Paper short abstract:

The urban culture of Baku is shaped by the ephemeral character of transition from a socialist regional center to a global capital, the future "Dubai of the Caspian". In this setting different social groups negotiate their concepts of urban culture and cosmopolitanism.

Paper long abstract:

Baku, today the capital of the Republic of Azerbaijan, rapidly developed from a small port at the Caspian Sea into a bustling city attracting people from all over Europe and the Russian Empire when the first oil boom set in in the early 1870s. Within a few decades Baku became a multiethnic city with a European appearance and cultural life defined by western styled theatres and opera houses. The flux of people and impulses continued during Soviet times and especially in the 1960s and 1970s when a vibrant Jazz scene flourished. These western influences are used until today as proof of Baku being "the most cosmopolitan city" of the region or the whole Soviet Union.

I focus on the shifting cultural scene of Baku which is marked by the negotiating processes between two different social groups over concepts of cosmopolitanism and culture: on one side the members of the old, Russian-speaking elite which is today often economically marginalized and therefore feel limited in their creative expressions and in (re-)creating their former (soviet) transnational networks, but nevertheless define themselves as bearers of a world culture defined through Jazz and opera as well as the literature of the last two centuries, on the other side the new English-speaking elite which has the financial opportunities to organize events with international artists and lives and works in real as well as in virtual transnational networks. The discussion processes between both groups represent the dynamics, the continuities and discontinuities of post socialist cities in transition.

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