THE CLASH OF MYTHS A Review of The Value of the Past: Myths, Identity and Politics in Transcaucasia by Victor A. Shnirelman

In ethnic conflicts of the former Soviet Transcaucasia, each conflicting group is trying its best to demonstrate the legitimacy of their claims mainly by the criteria of homeland and language. Such choice of criteria is based on Soviet practice, when ethnic groups could enjoy degrees of privilege of territorial political autonomy only when they were considered to be indigenous ethnic groups of the territories in question. Thus, most of the ethnic groups had to show that they were an autochthonous population in a particular territory which had continued to live there using their own language from the very beginning of their existence as a unique ethnic group.