1962 Ethnic Map of the Caucasus

This is one of the first ethnographic mappings made of Azerbaijan after the 1959 census results, during which the Tats and Udis were added to the list of official nationalities in Azerbaijan but the Talysh were assimilated into the Azerbaijani narod. The assimilation of the large Talysh population was portrayed as a positive consequence of the ethnohistorical advancements that the Marxist Leninist regime afforded the Soviet people because national affiliations--like Talysh--were supposed to become less prevalent as the Soviet people drew closer to communism. The Talysh were particularly vulnerable to assimilation because they lived in a special zone next to Iran, which was subject to heightened border zone laws. This map portrays a restricted area as "Talysh," but we can see that the "Talysh" zone is decreasing by the special note in the map key that signifies that the Talysh are now an ethnographic people of the Azerbaijani narod rather than their own people. The Talysh zone as depicted in the map is also smaller in comparison with earlier maps.