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A Lost World: Evgeniy Voyskunskiy’s Maiden Dreams, the Karabakh Crisis, and the End of Old Baku

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 October 2019

Mikail Mamedov
Mikail Mamedov*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article examines the first novel about the Karabakh crisis and ethnic cleansing of the Armenian population in the city of Baku. Maiden Dreams (Devich’i Sny), published in 1995, was written by Evgeniy Voyskunskiy, an author born in Baku and generally known for science fiction novels. The novel explores the tragic fate of the city, and it includes stories of persecution and pogroms against the Armenian population in Azerbaijan in the late 1980s and early 1990s in light of the Karabakh conflict. Maiden Dreams is the story of Baku from the beginning of the 20th century to the turbulent period late in the century when violence and ethnic cleansing had transformed the cosmopolitan, multi-ethnic capital into a homogeneous city with no space for “others.” This article examines the novel from both literary and historical perspectives.

Keywords

Karabakh conflictEvgeniy VoyskunskiyMaiden Dreamsethnic cleansingAzerbaijani-Armenia conflict
Type
Article
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 47 , Issue 6 , November 2019 , pp. 1013 - 1029
Copyright
© Association for the Study of Nationalities 2019

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