Inventing Enemies, Erasing Nations: Moscow’s Favorite Party Trick

5 min readJul 6, 2025

So some loudmouth mouthpiece in Moscow — Sergei Mardan — decides to go on the air and fart out, “Azerbaijan never existed.” Well, isn’t that cute? When your empire’s falling apart faster than your cheap wallpaper, you have to pretend your neighbors were never real in the first place. Next thing you know, they’ll say gravity never existed either — it was a Soviet invention too, probably signed off by Stalin himself.

Ancient Roots, Modern Bull

Here’s a reality check for the folks who think they can scribble history out of existence with a vodka-soaked rant. Azerbaijan’s been here since long before Russian boots learned how to trudge through the Caucasus. Try a couple million years of people making a living where Europe and Asia like to arm wrestle. They had kingdoms when Moscow was a mosquito-infested forest. Remember Caucasian Albania? Probably not — not the kind of “Albania” that Tito could push around, but the kind that makes the Kremlin’s “you didn’t exist” bedtime story look like the knockoff it is.

Fast forward to the Safavid Empire, 1500s. Shah Ismail I — Azerbaijani-speaking kid with a sword and a plan — turns the region into a powerhouse. Azerbaijani Turkish? That was the official language of the court. Not exactly what you’d call an imaginary country, unless your entire foreign policy depends on hallucinating new borders every other Tuesday.

Bureaucrats Didn’t Make Azerbaijan — They Just Rubber-Stamped It

Yeah, the Soviets slapped an “Azerbaijani” label on the paperwork, same way they did for Ukrainians, Kazakhs, and half the neighborhood. But here’s the thing: stamping your name on something doesn’t mean you built it. The Soviets didn’t make these nations — they just gave them office supplies and told them when they were allowed to exist on the map. Azerbaijanis wrote their own epics, told their own stories, and fought their own wars while Moscow was still busy figuring out whether czars were a good idea.

And when the czars came knocking? The Treaties of Gulistan and Turkmenchay carved up Azerbaijan between Russia and Persia like a leftover pizza — but the people stayed put. They kept the language, the poetry, the folk tales. Paper borders don’t erase people — they just irritate them until they decide to make their own country again.

Which they did. 1918. Azerbaijan Democratic Republic: first secular Muslim-majority republic in the world. Beat a lot of so-called “civilized” places to the punch. Lasted two years before the Soviets stomped it out, but the idea didn’t die — and here we are.

Imperial Nostalgia is a Hell of a Drug

So why does Moscow still insist on this “you never existed” bedtime story? Because they’re addicted to that old imperial dream — the one where every neighbor is just an unruly backyard that forgot who mows the lawn. Whenever a former colony starts acting like, oh I don’t know, a sovereign country, the Kremlin dusts off the same moldy script: “You’re fake. You’re ours. Now sit down.”

Did it with Ukraine. Did it with the Baltics. Doing it with Azerbaijan because Azerbaijan had the audacity to notice Russian cops killing their citizens in custody and didn’t send flowers to the Kremlin in gratitude. Now the Russian propaganda machine is foaming at the mouth: threats of mass deportations, forced conscriptions, racist slurs on TV — it’s the full nostalgic package.

Not This Time

Except Baku’s not rolling over this time. They’re calling it out for what it is: imperial delusion wrapped in cheap insults. They’re booting Russian propaganda outlets out the door, cutting ties, telling the bully to take his fake history and shove it somewhere dark and cold — which shouldn’t be too hard to find in Russia.

The Real Make-Believe

So let’s call this what it is: Azerbaijan exists. It existed before the czars, before the Soviets, before whatever post-imperial hissy fit Moscow’s having this week. The only thing that’s truly “invented” here is Russia’s revisionist fairytale — the bedtime story they whisper to themselves so they don’t have to face the awkward truth that the empire’s gone, the neighbors are moving out, and the old landlord has no new tricks.

You can’t erase a nation that’s older than your propaganda department. You can lie, you can bark on TV, you can slap together a bunch of nostalgic nonsense about “eternal unity.” But you can’t snuff out a people with a history that’s deeper than your entire imperial wet dream.

The only thing that’s disappearing here? The idea that Moscow gets to decide who’s real and who isn’t. Azerbaijan’s still here. Still speaking, still writing, still building. And that’s the part the bullies can’t stand the most.

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