Cosmopolitan baku

Among the many points of reflection in looking back on the last 100 years in the Caucasus, a particular pride of place for some Azerbaijanis comes in the status of Baku as a cosmopolitan city: a status claimed by historians who speak of the early twentieth-century border crossings between families and trade networks across Turkey and Iran; and more recently, a status claimed by residents of the city from the Soviet 1960s and 1970s, when these diverse urban elites were at the peak of their social capital. At the same time, however, Azerbaijan had one of the lower rates of intermarriage and out-migration of all the Soviet republics. This essay therefore asks: What does cosmopolitanism mean in this context and what does it tell us about changing Caucasus landscapes?