during the Soviet era, it was a nonissue for most Azerbaijanis in the mid-1980s.
