SUMMARY:

Focusing on the culmination of the Karabakh conflict in the so-called 44-day war of 2020 and the final liquidation of the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh in September 2023, this article reconstructs the mechanisms of perpetual confrontation in 1988–1923. A product of the competing Armenian and Azerbaijani nationalisms during the late Soviet period, the territorial dispute over the predominantly Armenian-populated region of Azerbaijan formed a cultural mechanism that produced discourses of hatred and counterfactual historical claims. Both sides’ fixation on the mythologized past made mutual understanding and compromise impossible, predetermining an equally antagonistic future. Cultural mythologies framed by tropes of Romantic nationalism became primary drivers of the territorial conflict in the late 1980s, when they proved their efficiency in nationalist mobilization. Today, political regimes in Armenia and Azerbaijan entirely rely on thus-produced national mobilization as the foundation of their legitimacy and authority, which makes the conflict insoluble. Today, it is not the contested territory that produces confrontation, but the need to sustain authority within the embraced format of national mobilization that necessitates constant disputes with the neighboring country.