Rethinking internationalism and peace in Transcaucasia following renewed conflict

This article reinterprets Soviet internationalism not as a historical ideal or failed project, but as a game state —a dynamic, tension-ridden configuration in which solidarity and coercion, cultural autonomy and ideological control, coexisted without resolution. Through the case of Armenian poet Yeghishe Charents, the paper explores how internationalist ideals were both imagined and constrained in the Soviet Transcaucasia. Drawing on literary analysis, published sources, and historical context, it argues that Charents enacted a poetics of solidarity that resisted ethnic essentialism while remaining within the shifting boundaries of ideological orthodoxy. His life and death illuminate how internationalism functioned not as a settled doctrine but as a recursive strain: a structure of feeling and force that governed cultural production in a multiethnic empire. The paper concludes by applying this Charentsian lens to contemporary challenges—digital governance, postcolonial cultural diplomacy, and the aestheticization of dissent—proposing that internationalism today remains a game state : ethically necessary, structurally unstable, and always under strain. • Reinterprets Soviet internationalism as a dynamic “game state” of tensions. • Analyzes Charents' poetics of solidarity amid ideological constraint. • Shows how internationalism functioned as both force and feeling. • Critiques intercultural diplomacy through the lens of Charents' legacy. • Applies historical insights to digital governance and cultural conflict today.