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Most secret agent of Empire: Reginald Teague-Jones, master spy of the Great Game

Karabakh under Azerbaijan’s administration was made only when an Armenian rebellion in the Zangezur Mountains was finally subdued in 1921, where previously the kavburo – the regional executive – had been prepared to cede the region to Armenia to satisfy Armenian nationalists and thereby undermine the popularity of the rebellion (111). While the author’s ability to condense the separate stories of South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and Nagorno Karabakh into one conversation is remarkable, the inevitable consequence is that he does not penetrate to any extreme depth for any one of his case studies. The chapters focused on the immediate circumstances of each region’s Sovietization and consequent organization into an autonomous unit are the best developed, but only the most important developments in that central issue are explored. The positive side to this is that any reader with some background in the Caucasus or the Soviet Union can gain a general but healthy knowledge of both the legacy of Soviet statecraft and of the most formative events in the modern history of the South Caucasus. Thanks to its lucid introduction and unambiguous writing style, this book remains accessible to non-specialized readers, though some acquaintance with the post-Soviet conflicts and with the Soviet bureaucratic system is important. This is particularly true for the chapters focused on the organization of the autonomies, as the content is at times fairly technical, with little explanation of Soviet administrative structures or the political classification of regional administrations. Also, given that one of the author’s stated intentions is to round out the knowledge of those involved in explaining or resolving the post-Soviet conflicts in South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and Nagorno Karabakh, the conflicts as an outcome of Soviet federalism are not demonstrated thoroughly enough (9). This might be explained as a by-product of the author’s choice of target audience, but given that the post-Soviet conflicts are the apparent impetus for this research, they occupy a rather peripheral role in this work. These are only minor concerns, however. The outstanding feature of this work is that, in a breezy 177 pages, the author has succeeded in presenting three phenomenally complicated historical issues in a totally intelligible format, while reviving discounted or unknown historical sources that go far in fleshing out the neglected backstory of the contemporary issues that dominate the existing body of scholarship. In this light, the greatest achievement of From Conflict to Autonomy in the Caucasus is that it fully articulates new paths of inquiry that, taken individually with more focus, are bound to rescue further studies from more near-sighted preoccupations with ethnic animosities. As such, this work is probably the best introduction available to those looking to investigate more distant historical influences on post-Soviet conflict in the South Caucasus.