Bibliography of the history of the Caucasus

This is a select bibliography of English language books (including translations) and journal articles about the history of the Caucasus. A brief selection of English translations of primary sources is included. Book entries have references to journal articles and reviews about them when helpful. Additional bibliographies can be found in many of the book-length works listed below. The External links section contains entries for publicly available select bibliographies from universities. This bibliography specifically excludes non-history related works and self-published books.

Inclusion criteria

Geographic scope of the works include the present day areas of: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and the Ciscaucasia region in southern Russia. Works about the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea are included when they relate to the history of the Caucasus.

Included works should either be published by an academic or notable publisher, or be authored by a notable subject matter expert and have reviews in significant scholarly journals.

Formatting and citation style

This bibliography uses APA style citations. Entries do not use templates; references to reviews and notes for entries do use citation templates. Where books which are only partially related to the history of the Caucasus are listed, the titles for chapters or sections should be indicated if possible, meaningful, and not excessive.

If a work has been translated into English, the translator should be included and a footnote with appropriate bibliographic information for the original language version should be included.

When listing book titles with alternative English spellings, the form used in the latest published version should be used and the version and relevant bibliographic information noted if it previously was published or reviewed under a different title.

General surveys

 * De Waal, T. (2020). The Caucasus: An Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
 * Forsyth, James (2013). The Caucasus: A History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
 * King, C. (2012). The Ghost of Freedom: A History of the Caucasus. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Pre-colonial era

 * Under Construction

Russian imperial era

 * Brisku, A. & Blauvelt, T. K. (Eds.) (2021). The Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic of 1918: Federal Aspirations, Geopolitics and National Projects. London: Routledge.
 * Kazemzadeh, F. (1951). The Struggle for Transcaucasia (1917–1921). New York City: Philosophical Library.

Soviet era

 * Marshall, A. (2010). The Caucasus Under Soviet Rule. New York City, NY: Routledge.
 * Nahaylo, B., & Swoboda, V. (1990). Soviet Disunion: A History of the Nationalities Problem in the USSR. London, UK: Hamilton.
 * Saparov, A (2015). From Conflict to Autonomy in the Caucasus: The Soviet Union and the making of Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Nagorno Karabakh. New York City, NY: Routledge.

Post-Soviet era

 * Zürcher, C. (2007). The Post-Soviet Wars: Rebellion, Ethnic Conflict, and Nationhood in the Caucasus, New York City: New York University Press.

Armenia

 * Hovannisian, R. G. (1967). Armenia on the Road to Independence, 1918. Berkeley: University of California Press.
 * Hovannisian, R. G. (Ed.) (1997). The Armenian People from Ancient to Modern Times, Volume I: The Dynastic Periods: From Antiquity to the Fourteenth Century. New York: St. Martin's Press.
 * Hovannisian, R. G. (Ed.) (2012). The Armenian People From Ancient Times to Modern Times, Volume II: Foreign Dominion to Statehood: The Fifteenth Century to the Twentieth Century. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: MacMillan.
 * Laycock, J. & Piana, F. (2020) Aid to Armenia: Humanitarianism and Intervention from the 1890s to the Present'. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
 * Riegg, S. B. (2020). Russia's Entangled Embrace: The Tsarist Empire and the Armenians, 1801–1914. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, Ithaca.

Azerbaijan

 * Altstadt, A. L. (1992). The Azerbaijani Turks: Power and Identity under Russian Rule. Stanford, California: Hoover Institution Press.
 * Bolubaksi, S. (2011. Azerbaijan: A Political History. London: I.B. Taurus.
 * Hasanli, J. (2016). Foreign Policy of the Republic of Azerbaijan: The Difficult Road to Western Integration, 1918–1920. New York City: Routledge.
 * Swietochowski, T. (2010). Russian Azerbaijan, 1905-1920: The Shaping of a National Identity in a Muslim Community (Cambridge Russian, Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Black Sea

 * Under Construction

Caspian Sea

 * Under Construction

Chechnya

 * Under Construction

Dagestan

 * Chenciner, Robert. (1997). Dagestan: Tradition and Survival. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
 * Chenciner, Robert & Magomedkhanov Magomedkhan. (2023). Dagestan - History, Culture, Identity. New York: Routledge.

Georgia

 * Asmus, R. D. (2010). A Little War that Shook the World: Georgia, Russia, and the Future of the West. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
 * Blauvelt, T. K. & Smith, J. (Eds.) (2016). Georgia After Stalin: Nationalism and Soviet Power. London: Routledge.
 * Coppieteres, B. & Legvold, R. (Eds.) (2005). Statehood and Security: Georgia after the Rose Revolution. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
 * Cornell, S. E. & Starr, S. F. (Eds.) (2009). The Guns of August 2008: Russia's War in Georgia. Armonk, New York: M. E. Sharpe.
 * Hewitt, G. (2013). Discordant Neighbours: A Reassessment of the Georgian-Abkhazian and Georgian-South Ossetian Conflicts. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill.
 * Hewitt, George (Ed.). The Abkhazians: A Handbook. New York City: St. Martin's Press.
 * Jones, S. (2013). Georgia: A Political History Since Independence. London: I. B. Taurus.
 * Jones, S. F. (2005). Socialism in Georgian Colors: The European Road to Social Democracy 1883–191. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
 * Jones, S. F. (Ed.). The Making of Modern Georgia, 1918–2012: The first Georgian Republic and its successors. New York City: Routledge.
 * Lang, D. M. (1962). A Modern History of Soviet Georgia. New York: Grove Press.
 * Lang, D. M. (1957). The Last Years of the Georgian Monarchy: 1658–1832. New York City: Columbia University Press.
 * Lee, E. (2017). The Experiment: Georgia's Forgotten Revolution, 1918–1921. London: Zed Books.
 * McGiffert Ekedahl, C. & Goodman, M. A. (1997). The Wars of Eduard Shevardnadze. London: Hurst & Company.
 * Mitchell, L. (2009) Uncertain Democracy: U.S. Foreign Policy and Georgia's Rose Revolution. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
 * Rayfield, D. (2012). Edge of Empires: A History of Georgia. London: Reaktion Books.
 * Scott, E. (2017). Familiar Strangers: The Georgian Diaspora and the Evolution of Soviet Empire. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
 * Suny, R. G. (1994). The Making of the Georgian Nation (Second ed.). Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press.
 * Trier, T., Lohm, H. & Szakonyi, D. (2010). Under Siege: Inter-Ethnic Relations in Abkhazia. New York: Columbia University Press.

North Caucasus
Hamed-Troyansky, V. (2023). Welcome, Not Welcome: The North Caucasian Diaspora's Attempted Return to Russia since the 1960s. Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 24(3), 585-610.

Other

 * Under Construction

Topical

 * Forestier-Peyrat, E. (2017). Soviet Federalism at Work: Lessons from the History of the Transcaucasian Federation, 1922–1936. Jahrbücher Für Geschichte Osteuropas, 65(4), pp. 529–559.

The arts and culture

 * Under Construction

Famine, violence and terror

 * Balakian, P. (2004). The Burning Tigris: The Armenian Genocide and America’s Response. Harper Perennial.
 * Dédéyan, G., Demirdjian, A., & Saleh, N. (2023). The Righteous and People of Conscience of the Armenian Genocide (B. Mellor, Trans.). Hurst.
 * Morris, B., & Ze’evi, D. (2019). The Thirty-Year Genocide: Turkey’s Destruction of Its Christian Minorities, 1894–1924. Harvard University Press.
 * Suny, R. G. (2015). “They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else”: A History of the Armenian Genocide (First Edition). Princeton University Press.

Religion and philosophy

 * Under Construction

Christianity

 * Under Construction

Islam

 * Under Construction

Judaism

 * Under Construction

Rural studies and agriculture

 * Under Construction

Urban studies and industry

 * Under Construction

Armenia–Azerbaijan conflict

 * Under construction

Biographies

 * Under Construction

Other

 * Blauvelt, T. K. (2021). Clientelism and Nationality in an Early Soviet Fiefdom: The Trials of Nestor Lakoba. London: Routledge.
 * Roobol, W. H. (1976). Tsereteli – A Democrat in the Russian Revolution: A Political Biography. Translated by Hyams, P. and Richards, L. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Historiography and memory studies

 * Kotljarchuk, A., & Sundström, O. (2017). Ethnic and Religious Minorities in Stalin's Soviet Union: New Dimensions of Research. Huddinge: Södertörn University.

Memory studies

 * Under Construction

Identity studies

 * Under Construction

Other works

 * Lee, E. (2020). Night of the Bayonets: The Texel Uprising and Hitler's Revenge, April–May 1945. Barnsley: Greenhill Books.

Reference works

 * Under Construction

English language translations of primary sources

 * Under Construction

Academic journals

 * Journal of Baltic Studies (1970present); four issues per year published by Taylor &amp; Francis for the Association for the Advancement of Baltic Studies; (print),  (online).
 * Journal of Borderlands Studies (1986present); five issues per year published by Taylor &amp; Francis for the Association for Borderlands Studies; (print),  (online).