As simple as that sounds, it is a misleading truth. The ethnic, linguistic, and religious diversity of the region is richly complicated. The region is home to scores of small ethnic groups and about a dozen ethnic-based political enclaves. There are Sunni Muslims, Shi'ite Muslims, and mystic Sufi Islamic sects. Christianity is divided in the region into Eastern Orthodox believers, Catholics, and Armenian Orthodox churches. There are small Jewish communities that date back centuries. And there are unique minority religious groups like the Yazidis. Persian, Turkish, Balkan, Arab, and indigenous cultural influences blend and clash in the region. It is an understatement to say that the region's human geography is complicated.
Geography and History
The Caucasus Mountains have traditionally been viewed as the dividing line between Europe and West Asia. As political scientists began thinking of the world in terms of geo-political regions (Latin America, the Middle East) instead of continents after World War II, the idea of the Caucuses as a continental boundary became less important. Today the region is generally thought of as being part of Europe.
The Caucasus Mountains can be divided into two chains: the Greater Caucasus and the Lesser Caucasus. The Greater Caucasus runs from near the Russian Black Sea port of Sochi southeast toward the Azerbaijan's capital of Baku on the Caspian Sea. It includes nine peaks over four thousand meters high, with five of them being over five thousand meters high. Mt. Elbrus is the highest peak, at 5,642 meters (18,506 feet ). The Lesser Caucasus runs parallel to the Greater Caucasus, about 60 miles to the south.
The southern slopes of the Caucasus were populated before the Bronze Age began in 3,000 BC. The area was part of the Persian Empire, then later conquored by Alexander the Great and ruled by the Seleucids. The Romans ruled parts of the region, followed by the Byzantines, the Umayyad Caliphate, the Ottomans, and finally, the Soviets.
The northern slopes of the Caucasus were spared the rule of the Persians, Romans, and Byzantines for the most part. This is especially true on the Caspian side of the mountains. But Arab and, later, Ottoman rule did extend into the region before the Russians arrived. Russian rule was extended into the minority ethnic enclaves along the northern slopes of the Caucasus in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
The region's larger countries (Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan) regained independence in 1991. Smaller ethnic units have been agitating for their own independence since that time.
Smaller Ethnic Political Units in the Caucasus
The political structure of the former Soviet Union was based on the concept of ethnic autonomy. The USSR was made up of 15 of these ethnic republics - one for the Russians, one for the Ukrainians, one for the Kazakhs, one for the Estonians, etc. When the USSR collapsed in 1991 those 15 republics became independent countries. Unfortunately, most of the newly independent countries had smaller politically autonomous ethnic enclaves within them and these political units have agitated for their own independence. Nowhere is this more true than in the Caucasus, where there have been six armed conflicts over ethnic independence since 1991.
Ethnic tensions in the former USSR are sometimes aggravated by the fact that ethnic rivals were often grouped together into a single political unit, such as the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic - a sub-division Russia on the northern slopes of the Greater Caucasus.
These tensions continue today and have the potential to cause instability in the region and create conflicts between the nations of the region - including Turkey and Iran to the south of the Caucasus.
Greg Cruey - Greg Cruey is an educator and journalist. He works as an educational interventionist specializing in a small, rural school in Central ...
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