In the decades since the post-Soviet war the Armenian diaspora in the West has helped turn Karabakh into a surprising democracy, journalist Anna Nemtsova writes in an article included in The Daily Beast.

Karabakh, according to Nemtsova, resembles other quasi-nations dotting the map of the former Soviet Union: Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Transnistria and more recently the embattled self-proclaimed states of Donetsk and Luhansk in Ukraine. “But where those have depended mainly on Russian backing, and critics would argue they are Russian creations, Nagorno-Karabakh has found other sponsors,” the author writes.

According to her, the enclave has support from a population of ethnic Armenians around the world.

Karabakh government is “more at ease and more fair to its people than Armenia itself,” she writes. Thus, to prevent traumatizing revolutions, Stepanakert made elections transparent and honest. “Besides, the state is so tiny that it seems everyone knows everyone, and local officials are just too exposed to cheat the voters,” the article reads.

Arayik Harutyunyan, the prime minister, is of the same opinion. He told The Daily Beast that that with transparent and democratic presidential elections it could beat corruption and organized crime successfully.

This is, according to the journalist, exactly what attracts certain businessmen, who come to live and work here. “Democracy is not the only goal for Nagorno-Karabakh. Very soon, Harutyunyan promised, Karabakh would turn into a black caviar heaven, to demonstrate to Azerbaijan that they not only despise dictatorship, they can also grow rich,” she writes.  

And yet any conversation on the street or in private homes slowly drifts back to memories of war, and to stories of today’s losses on the border.

“Every local schoolboy knows that right after graduation he will put on his uniform and go to defend his state from enemies.”