State at War, State in War: The Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict and State-Making in Armenia, 1991-1995

Résumé 0

The Republic of Armenia’s accession to independence came along with open war with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian populated enclave dispatched within the Azerbaijani SSR in 1923. These specific conditions determined state-building in Armenia, launching two complementary processes: building of a national army from a meagre Soviet heritage and accumulating scarce resources into a restricted number of state institutions, the Defence Ministry in particular. Open conflict ended in 1994, freezing Armenian advances in Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan, thus marking victory in the eyes of the Armenian military. This sense of victory coupled with the return of soldiers to civilian life transcribed into a “Karabakh syndrome”, a tentative notion for the mindset of victorious militiamen eager to be rewarded for their sacrifices in war by economic or political benefits. Starting from 1995, this syndrome weighed on the Republic’s political life, eventually resulting in the resignation of then President Levon Ter Petrossian.