De facto states, Javakheti, Nagorno-Karabakh

This chapter compares Javakheti and Nagorno-Karabakh – two territories inhabited by ethnic Armenians, which at the beginning of the 1990s had similar potential for separatism – and seeks to explain which factors led to the birth of Nagorno-Karabakh as a de facto state and which factors led to the eventual decline of the separatist movement in Javakheti. The author argues that the decisive factors were: existence, respectively non-existence of autonomous status within the USSR; different image of the two conflict zones in the eyes of the population of the Republic of Armenia, what led to a different engagement of the kin-state/patron state; the attitude of Russia; and the difference between Georgian and Azerbaijani approach to their Armenian minorities.