The area of Nagorno-Karabakh per year is. Nagorno-Karabakh
[Application]
Application
This document and its annex were distributed to the United Nations on September 2, 1997 by the Permanent Mission of the Republic of Armenia to the UN in New York.
(unofficial translation)
Your Excellency,
Over the past few years, the Azerbaijani government has been actively disseminating fabricated and false information about Nagorno-Karabakh and the consequences of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The information provided by Azerbaijan about the occupied territories, refugees and displaced persons does not correspond to existing reality.
We are confident that providing inaccurate and unreliable information about Nagorno-Karabakh and the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict to mediators and the international community leads to incorrect decisions and conclusions.
The attached document, which has been prepared on the basis of impartial analysis and official sources, clarifies a number of issues and thus contributes to a better understanding of the existing reality, facts and general situation surrounding the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
I am at your disposal to provide any additional information.
Yours sincerely,
Leonard Petrosyan,
acting President
Nagorno-Karabakh Republic
His Excellency Mr. Kofi Annan,
UN Secretary General,
NY.
Copies of the letter:
UN High Commissioner for Refugees,
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights,
International Organization for Migration,
Interparliamentary Union,
CIS Parliamentary Assembly,
OSCE Parliamentary Assembly,
Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe,
To the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the OSCE Minsk Group member states on
Nagorno-Karabakh.
APPLICATION
DATA ON REFUGEES, DISPLACED PERSONS AND
TERRITORIES OCCUPIED DURING MILITARY OPERATIONS
IN NAGORNO-KARABAKH AND AZERBAIJAN
NAGORNO-KARABAKH
When speaking about the occupied territories of Nagorno-Karabakh, refugees and displaced persons in Nagorno-Karabakh, the NKR leadership uses terms such as “Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region” (NKAO), “Nagorno-Karabakh Republic” (NKR) and “Nagorno-Karabakh” (NK).
NKAO includes territories that were part of the administrative boundaries of the former Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region.
The Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR) territorially covers not the entire Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh in its geographical and historical unity, but the territory of the former NKAO and the Shahumyan region. In these territories, the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR) was proclaimed in accordance with the legislation of the USSR in force at that time, in particular, Article 3 of the USSR Law “On the procedure for resolving issues related to the withdrawal of a union republic from the USSR” dated April 3, 1990 ., as well as the Declaration of the joint session of the Nagorno-Karabakh regional and Shahumyan district Councils of People's Deputies with the participation of deputies of all levels on September 2, 1991 and a national referendum on December 10, 1991. It was the population of these territories that elected and formed the governing bodies of the NKR authorities, about which the mandate of the OSCE Minsk Group of March 1992 refers to “elected and other representatives of Nagorno-Karabakh.”
Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh as a whole represents larger territories.
It also includes the northern part of Nagorno-Karabakh (whose population was predominantly Armenian until 1988), as well as a number of other areas.
In 1918, the number of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh reached 300-330 thousand people.
With normal development of the region, the total number of the Armenian population of NK should have been 600-700 thousand people by 1988. In 1918-1920 As a result of the Turkish-Azerbaijani aggression, which aimed at the genocide of the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh, 20% of the inhabitants of the region died. Only in the capital of the region, the city of Shushi, one of the largest cities in Transcaucasia at that time, and its surroundings, almost 20 thousand Armenians were killed by Turkish-Azerbaijani troops in March 1920. Despite this, when the Autonomous Region of Nagorno-Karabakh - AONK (as the former NKAO was called until 1936) was created in 1923, Armenians made up 95% of the population of the autonomy, and Azerbaijanis - only 3%. Over the 75 years of Soviet-Azerbaijani domination, the size of the Armenian population both in Nagorno-Karabakh as a whole and in the NKAO remained in absolute terms at the same level due to the discriminatory policies of the authorities, which forced Armenians to emigrate (nowadays more than 500 live in Armenia and the CIS countries thousands of Armenians with Karabakh roots); as a result, the number of Armenians in NKAO decreased in relative terms to 77 percent, while the absolute number of Azerbaijanis increased several times as a result of mechanical growth due to immigrants from Azerbaijan.
According to official data from the 1989 census, the population of NKAO was 189 thousand people, of which 145.5 thousand (76.9%) were Armenians, 40.6 thousand (21.5%) were Azerbaijanis. In the Shahumyan region, according to data for the same year, there lived over 17 thousand Armenians (approximately 80% of the region’s population) and about 3 thousand Azerbaijanis. During the census, approximately 23 thousand Armenian refugees from Baku, Sumgait, and a number of other cities remained uncounted, who by the time of the census in January 1989 were actually living in the former NKAO, without local registration, and therefore, according to the old mark in their passport about registration, were assigned to the places of their previous residence.
The northern part of Nagorno-Karabakh, transferred in 1921 by the Russian Bolsheviks to Azerbaijan as part of Nagorno-Karabakh, was not included, like the Shahumyan region, in the Autonomous Region of Nagorno-Karabakh created in 1923 on the territory of the NK (the borders of which Moscow was entrusted with determining Azerbaijan).
- The territories of the northern part of NK, where Karabakh Armenians lived compactly, were repeatedly redrawn and were then included in the newly created administrative regions of the AzSSR in the 1930s and later in order to artificially transform the Armenian population in these territories from the overwhelming majority to the minority population. We are talking about the Dashkesan, Shamkhor, Gadabay, and Khanlar regions, on the territory of which the ancient Karabakh city of Ganja is located (Gandzak in Armenian, former Elisavetpol, in Soviet times - Kirovabad). However, until 1988, Armenians still constituted the overwhelming majority of the population in the zone of compact residence in Northern NK, which covered the mountainous and partially foothill parts of the above-mentioned regions of the former AzSSR.
- In 1988, Armenians lived in these territories (by region):
- in Khanlarsky - 14.6 thousand people,
- in Dashkesan - 7.3 thousand people,
- in Shamkhorsky - 12.4 thousand people,
- in Gadabek - 1.0 thousand people,
in Ganja - 48.1 thousand people.
Total - 83.4 thousand people.
That is, the Armenian population of Northern Nagorno-Karabakh was more than twice the size of the Azerbaijani population in the former NKAO (in the city of Ganja alone there were 7 thousand more Armenians than Azerbaijanis in the former NKAO as a whole, or four times more than there were Azerbaijanis in city of Shusha).
During the fighting in the summer-autumn of 1992, the Azerbaijani army occupied the entire Shaumyan region, about two-thirds of the Mardakert region, and parts of the Martuni, Askeran and Hadrut regions of the NKR. As a result, 66 thousand Armenians became refugees and displaced persons. After the liberation of most of the occupied territories by the NKR Defense Army (except for the Shaumyan and parts of the Mardakert and Martuni regions of the NKR), 35 thousand refugees returned to the territory of the NKR. However, due to the fact that their villages were either completely destroyed or continue to remain under Azerbaijani occupation, most of these people should be classified as displaced persons.
Thus, the total number of Armenian refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh is 114 thousand people, including 83 thousand from Northern NKR and 31 thousand mainly from the Shahumyan and Mardakert regions of NKR.
Currently, there are approximately 30 thousand displaced people in the NKR.
With a total Armenian population of NKR in 1991 of 185 thousand people, refugees and displaced persons directly from NKR itself, as of today there are 61 thousand people, which is 33 percent of the Armenian population of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. That is, a third of the population of the NKR are now refugees or internally displaced persons.
Taking into account refugees from the northern part of Nagorno-Karabakh (see above), the total number of refugees and displaced Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh as a whole reaches, according to 1988 data, 144 thousand people, which is 54 percent of the total Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh (NKR and Northern NK).
Thus, since 1988, every second Karabakh Armenian living at that time in their homeland became a refugee or displaced person.
Despite the fact that the majority of Armenians who lived in Baku, Sumgait, and a number of other cities and regions of Azerbaijan and who became refugees as a result of the conflict 2 came from Nagorno-Karabakh, we deliberately limit ourselves to the geographical and demographic framework of Nagorno-Karabakh and do not talk about this , the largest category of Armenian refugees, which should be the subject of discussion between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
The above figures clearly show that of the two main parties to the conflict - Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan (data for Azerbaijan will be given below) - the first has an incomparably more difficult situation with refugees and displaced persons.
It should be added that, unlike Azerbaijan, the NKR receives practically no assistance for its refugees and displaced persons from international organizations. At the same time, Azerbaijani refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh receive humanitarian assistance from international organizations. Thus, there is also actual discrimination against refugees on the basis of nationality by international organizations.
OCCUPIED TERRITORIES OF NAGORNO-KARABAKH Speaking about the occupied territories of Nagorno-Karabakh, the NKR authorities are talking about the territories of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic occupied by Azerbaijan, which, as mentioned earlier, do not cover the entire Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh in its geographical, historical and ethnic unity, but only the territories of the former NKAO and the Shahumyan region(see above)
, which at the beginning of open hostilities were fully subject to the authority of the NKR leadership.
As a result of hostilities between Azerbaijan and NKR, Azerbaijani troops occupied in 1992 and today occupy about 750 square meters. km of the territory of the NKR, which is 15 percent of its area. We are talking about the entire Shaumyan region (600 sq. km), as well as parts of the Mardakert and Martuni regions.
AZERBAIJAN
According to the propaganda statements of the Azerbaijani authorities and official representatives, 20 percent of the territory of Azerbaijan is currently occupied, and there are supposedly over 1 million refugees and displaced persons in the country. It is also alleged that this situation arose as a result of “Armenia’s aggression against Azerbaijan and the seizure by Armenia of both Nagorno-Karabakh and the adjacent areas.” Let us note that none of the UN Security Council resolutions adopted in connection with the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict contains any expressions about Armenia’s “aggression” and, as a result, demands for the withdrawal of its troops from the territory of Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh
(see resolutions 822, 853, 874, 884 /all from 1993/UNSC).
According to the maps shown by AR representatives, the total area of the territories occupied by the NK Defense Army is supposedly 8,780 square meters. km with a total area of the Republic of Azerbaijan of 86,600 sq. km. A simple arithmetic operation shows that the area of the seven regions of the Azerbaijan Republic adjacent to the NKR is only 10 percent of the indicated territory. Even if we consider, as the leaders of the Republic of Azerbaijan officially declare, that the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic itself is also an “occupied territory,” then even then these territories will make up not 20, but 13 percent 3 .
As mentioned above, not a single UN resolution or OSCE document has ever said anything about the “occupation of the territories of Azerbaijan by Armenia.”
This statement itself is the fruit of the falsification efforts of Azerbaijani propaganda. Since Nagorno-Karabakh cannot occupy itself in any way, therefore the territory of the NKR, which is under the control of the NKR authorities (about 4,300 sq. km) cannot, naturally, under any circumstances be considered “occupied territory of the AR”.
It should be especially noted that the schematic maps presented by the Azerbaijani side, firstly, often have a deliberately distorted scale, in which NK and its surrounding areas are depicted larger than they actually are in relation to neighboring regions; secondly, the line of Karabakh-Azerbaijani military contact is drawn on them much to the east of the actual borders of the confrontation, which is easy to notice if you compare Azerbaijani maps with military and other maps used in the work of the OSCE Minsk Group on Nagorno-Karabakh.
Meanwhile, and after all of the above, the area of occupied territories given by the AR is overestimated.
It is known that the NK Defense Army completely occupied 5 regions of the Azerbaijan Republic (Lachin, Kelbajar, Kubatli, Zangelan and Jebrail) during the fighting.
Agdam and Fizuli districts are partially occupied, generally about 30 percent.
According to Azerbaijani data 4, the area and population of these areas are:
Kelbajar - 1936 sq. km, 50.6 thousand people;
Lachin - 1835 sq. km, 59.9 thousand people;
Kubatly - 802 sq. km, 30.3 thousand people;
Jebrail - 1050 sq. km, 51.6 thousand people;
Zangelan - 707 sq. km, 33.9 thousand people;
The total area of the first 5 districts is 6330 square meters. km. The total area of Agdam and Fizuli is 2480 square meters. km, but of these, 35% of the territory of the Agdam and 25% of the Fizuli regions are under the control of the NK Defense Army, i.e. respectively 383 and 347 sq. km.
Thus, the figures given in Azerbaijani data on the area of occupied territories are 8780 square meters. km is also a falsification.
The total area of the AR territory under the control of the NKR is not 8780 square meters. km, and 7059 sq. km, which is 8 percent of the territory of the former Azerbaijan SSR, that is, two and a half times less than 20%, which the leaders and representatives of the Azerbaijan Republic constantly repeat, deliberately misleading the international community and world public opinion.
Let us recall that Azerbaijan, for its part, occupies 15 percent of the territory of the NKR.
REFUGEES AND DISPLACED PERSONS IN AZERBAIJAN 168 thousand Azerbaijanis left Armenia in 1988-1989 5 . These 168 thousand people who left Armenia 8-10 months after the pogroms of Armenians in Sumgait and the forced expulsion of more than 350 thousand Armenians from the AzSSR, most of them exchanged or sold their homes. The rest received monetary compensation from the Armenian government, while Armenian refugees from Azerbaijan have not yet received any compensation. Almost the entire Azerbaijani population left the former NKAO in 1991-92 during military operations - 40.6 thousand people, or 21.5% of its population
(according to the 1989 census)
According to the above Azerbaijani data, the population of 7 regions, fully or partially occupied by the NK Defense Army, was 483.9 thousand people in 1989. Taking into account the fact that the Agdam and Fizuli regions are partially occupied, the total number of displaced persons who left these areas was approximately 420 thousand people, of which 45 thousand, according to Azerbaijani data, returned to their homes in 1997. Thus, out of the total number of residents of these seven districts, only 375 thousand people are displaced persons and refugees 7.
The total number of Azerbaijani refugees and displaced persons in the AR, therefore, consists of the above number, to which should be added the number of refugees from Armenia (168 thousand people who, as noted above, exchanged houses or received compensation and therefore can only be considered refugees with a stretch ) and Nagorno-Karabakh (40 thousand people).
Thus, as a result of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, there are 583 thousand refugees and displaced persons in Azerbaijan, which is 7.9 percent of the official population of the Republic of Azerbaijan declared by Azerbaijan.
Statements about “a million refugees in Azerbaijan” are the same fruit of propaganda falsifications as statements about “20 percent of the occupied territories of Azerbaijan.”
Let us recall that in the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, a third of the population are refugees and displaced persons. According to the Republic of Armenia, 12 percent of the population in Armenia are refugees. In addition, 300 thousand people in Armenia lost their homes as a result of the 1988 earthquake, and the country itself continues to be under blockade carried out by Azerbaijan and one of the members of the OSCE Minsk Group on NK - Turkey.
BASIC COMPARATIVE DATA IN PERCENTAGE
NKR territory occupied by Azerbaijan - 15%
The territory of Azerbaijan under the control of the NKR Defense Army - 8%
Refugees and displaced persons in the NKR (as a percentage of the population) - 33%
_____________________________
Refugees and displaced persons in Azerbaijan (as a percentage of the population) - 7.9%
- 1 Sources of information:
- USSR population census 1989
- Statistics Department of the Regional Council of the NKAO
- District Executive Committee of Shaumyanovsky District
Committee for Refugees of NKAO
2 Over 350 thousand Armenians who are in Armenia, Russia, CIS countries and abroad have left Azerbaijan.
4 Data from the Ministry of Defense of the AR, distributed by the Embassy of the AR in the Russian Federation in the fall of 1994, population census data, the book “Azerbaijan SSR - Administrative-Territorial Division”, Azgosizdat, Baku, 1979, Azerbaijani newspaper “Mukhalifat” dated April 3, 1996, etc. .d.
5 This was precisely their number in Armenia according to official data at the beginning of 1988; in Baku they arbitrarily call the figure 200 and even 250 thousand people.
Artsakh - Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR), as an independent state, has existed since September 2, 1991. The territory of the NKR mainly covers the Artsakh Ashkhar of Greater Armenia.
After the first division of Armenia (387), Artsakh passed to Persia. As part of Persia, Artsakh, together with Utik and Akhvank, is included in a single province under the general name “Akhvank”.
During the Arab rule, Artsakh was part of the governorship of Arminia, and later became part of the Armenian kingdom of Bagratuni.
After the fall of Armenian statehood, when Armenia was subjected to raids by foreign conquerors, the Artsakh principalities retained their independence. Being part of Persia, the Artsakh principalities enjoyed special privileges and had a semi-independent status. They were united into the melikdoms of Khamsa (5 melikdoms - Khachen, Jraberd, Dizak, Varanda, Gulistan).
Starting from the 15th century, the eastern Turkish-speaking wild tribes that penetrated into Transcaucasia, the territory of Artsakh, were called Karabakh.
Now Artsakh has emerged as the second Armenian state. Thus, current Armenia consists of the Republic of Armenia (RA) and the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR).
Natural conditions and riches
Artsakh is divided into 7 administrative districts - Shahumyan, Kashatakh, Martakert, Askeran, Shusha, Martuni and Hadrut. Administrative centers are highlighted on the map.
Artsakh has a complex mountainous terrain. The differences in absolute surface heights reach 3700m (Kur-Araxes Valley – 100m, Mount Gomshasar – 3724m). In the northern part of the NKR, the Mvasar ridge stretches from west to east, the highest peak of which is Gomshasar.
The relatively large river of Artsakh is Tartar (also known as Terter, Trtu), on which the Sarsang reservoir is built. The rivers Khachenaget, Ishkhanaget and Akari are also famous in Artsakh. Basically, all the valleys of Artsakh rivers are covered with dense forests. There are also many mineral springs.
Artsakh is beautiful...
Population
Ancient Greek and Roman sources indicate that long before our era, the inhabitants of Artsakh, Utik and all other Ashkhars of Greater Armenia were Armenians and spoke one single language - Armenian. The fact that Armenians have lived in Artsakh for thousands of years is evidenced by not only Armenian, but also Arab, Persian, Georgian and Turkish authors.
There are many other proofs that Artsakh was originally inhabited by Armenians. More than a thousand Armenian rock inscriptions, more than 1,600 historical, architectural and religious monuments were discovered on the territory - monasteries, churches, castles, ancient cemeteries, khachkars, but not a single non-Armenian monument built before the 18th-19th centuries.
In the 18th-19th centuries, Turkish-speaking nomadic tribes penetrated into Artsakh, who until 1926. All-Union (former USSR) population count were officially called Caucasian Tatars. Later they were called Azerbaijanis.
Today only Armenians live on the territory of the NKR.
Cities
The capital of the NKR is Stepanakert, built on the left bank of the Karkar River. Stepanakert is an old Armenian settlement, which was formerly called Vararakn.
Stepanakert has experienced relatively rapid population and economic growth in recent years. About 1/3 of the NKR population lives in Stepanakert.
Stepanakert is not only the administrative and political, but also the cultural and industrial center of the NKR. Here are the administration of the President of the Republic, the National Assembly, the government, the state university, many technical colleges and schools, and the main cultural and health institutions.
Among the industrial enterprises known are a silk factory, a building materials factory, a carpet weaving factory, an electrical engineering factory and a wine and vodka factory. There are also shoe, furniture and other enterprises.
The second city of Artsakh is Shushi. The city is located 10 km south of Stepanakert, on a high plateau, on the Stepanakert-Goris highway.
In historical sources, the city of Shushi is known as an impregnable fortress, where the population of the region defended itself during enemy attacks. In the 19th century, Shushi became one of the largest trade, craft and cultural centers of Transcaucasia, second in population (more than 40 thousand) only to Tbilisi and Baku, despite the fact that the main elite of Tbilisi and Baku consisted of Armenians.
In the early Middle Ages, Shushi was called Shikakar, later – Karaglukh, Kar.
The city was rebuilt according to the general plan. 2-3 storey residential buildings, schools, hotels, shops, churches were built. Particularly attractive are the Church of St. Amenaprkich Ghazanchetsots, the building of the Khandamiryan Theater and so on.
A military clash arose here, since the vast majority of the inhabitants inhabiting the area have Armenian roots. The essence of the conflict is that Azerbaijan makes well-founded demands on this territory, but the inhabitants of the region gravitate more towards Armenia. On May 12, 1994, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh ratified a protocol establishing a truce, resulting in an unconditional ceasefire in the conflict zone.
Excursion into history
Armenian historical sources claim that Artsakh (the ancient Armenian name) was first mentioned in the 8th century BC. If you believe these sources, then Nagorno-Karabakh was part of Armenia back in the early Middle Ages. As a result of the wars of conquest between Turkey and Iran in this era, a significant part of Armenia came under the control of these countries. The Armenian principalities, or melikties, at that time located on the territory of modern Karabakh, retained a semi-independent status.
Azerbaijan takes its own point of view on this issue. According to local researchers, Karabakh is one of the most ancient historical regions of their country. The word “Karabakh” in Azerbaijani is translated as follows: “gara” means black, and “bagh” means garden. Already in the 16th century, together with other provinces, Karabakh was part of the Safavid state, and after that it became an independent khanate.
Nagorno-Karabakh during the Russian Empire
In 1805, the Karabakh Khanate was subordinated to the Russian Empire, and in 1813, according to the Gulistan Peace Treaty, Nagorno-Karabakh also became part of Russia. Then, according to the Turkmenchay Treaty, as well as the agreement concluded in the city of Edirne, Armenians were resettled from Turkey and Iran and settled in the territories of Northern Azerbaijan, including Karabakh. Thus, the population of these lands is predominantly of Armenian origin.
As part of the USSR
In 1918, the newly created Azerbaijan Democratic Republic gained control over Karabakh. Almost simultaneously, the Armenian Republic makes claims to this area, but the ADR made these claims. In 1921, the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh with the rights of broad autonomy was included in the Azerbaijan SSR. After another two years, Karabakh receives the status of (NKAO).
In 1988, the Council of Deputies of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Okrug petitioned the authorities of the AzSSR and Armenian SSR republics and proposed to transfer the disputed territory to Armenia. was not satisfied, as a result of which a wave of protest swept through the cities of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Okrug. Demonstrations of solidarity were also held in Yerevan.
Declaration of Independence
In the early autumn of 1991, when the Soviet Union had already begun to fall apart, the NKAO adopted a Declaration proclaiming the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. Moreover, in addition to the NKAO, it included part of the territories of the former AzSSR. According to the results of a referendum held on December 10 of the same year in Nagorno-Karabakh, more than 99% of the region's population voted for complete independence from Azerbaijan.
It is quite obvious that the Azerbaijani authorities did not recognize this referendum, and the act of proclamation itself was designated as illegal. Moreover, Baku decided to abolish the autonomy of Karabakh, which it enjoyed during Soviet times. However, the destructive process has already been launched.
Karabakh conflict
Armenian troops stood up for the independence of the self-proclaimed republic, which Azerbaijan tried to resist. Nagorno-Karabakh received support from official Yerevan, as well as from the national diaspora in other countries, so the militia managed to defend the region. However, the Azerbaijani authorities still managed to establish control over several areas that were initially declared part of the NKR.
Each of the warring parties provides its own statistics of losses in the Karabakh conflict. Comparing these data, we can conclude that during the three years of the showdown, 15-25 thousand people died. At least 25 thousand were wounded, and more than 100 thousand civilians were forced to leave their places of residence.
Peaceful settlement
Negotiations, during which the parties tried to resolve the conflict peacefully, began almost immediately after the independent NKR was proclaimed. For example, on September 23, 1991, a meeting was held, which was attended by the presidents of Azerbaijan, Armenia, as well as Russia and Kazakhstan. In the spring of 1992, the OSCE established a group to resolve the Karabakh conflict.
Despite all attempts by the international community to stop the bloodshed, a ceasefire was achieved only in the spring of 1994. On May 5, the Bishkek Protocol was signed, after which the participants ceased fire a week later.
The parties to the conflict were unable to agree on the final status of Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan demands respect for its sovereignty and insists on maintaining territorial integrity. The interests of the self-proclaimed republic are protected by Armenia. Nagorno-Karabakh stands for a peaceful resolution of controversial issues, while the authorities of the republic emphasize that NKR is capable of standing up for its independence.
The Gandzasar Monastery is located in the central part of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR) - an independent state formed as a result of the collapse of the former Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic into two parts: the Azerbaijan Republic and the NKR. The Republic of Azerbaijan is populated primarily by Muslim Turks, known since the 1930s as "Azerbaijanis". The Nagorno-Karabakh Republic is home to Armenians who traditionally profess Christianity.
The Nagorno-Karabakh Republic was proclaimed in 1991 on the basis of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region (NKAO) - an Armenian self-governing unit within the USSR, territorially subordinate to Soviet Azerbaijan. In the past, Artsakh, the 10th province of the ancient Armenian Kingdom, was located on most of the territory of the modern Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. Despite the fact that the toponym “Karabakh” remains in use to this day, it is gradually being replaced by a more authentic and adequate name of the country - “Artsakh”.
Nagorno-Karabakh is a presidential republic with a population of approximately 144 thousand people. The main legislative and representative body of the republic is the National Assembly.
The president of the republic, the third in a row, is Bako Sahakyan (elected in 2007). President Sahakyan replaced President Arkady Ghukasyan, head of the republic from 1997 to 2007. The country has been developing its ties with the international community for many years.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Nagorno-Karabakh has representative offices in Australia, Germany, Lebanon, Russia, the United States and France. NKR maintains close economic and military relations with the Republic of Armenia. The borders of the republic are under the protection of the Nagorno-Karabakh Defense Army, considered one of the most combat-ready armies in the entire post-Soviet space.
In October 2008, the wedding of 675 newlywed couples from the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic took place in the Gandzasar Monastery. |
October 2008: Collective wedding ceremony at the Gandzasar Monastery, Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh). Along with taking on the duties of godparents, seven Armenian philanthropists who arrived from Russia witnessed the wedding. The main godfather and sponsor of the Big Wedding was a famous philanthropist, a devoted patriot of Karabakh - Levon Hayrapetyan, a descendant of the ancient Asan-Jalalyan family. |
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Nagorno-Karabakh in antiquity and the Middle Ages
The history of Nagorno-Karabakh's statehood goes back to ancient times. According to Movses Khorenatsi, a 5th century historian and founder of Armenian historiography, Artsakh was part of the Armenian Kingdom already in the 6th century BC, when the Ervanduni (Ervandid) dynasty asserted its power over the Armenian Highlands after the collapse of the state of Urartu. Greek and Roman historians, such as Strabo, mention Artsakh in their works as an important strategic region of Armenia, supplying the best cavalry to the royal army. In the first century BC. e. King of Armenia Tigran II (reigned 95 - 55 BC) built one of four cities in Artsakh, named Tigranakert after him. The name of the area “Tigranakert” was preserved in Artsakh for centuries, which allowed modern archaeologists to begin excavations of the ancient city in 2005.
In 387 AD, when the united Armenian Kingdom was divided between Persia and Byzantium, the rulers of Artsakh had the opportunity to expand their possessions to the east and form their own Armenian state - the Kingdom of Aghvank. “Agvank” is named after one of the great-grandsons of Patriarch Hayk Nahapet - the legendary ancestor of the Armenians, the great-great-grandson of righteous Noah. The administration of the Aghvank Kingdom was carried out from the Armenian-populated provinces of Artsakh and Utik. Agvank controlled a vast territory, including the foothills of the Greater Caucasus and part of the coast of the Caspian Sea.
In the fifth century, the Kingdom of Aghvank became one of the cultural centers of Armenian civilization. According to the 7th century Armenian historian Movses Kagankatvatsi, author of “The History of the Country of Agvank” (Armenian. Պատմություն Աղվանից Աշխարհի ), a large number of churches and schools were built in the country. Revered by Armenians, St. Mesrob Mashtots, the creator of the Armenian alphabet, opened the first Armenian school at Amaras Monastery, around 410. Poets and storytellers, such as the 7th century author Davtak Kertoh, create masterpieces of Armenian literature. In the fifth century, King Agvanka Vachagan II the Pious signed the famous Agveni Constitution (Arm. Սահմանք Կանոնական ) is the oldest surviving Armenian constitutional decree. Hovhannes III Odznetsi, Catholicos of All Armenians (717-728), subsequently included the Aghven Constitution in the pan-Armenian legal collection known as the “Code of Laws of Armenia” (Armen. Կանոնագիրք Հայոց ). One of the chapters of the “History of the Country of Agvank” is entirely devoted to the text of the Agvan Constitution.
In the Middle Ages, during the period of feudal fragmentation, the Agvank Kingdom split into several separate Armenian principalities, the most significant of which were the Upper Khachen (Aterk) and Lower Khachen principalities, as well as the principalities of Ktish-Bakhk and Gardman-Parisos. All these principalities were recognized as part of Armenia by the leading world powers. The Byzantine Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus (905-959) addressed his official letters to “the Prince of Khachen, in Armenia.”
In the middle of the 9th century, the feudal lords of Artsakh recognized the power of the Bagratuni (Bagratid) dynasty, collectors of Armenian lands, who in 885 restored an independent Armenian state, the capital of which was the city of Ani. In the 13th century, Grand Duke Asan Jalal Vakhtangyan (reigned from 1214 to 1261), founder of the Gandzasar Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, united all the small states of Artsakh into one single Principality of Khachen. Hasan Jalal called himself “autocrat” and “king”, and his state is also known in history as the Kingdom of Artsakh.
After the weakening of the united Khachen Principality as a result of the Tatar-Mongol invasion, Tamerlane’s wars and attacks by Turkic nomads from the hordes of the Black and White Sheep, Artsakh formally became part of the Persian Empire, but did not lose its autonomy. From the 15th to the 19th centuries, power in Artsakh belonged to five united Armenian feudal entities - melikdoms, known as the Five Principalities or Melikdoms of Khamsa. Five principalities/melikdoms - Khachen, Gulistan, Jraberd, Varanda and Dizak - had their own armed forces, and the Armenian meliks (princes) were often perceived as representatives of the political will of the entire Armenian people. According to the testimony of Russian and European diplomats, military commanders and missionaries (such as Field Marshal A.V. Suvorov and Russian diplomat S.M. Bronevsky), the total power of the Armenian troops of Artsakh in the 18th century reached 30-40 thousand infantrymen and horsemen.
In the 1720s, the Five Principalities, under the leadership of the spiritual leaders of the Holy See of Gandzasar, led a large-scale national liberation movement aimed at restoring the Armenian state with the assistance of Russia. In a letter to the Russian Tsar Paul I, the Armenian meliks of Artsakh reported on their country as “the region of Karabagh, as the only remnant of ancient Armenia, which preserved its independence through many centuries” and called themselves “princes of Greater Armenia.” Field Marshal A.V. Suvorov begins one of his reports with the words: “The autocratic province of Karabagh remained from the great Armenian state after Shah Abbas for two centuries.”
At the beginning of the 18th century, the Holy See of Gandzasar for some time became the religious center of the entire world Armenian community. This continued until the Supreme See of Holy Etchmiadzin again assumed this role.
Historical roots of the Karabakh conflict
The term "Karabakh" has been known since the 16th century. This geographical concept designated the eastern outskirts of Artsakh, which in the Middle Ages were periodically invaded by Turkic tribes from Central Asia.
The term "Karabakh" has Armenian roots, referring to the Principality of Bakhk (Ktish-Bakhk), which occupied the southern part of the Artsakh and Syunik regions between the 10th and 13th centuries. The Turkic nomadic tribes that penetrated Transcaucasia began to use the term “Karabakh” due to its phonetic (sound) similarity with the Turkic word “kara” (black) and the Persian word “bakh” (garden). Such phonetic incidents are not uncommon in situations where migrants try to adopt and alter in their own way the geographical names of the indigenous population.
With the expansion of the Turkic-Islamic colonization of the Middle East, Asia Minor, the Balkans and Transcaucasia, the nomads gradually pushed the indigenous Christian population into the mountains, and they themselves occupied the lowland territories. As a result of this process, in the central and eastern regions of modern Azerbaijan, the indigenous Armenian population was forced to flee to the west, to inaccessible areas inhabited by the Armenian mountaineers of Artsakh since ancient times.
To control the full cycle of transhumance cattle breeding, the nomadic Turks planned to occupy not only the plains but also mountain pastures in Artsakh and other regions of the Armenian Highlands. For many centuries, the Armenian people managed to repel the attempts of the Turks to colonize the territories of Transcaucasia. A 13th-century inscription engraved on the wall of the Cathedral of the Holy Mother of God of the Dadivank Monastery tells of the victories of the Artsakh prince Hasan the Great in his 40-year war against the Seljuk Turks.
By the mid-18th century, the long-term Armenian-Turkish war with Ottoman invaders had devastated Artsakh, and internal divisions weakened the power of the Armenian princes. As a result, Muslim nomads managed to advance into the mountainous part of Artsakh, capture the Shushi fortress and proclaim the so-called “Karabakh Khanate” - an Armenian-Turkic principality that existed for just over 40 years. In 1805, the “Karabakh Khanate” was annexed to the Russian Empire and was soon abolished. All three representatives of the dynasty of “Karabakh khans” - Panah-Ali, his son Ibrahim-Khalil and grandson Mehdi-Kuli died a violent death at the hands of the Persians, Armenians and Russians.
The liquidation of the Khanate served to establish stability and peace in relations between the Armenian population and the Muslim minority in Artsakh. The administrative center of the region, the city of Shushi, became the trade and cultural center of the region. Many outstanding musicians, artists, writers, historians and engineers - both Christian Armenians and Muslims - were born and worked in Shushi.
Despite the relatively quick liquidation of the “Karabakh Khanate,” some of the Turkic colonists did not return to their former territories in the Mugan Steppe, but wished to remain in Artsakh. After the Turks settled the city of Shushi, outbreaks of interreligious tensions began to arise in the city.
The Armenian-Turkic conflict in Artsakh flared up in full force at the beginning of the 20th century. In 1905-1906, almost all of Transcaucasia, and Artsakh in particular, was drawn into the so-called “Armenian-Tatar war” (the ethnonym “Azerbaijanis” fully came into use only in the 1930s; instead, the Russians called the Azerbaijanis “Caucasian Tatars” ").
Nagorno-Karabakh after the October Revolution of 1917
The situation in Nagorno-Karabakh worsened significantly after the fall of the Russian Empire in October 1917. In 1918, three independent states emerged in Transcaucasia - Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. From the very first days of their existence, all three republics plunged into territorial disputes with each other. During this tragic period, in March 1920, Transcaucasian Muslim Turks (future “Azerbaijanis”) and the Turkish interventionists who supported them committed a large-scale massacre of the Armenian population in the administrative and cultural center of the region, the city of Shushi, while continuing the policy of genocide of the Armenian people, started by the government of the Ottoman Empire in 1915. Up to 20 thousand Armenians from Shushi were killed, about 7 thousand buildings of the city were destroyed. A large amount of documentary evidence of the pogrom has been preserved, including photographs indicating the scale of destruction in the Armenian quarters of Shushi. The Armenian half of the city was virtually wiped off the face of the earth. In the same way, thousands of Armenian cities and villages in Western Armenia, Cilicia and other regions of the Ottoman Empire were destroyed and burned during the genocide in 1915-1922.
Nagorno-Karabakh under Bolshevik rule
In 1921, the Bolsheviks recognized Artsakh as part of Armenia, along with two other predominantly Armenian-populated regions: Nakhichevan and Zangezur (ancient Syunik, whose population managed to defend their right to remain in Armenia). The leader of the Azerbaijani Bolsheviks, Nariman Narimanov, personally congratulated his Armenian comrades on determining the status of all three provinces within the borders of Armenia. However, Baku's position quickly changed. Azerbaijan's oil blackmail (Baku did not send kerosene to Moscow) and Russia's desire to enlist the support of Turkish leader Kemal Ataturk led to Joseph Stalin, who at that time served as People's Commissar for Nationalities, forcibly changing the decision of the Soviet authorities and transferring Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan. 1921, which caused a storm of indignation among the Armenian majority of the region.
In 1923, Nagorno-Karabakh received the status of an autonomous region within the Transcaucasian Federative SSR (later Soviet Azerbaijan), thus becoming the only Christian autonomy in the world subordinate to a Muslim territorial-political entity.
Over the next 70 years, Azerbaijan applied various forms of ethno-religious, demographic and economic discrimination towards Nagorno-Karabakh, seeking to expel Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh and populate the region with migrant Azerbaijanis.
Nagorno-Karabakh as an autonomous region of the USSR
The fact that official Baku tried to expel the Armenian majority from Nagorno-Karabakh was not a secret for the Karabakh residents themselves, who sent folders of complaints to the Kremlin about the illegal actions of Azerbaijan. However, Azerbaijan acted secretly and skillfully disguised its policy with demagoguery about the “brotherhood of the Transcaucasian peoples” and “socialist internationalism.”
The veil of secrecy was lifted after the collapse of the USSR. In 1999, the former leader of Soviet Azerbaijan - and later its third president - Heydar Aliyev stated in public speeches that since the mid-1960s his government had pursued a conscious policy of expelling Armenians from the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh by changing the demographic balance in the area in favor of the Azerbaijanis. (Source: “Heydar Aliyev: A state with opposition is better”, newspaper “Echo” (Azerbaijan), Number 138 (383) CP, July 24, 2002). Aliyev not only admitted to what he had done on the pages of the press, but also made it clear that he was proud of it.
In Nagorno-Karabakh, the Heydar Aliyev demographic policy led to a complete stop in the growth of the Armenian population of the region: NKAO was the only unit of national-territorial division of the USSR, where both the absolute and relative growth of the titular nationality (Armenians) was negative. NKAO was also the only unit of the national-territorial division of the USSR, where, despite the Christian majority of the population, there was not a single functioning church.
The number of the Azerbaijani minority increased sharply: if, according to the 1926 census, Azerbaijanis (officially listed as “Turks”) made up only 9% of the region’s population, and Armenians 90%, then by 1986 the number of Azerbaijanis of the total population amounted to 23%. By 1980, 85 Armenian villages had disappeared in Nagorno-Karabakh, while 10 new Azerbaijani villages had been added.
One of the reasons for Azerbaijan's demographic expansion in Nagorno-Karabakh lies in the events associated with the episode of almost complete disappearance of the Turkic minority from the region in the 1930s. After the monstrous massacre in Shushi in 1920, Azerbaijani nationalists seemed to have achieved their goal - the Armenian population of the city was destroyed, and Shushi ceased to be the cultural and political center of the Armenians of Transcaucasia. However, the mass killing of workers, traders and technical specialists, as well as the destruction of most of the city's urban infrastructure, backfired on the Azerbaijanis. Despite the fact that the Azerbaijanis became the masters of Shushi, the city, or rather, what was left of it, quickly fell into decay and became unsuitable for use as a populated area for two decades to come. This circumstance, as well as the plague epidemic in Nagorno-Karabakh in the 1930s, led to the mass migration of Azerbaijanis from Shushi. By 1935, there were practically no Azerbaijanis left in Nagorno-Karabakh who were descendants of the “original” community of Muslim Turks who had lived in the region since the times of the “Karabakh Khanate”. This is where the story of the “old” Azerbaijani community of Nagorno-Karabakh ended. The “Stalinist” census of the population of the region in 1939 was completely fabricated by the Baku leadership of Mirjafar Bagirov to create the appearance of the presence (and even growth) of Azerbaijanis in the region. All Azerbaijanis who were registered by the All-Union Population Census in the post-war years were descendants of migrant colonists sent to Nagorno-Karabakh from other regions of the republic.
Armenians periodically sent petitions to Moscow, in which they asked to protect them from the policies of the Baku authorities and to reunite the region with Soviet Armenia. The most large-scale actions were taken in 1935, 1953, 1965-67 and 1977.
Although official Baku, during the period of strong centrist power of the USSR, did not hide its extremely negative attitude towards the protests in Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan did not have the opportunity to use force against the Armenian population of the region. By the middle of 1987, the actions of the Baku authorities took on the character of openly forcing Armenians to leave the republic.
According to President Heydar Aliyev himself and his Minister of Internal Affairs, Major General Ramil Usubov, the main anti-Armenian demographic actions were organized by Azerbaijan in the city of Stepanakert, the administrative center of Nagorno-Karabakh, and in the regions north of Nagorno-Karabakh (Source: Ramil Usubov, “ Nagorno-Karabakh: the rescue mission began in the 70s,” Panorama, May 12, 1999). These Armenian-populated territories - Shamkhor, Khanlar, Dashkesan and Gadabay regions were not included in the autonomous region in 1923, and there the Baku authorities managed to reduce the proportion of the Armenian population and relieve people of Armenian origin from their leadership positions. The only exception was the Shaumyan district of Azerbaijan, which bordered the NKAO.
Another vector of Azerbaijan’s anti-Armenian policy at the beginning of Gorbachev’s perestroika (1985-1987) was aimed at the destruction of Armenian architectural monuments in Nagorno-Karabakh and adjacent areas, and the appropriation, or alienation, of the Armenian historical and cultural heritage. The purpose of these actions was to “cleanse” Azerbaijan of traces of the Armenian historical and cultural presence. The methods of the Baku authorities also included the destruction of archival documents, reprinting historical evidence with the removal of references to Armenians, and the publication of revisionist publications making territorial claims to Soviet Armenia.
Perestroika and glasnost: secession of Nagorno-Karabakh from the Azerbaijan SSR
The strengthening of anti-Armenian sentiments in Azerbaijan in 1987 alerted the population of Nagorno-Karabakh. The catalyst for a new wave of popular movement for the secession of Nagorno-Karabakh from the Azerbaijan SSR was the events in the large Armenian village of Chardakhly in the Shamkhor region of Azerbaijan. Chardakhly was not included in the NKAO in 1921 during the formation of the autonomous region. When a man who spent part of his life in Armenia became the director of the Chardakhly state farm, the Azerbaijani authorities removed him from his position, and the population of the village was openly demanded to leave Azerbaijan. When the Armenians refused to comply with this demand, the leadership of the Shamkhor region staged two pogroms in Chardakhly - in October and December 1987. The Soviet newspaper “Selskaya Zhizn” wrote about the Chardakhly incident in its issue dated December 24, 1987. In October 1987, a the first rally in defense of the Chardakhlin residents.
After the events in Chardakhly, the Armenians of the NKAO came to the conclusion that history was repeating itself, and further being under the rule of Baku was fraught with disaster.
Inspired by the policies of perestroika and glasnost, the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh launched the first mass democratic movement in the USSR in their homeland, which was soon supported by most of the region’s party apparatus. The movement spread to the territory of Armenia. Rallies of thousands took place in Yerevan and other cities of the republic.
On February 20, 1988, the regional council of people's deputies of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region, which for 70 years had been a purely formal administrative body, officially appealed to the Azerbaijan SSR and the Armenian SSR with a request to consider the possibility of the region secession from the Azerbaijan SSR and its annexation to the Armenian SSR.
This unprecedented initiative shocked the Moscow authorities, who did not expect that perestroika, glasnost and democracy could be taken so seriously on the ground. Moreover, the Karabakh movement was perceived with caution in the Kremlin, since, in fact, it ran counter to the principles of the totalitarian system and communist authoritarianism. The situation with Nagorno-Karabakh set a precedent for other Soviet autonomous entities, some of which also sought to change their status.
Baku, meanwhile, was preparing its “solution” to the Karabakh issue. Instead of starting a constitutional dialogue, as suggested by the appeal of the Council of People's Deputies of the region, the Azerbaijani government resorted to violence, overnight transforming the legal process into a violent interethnic conflict. Just two days after the announcement of the petition of the NKAO regional council, the Baku leadership armed a crowd of thousands of pogromists from the nearby Azerbaijani city of Agdam and sent it to the regional capital Stepanakert to “punish” the Armenians of NKAO and “restore order.” And 5 days after the Agdam attack, the Soviet Union was shocked by an extraordinary event in the entire history of this state - the massacres of Armenians in the Azerbaijani city of Sumgait, located near Baku. Over the course of two days, dozens of people were brutally killed and maimed. After the belated arrival of Soviet internal troops and police detachments in the city, all 14 thousand Armenians living in the city left Sumgait in panic. For the first time, refugees appeared in the USSR.
The party leadership in the Kremlin was in a state of confusion and inaction, and ordinary Soviet citizens could not believe that the events described could take place in a state where the friendship of peoples was glorified.
The Kremlin's slowness and slowness in condemning the Sumgayit events ultimately turned into a disaster for the entire country. Firstly, the Karabakh issue quickly left the legal channel and took the form of an armed conflict. Secondly, the feeling of impunity soon led to brutal acts of violence in other republics of the USSR. For example, to the pogroms in the Fergana Valley of Uzbekistan in 1989.
Actions of mass violence against Armenians in the Azerbaijan SSR made the process of Nagorno-Karabakh's secession from Azerbaijan irreversible. The nightmare of the Sumgait massacre in February 1988 was repeated in the Azerbaijan SSR more than once - first in Kirovabad in November-December 1988, and then in Baku in January 1990, when hundreds of Armenians died. These were mostly elderly people who did not have time to leave the capital of Azerbaijan after the Sumgayit events. In total, out of 475 thousand Armenians living in Soviet Azerbaijan at the time of the 1979 census, 370 thousand people were expelled. Most of them settled in refugee camps in Armenia.
While tens of thousands of Armenians began to leave the Azerbaijani SSR during the pogroms in the fall of 1988, Azeris, fearing retribution, also began to leave the Armenian SSR, succumbing to panic and rumors. Armenian activists of the Karabakh movement tried in every possible way to stop the process of forced population exchange between Armenia and Azerbaijan and turn events back into the mainstream of the constitutional process. Despite the fact that many expected a response to the Armenian pogroms, restraint and tolerance were shown in Armenia and NKAO; The Sumgait pogrom remained unanswered. This strategy of Karabakh activists was based not only on the belief in the potential effectiveness of legal methods for resolving the Karabakh problem in favor of the Armenians, but also on cold calculation. Armenia and NKAO quickly realized that the Kremlin leadership was opposed to the Karabakh movement and was looking for a reason to suppress it. The Azerbaijanis, on the contrary, did not shy away from violence, since their position on maintaining the status quo in the Karabakh issue was shared by Moscow. Moreover, the Baku leadership tried to provoke the Armenians into retaliatory violence: firstly, to create a pretext for Moscow to liquidate the Karabakh movement, and secondly, to “quietly” bring to its logical conclusion the implementation of the project to expel the Armenians, which began in the fall of 1987 from the republic and the creation of a mono-ethnic, Turkic Azerbaijan.
By 1990, reactionary forces had gained influence in the Kremlin, trying to slow down Gorbachev’s reforms and strengthen the shaky positions of the CPSU. The Baku authorities found important allies in these forces, led by member of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee Yegor Ligachev. Ligachevites considered Nagorno-Karabakh a kind of “Pandora’s box”, from where “the harmful democratic heresy spread throughout the entire territory of the Union,” threatening the territorial integrity of the republics and the hegemony of the Communist Party. The Likhachevites supported the actions of Azerbaijan, placing at its disposal units of the Soviet internal troops, which, together with punitive detachments of the Azerbaijani police, pursued Armenian activists, bombed Karabakh villages from military helicopters and terrorized the villagers of the region. In turn, the Baku authorities did not remain in debt, pleasing some of the corrupt Kremlin patrons with generous bribes.
In April-May 1991, through the joint efforts of Soviet troops and the Azerbaijani police, “Operation Ring” was organized, which led to the deportation of 30 Armenian villages in the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Okrug and the Armenian regions bordering it and the murder of dozens of civilians.
Military aggression of Azerbaijan against Nagorno-Karabakh
The collapse of the USSR freed Azerbaijan's hands. The previous goal of the Azerbaijani nationalists, which sought to “solve” the Karabakh issue by “squeezing out” the Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh, was replaced by a new, more ambitious and brutal strategy, which envisaged the military seizure of Nagorno-Karabakh and the complete physical destruction of the Armenian population of the region. This policy was based on the ideals and principles of the Republic of Azerbaijan in 1918, whose leadership conceived and carried out the massacre of the Armenian population of the former capital of Nagorno-Karabakh, the city of Shushi, in 1920, as a result of which up to 20 thousand people died.
At the end of 1991, Azerbaijan quickly disarmed the former military units of the Soviet Army located on the territory of the republic, and, overnight, having received weapons from four Soviet ground divisions and almost the entire Caspian Flotilla, began full-scale military operations against the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic.
In its anti-Armenian campaign, the Azerbaijani government used all available means, including a large number of foreign mercenaries. Among them were up to 2 thousand mujahideen from Afghanistan and militants from Chechnya, led by the later famous terrorist Shamil Basayev. A few years later, the Islamic mercenaries who fought in Azerbaijan became part of the Al-Qaeda terrorist network. The Azerbaijani military was trained by NATO instructors from Turkey.
In 1988-1994, the American Congress and the structures of the European Union, in their official statements, condemned the aggression of Azerbaijan and supported the right of Nagorno-Karabakh to self-determination. In particular, in 1992, the US Congress passed Amendment 907 to the Freedom Support Act, which limited aid to Azerbaijan due to its use of the blockade against Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh.
Yerevan tried its best to support the people of Nagorno-Karabakh in their unequal struggle for survival, but Armenia itself found itself in an extremely difficult situation as a result of the Spitak earthquake in December 1988, which occurred 8 months after the start of the Karabakh movement. As a result of the December disaster, a third of Armenia's housing stock was destroyed, 700 thousand people were left homeless (every fifth resident of the republic), and 25 thousand people died.
Azerbaijan was not slow to take advantage of the situation created in connection with the earthquake. In the summer of 1989, Azerbaijan completely blocked the railway communication of Armenia through its territory, which stopped restoration work in the Disaster Zone. A few months later, Azerbaijan closed the only road connecting Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia, blocked the airspace over Nagorno-Karabakh and in 1990, with the help of its armed forces, occupied the airport in Stepanakert. These actions led to a blockade of land and air routes with Nagorno-Karabakh, completely cutting off the region from the rest of the world. In Armenia, hundreds of thousands of earthquake victims remained in the open air, and the cities and villages of the republic remained destroyed until the end of the 90s.
Another, even more tragic episode of the war unleashed by Azerbaijan was the shelling of the civilian population of the regional capital, Stepanakert. The shelling was carried out in three ways: multiple launch rocket systems from heights above Stepanakert, from the city of Shushi, which until May 1992 was completely controlled by the armed forces of Azerbaijan; long-range guns from the city of Agdam and attack aircraft of the Azerbaijan Air Force. The shelling lasted for nine long months. Up to 400 surface-to-surface and air-to-surface missiles were fired into the city every day. Just a week after the bombing began, the central part of Stepanakert turned into a pile of ruins, and a few months later most of the city was wiped off the face of the earth.
By early 1992, after 3 years of complete blockade by Azerbaijan, famine began in Nagorno-Karabakh and an epidemic of severe infectious diseases broke out. The hospitals that had survived the destruction were overcrowded with the wounded and sick.
Self-defense and proclamation of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic
The difficult situation did not break the people of Nagorno-Karabakh. In response to Azerbaijan's military aggression, the population of Nagorno-Karabakh organized heroic self-defense. Despite their numerical minority and the lack of adequate weapons due to a complete blockade, the Karabakh Armenians made unprecedented sacrifices for the right to live in their historical homeland and build a democratic state. Thanks to discipline, endurance and good knowledge of military affairs, coupled with an ineradicable desire to survive, the Karabakh people managed to seize the initiative in military operations. The lack of support for Azerbaijan from the Kremlin also had an impact.
With the help of volunteers from Armenia, who were transferred to Nagorno-Karabakh by helicopters from Yerevan under heavy fire from Azerbaijani air defenses, the Artsakh self-defense formations managed not only to push the enemy back beyond the borders of the region, but also to create a wide demilitarized zone along the perimeter of the former borders of the region, which helped to shorten the front line and establish control over the dominant heights and the most important mountain passes. In May 1992, Armenian self-defense units managed to break through the land corridor between Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia through Lachin, thereby ending the three-year blockade.
Echoes of a recent war: restoration work in Gandzasar in the late 1990s, healing the monastery from the traces of Azerbaijani bombing and decades of neglect. Photo by A. Berberyan.
The security zone is the basis of the Nagorno-Karabakh defense system. However, some territories of Artsakh remain under the occupation of Azerbaijan to this day. This is the entire Shaumyan district, the Getashen subdistrict and the eastern parts of the Mardakert and Martuni districts.
In August 1991, Azerbaijan unilaterally seceded from the USSR, at the same time adopting a resolution on the “abolition” of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region, bypassing the USSR Constitution. Azerbaijan’s actions allowed Nagorno-Karabakh to take advantage of the USSR Law “On the procedure for resolving issues related to the secession of a union republic from the USSR,” adopted by the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in April 1990. According to Article 3 of this law, if a union republic included an autonomous entity (republic, region or district), and wanted to leave the USSR, a referendum had to be held separately in each of these entities. Their residents had the right to decide either to remain part of the USSR, or to leave the USSR together with the union republic, or to decide their state status themselves. Based on this law, a joint session of the regional council of people's deputies of the NKAO and the Shaumyanovsky district council proclaimed the secession of Nagorno-Karabakh from the Azerbaijan SSR and announced the creation of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR) within the USSR. When the USSR collapsed in December 1991, the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic held a referendum and declared independence. The referendum took place under the supervision of numerous international observers.
In May 1994, in the capital of Kyrgyzstan, Bishkek, a ceasefire agreement was signed between Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan and Armenia, which stopped hostilities. Since that time, the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic began the process of restoring the economy, strengthening the foundations of liberal democracy and preparing for formal recognition of the republic's independence by the international community.
Policy of destruction of Armenian historical and cultural heritage in Azerbaijan
The Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, a young Christian and democratic state, continues to be opposed by Azerbaijan, a Muslim quasi-monarchical dictatorship of the Middle Eastern type, based on oil production.
Since the late 1960s, Azerbaijan has been ruled by the Aliyev clan, founded by Heydar Aliyev, a KGB general who, after being elected first secretary of the Azerbaijan Communist Party, ruled the Azerbaijan SSR in the 70s and 80s. In 1993, two years after Azerbaijan declared independence, Heydar Aliyev, who had returned from Moscow by that time, organized a military coup and came to power, becoming the third president of the country.
When President Heydar Aliyev died in 2003, his only son Ilham became the head of Azerbaijan. He was “elected” by rigging, as usual, the voting results. Ilham Aliyev continues the traditions of his father's authoritarian rule. In Ilham’s Azerbaijan, any manifestation of dissent is suppressed: opposition parties are virtually banned, there is no free press as such, the Internet is under control, and dozens of people are sent to jail every year for criticizing the authorities or die under unclear circumstances.
Today, the main target of the Aliyev regime in Azerbaijan are monuments of the Armenian historical and cultural heritage, hundreds of which are located in the west of Azerbaijan and in the Nakhichevan region.
In 2006, Ilham Aliyev ordered the destruction of all Armenian churches, monasteries and cemeteries in Nakhichevan. Nakhichevan was recognized as part of the Armenian Republic by both the Entente governments, in 1919-1920, and the Russian Bolsheviks, in 1921. However, under pressure from the Turkish government, Nakhichevan was transferred to the rule of Soviet Azerbaijan. The massive destruction of architectural monuments and khachkars (Armenian stone carved crosses) located in the world famous medieval cemetery in Julfa in the spring of 2006 caused an international protest. The Western press compared Azerbaijani vandalism with the destruction of the Buddha monument in Afghanistan in 2001 by the Taliban regime.
And two years before that, Ilham Aliyev publicly called on Azerbaijani historians to rewrite history textbooks, erasing all references to facts that are not directly related to the Azerbaijani (Turkic) historical heritage of their country. This is truly not an easy task. Azerbaijanis are a relatively young ethnic community. Being descendants of Turkic nomads who migrated from Central Asia, the Azerbaijanis practically did not leave any tangible cultural trace on the territory of modern Azerbaijan.
Unlike Armenia, Georgia and Iran (Persia), whose history and culture were formed in the period of antiquity, “Azerbaijan” as a geographical, political and cultural unit appeared only at the beginning of the 20th century. Until 1918 “Azerbaijan” was not the name given to the territory of the current republic, but to the province of Persia, which bordered present-day Azerbaijan in the south and was populated primarily by Turkic-speaking Persians. In 1918, after long meetings and consideration of several alternative proposals, the Turkic leaders of Transcaucasia decided to proclaim their own state on the territory of the former Baku and Elizavetpol provinces of Russia and call it “Azerbaijan”. This immediately caused a sharp diplomatic reaction from Tehran, which accused Baku of appropriating Persian historical and geographical terminology. The League of Nations refused to recognize and accept the self-proclaimed state of “Azerbaijan” into its membership.
In order to demonstrate the absurdity of the situation with the declaration of independence of “Azerbaijan” in 1918, imagine that the Germans form a national state for themselves and call it “Burgundy” (similar to the name of one of the provinces of France) or “Venice” (similar to the name of the province of Italy) - thereby causing a protest from France (or Italy) and the UN.
Until the 1930s, the concept of “Azerbaijanis” did not exist as such. It appeared thanks to the so-called “indigenization” - a Bolshevik project aimed, in particular, at creating a national identity for many ethnic groups that do not have a self-name. These included the Turks of Transcaucasia, who were mentioned in tsarist documents as “Caucasian Tatars” (along with “Volga Tatars” and “Crimean Tatars”). Until the 1930s, “Caucasian Tatars” called themselves either “Muslims” or identified themselves as members of tribes, clans and urban communities, such as Afshars, Padars, Sarijals, Otuz-ikis, etc. In the beginning, however, the Kremlin authorities decided to call Azerbaijanis "Turks"; it was this term that officially appeared in defining the population of Azerbaijan during the All-Union Census of 1926. Moscow Bolshevik ethnographers also came up with standard surnames for “Azerbaijanis” based on Arabic names with the addition of the Slavic ending “-ov”, and invented an alphabet for their unwritten language.
Today, Azerbaijani historical revisionism and cultural vandalism are openly condemned by Russian and international scientists and politicians. However, the Baku ruling regime ignores international public opinion and continues to treat Armenian historical and cultural monuments on the territory of Azerbaijan as a direct threat to Azerbaijani statehood. However, the interest of the international community in the monuments of ancient Christian architecture helps to stop Azerbaijani vandalism and preserve the priceless cultural and spiritual heritage of the South Caucasus.
Bournoutian, George A. Armenians and Russia, 1626-1796: A Documentary Record. Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 2001, pp. 89-90, 106
On the term "Karabakh" and its connection with the principality of Ktish-Bakhk, see: Hewsen, Robert H. Armenia: a Historical Atlas. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2001. p. 120. See also: Armenia & Karabagh (tourist guide). 2nd edition, Stone Garden Productions, Northridge, California, 2004, p. 243
Bournoutian George A. A History of Qarabagh: An Annotated Translation of Mirza Jamal Javanshir Qarabaghi "s Tarikh-E Qarabagh. Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda Publishers, 1994, Introduction
First General Census of the Russian Empire in 1897 Ed. N.A. Troinitsky; volume I. General summary of the Empire's results of the development of data from the First General Census of Population, carried out on January 28, 1897. St. Petersburg, 1905
See photographic material in: Shagen Mkrtchyan, Shchors Davtyan. Shushi: a city of tragic fate. "Amaras", 1997; also in: Shahen Mkrtchyan. Treasures of Artsakh. Yerevan, Tigran Mets, 2000, pp. 226-229
Newspaper “Communist”, Baku from December 2. 1920; see also: Karabakh in 1918-1923: collection of documents and materials. Yerevan, Publishing House of the Academy of Sciences of Armenia, 1992, pp. 634-645
Cm. All-Union Population Census of 1926. Central Statistical Office of the USSR, Moscow, 1929
See Ramil Usubov: “Nagorno-Karabakh: the rescue mission began in the 70s,” Panorama, May 12, 1999. Usubov wrote: “ It can be said without exaggeration that only after Heydar Aliyev came to the leadership of Azerbaijan did the Karabakh Azeris feel like complete masters of the region. A lot of work was done in the 70s. All this caused an influx of Azerbaijani population into Nagorno-Karabakh from the surrounding regions - Lachin, Agdam, Jabrail, Fizuli, Agjabadi and others. All these measures, carried out thanks to the foresight of the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan Heydar Aliyev, favored the influx of the Azerbaijani population. If in 1970 the share of Azerbaijanis in the population of NKAO was 18%, then in 1979 it was 23%, and in 1989 it exceeded 30%.”.
See: Bodansky, Yossef. “The New Azerbaijan Hub: how Islamist Operations are Targeting Russia, Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh.” Defense & Foreign Affairs’ Strategic Policy, section: The Caucasus, p. 6; see also: "Bin Laden Among Islamists' Foreign Backers." Agence France Presse, report from Moscow, 19 September 1999
See: Cox, Caroline, and Eibner, John. Ethnic Cleansing in Progress: War in Nagorno Karabakh. Institute for Religious Minorities in the Islamic World, Switzerland, 1993
Fowkes, Ben. Ethnicity and ethnic conflict in the post-communist world. Palgrave, 2002, p. thirty; see also: Swietochowski, Tadeusz. Russia and Azerbaijan: A Borderland in Transition. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995. p. 69
Brubaker, Roger. Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the National Question in the New Europe. Cambridge University Press, 1996. Also: Martin, Terry D. 2001. The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001
· Notes · Official site ·
19th century
According to census data from the first half of the 19th century, about a third of the population of the entire territory of Karabakh (together with its lowland part) were Armenians, and about two-thirds were Azerbaijanis. George Burnoutian points out that the censuses show that the Armenian population was mainly concentrated in 8 of the 21 mahals (districts) of Karabakh, of which 5 constitute the modern territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, and 3 are included in the modern territory of Zangezur. Thus, 35 percent of the population of Karabakh (Armenians) lived on 38 percent of the land (in Nagorno-Karabakh), constituting an absolute majority on it (about 90%). According to Ph.D. Anatoly Yamskov, one should take into account the fact that population censuses were conducted in the winter, when the nomadic Azerbaijani population was on the plains, and in the summer months they climbed to high-mountain pastures, changing the demographic situation in the mountainous regions. However, Yamskov notes that the point of view on the rights of nomadic peoples to be considered a full-fledged population of the nomadic territory they seasonally use is currently not shared by the majority of authors, both from post-Soviet countries and from “far abroad” countries, including both pro-Armenian and pro-Azerbaijani works; in the Russian Transcaucasus of the 19th century, this territory could only be the property of the settled population.
Population of Nagorno-Karabakh at the beginning of the twentieth century
According to the 1923 census, Armenians made up 94% of the newly formed NKAO; Of the remaining 6%, the overwhelming majority were Azerbaijanis. Among other minorities stood out the Kurds, who have long inhabited these lands, and the Russians, settlers or descendants of settlers of the 19th-20th centuries; there were also a number of Greeks, also 19th century colonists.
In 1918, Karabakh Armenians claimed:
According to statistical data relating to recent years, the Armenian population of Elizavetpol, Dzhevanshir, Shusha, Karyagin and Zangezur districts, distributed almost exclusively in the mountainous parts of these districts, amounts to 300,000 souls and is the absolute majority in comparison with the Tatars and other ethnic groups, which are only In some areas they make up a more or less significant part of the population, while the Armenians everywhere represent a solid mass. Consequently, the Muslim part of the population can only be in the position of a minority, and because of this minority of 3-4 tens of thousands, the vital interests of the people cannot be sacrificed
In 1918-1920, this area was disputed between Armenia and Azerbaijan; after the Sovietization of Armenia and Azerbaijan, by the decision of the Caucasian Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) on July 4, 1921, it was decided to transfer Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia, but the final decision was left to the Central Committee of the RCP (b), however, with a new decision of July 5, it was left as part of Azerbaijan with granting broad regional autonomy. In 1923, the Autonomous Region of Nagorno-Karabakh (AONK) was formed from the Armenian-populated part of Nagorno-Karabakh (without the Shahumyan and part of the Khanlar regions) as part of the Azerbaijan SSR. In 1937, AONK was transformed into the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region (NKAO). Initially, NKAO bordered on the Armenian SSR, but by the end of the 1930s the common border disappeared.
Ethnolinguistic dynamics
Year | Population | Armenians | Azerbaijanis | Russians | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1923 | 157.800 | 149.600 (94 %) | 7.700 (6 %) | ||
1925 | 157.807 | 142.470 (90,3 %) | 15.261 (9,7 %) | 46 | |
1926 | 125.159 | 111.694 (89,2 %) | 12.592 (10,1 %) | 596 (0,5 %) | |
1939 | NKAO | 150.837 | 132.800 (88,0 %) | 14.053 (9,3 %) | 3.174 (2,1 %) |
Stepanakert | 10.459 | 9.079 (86,8 %) | 672 (6,4 %) | 563 (5,4 %) | |
Hadrut district | 27.128 | 25.975 (95,7 %) | 727 (2,7 %) | 349 (1,3 %) | |
Mardakert district | 40.812 | 36.453 (89,3 %) | 2.833 (6,9 %) | 1.244 (3,0 %) | |
Martuni district | 32.298 | 30.235 (93,6 %) | 1.501 (4,6 %) | 457 (1,4 %) | |
Stepanakert region | 29.321 | 26.881 (91,7 %) | 2.014 (6,9 %) | 305 (1,0 %) | |
Shusha district | 10.818 | 4.177 (38,6 %) | 6.306 (58,3 %) | 256 (2,4 %) | |
1959 | 130.406 | 110.053 (84,4 %) | 17.995 (13,8 %) | 1.790 (1,6 %) | |
1970 | 150.313 | 121.068 (80,5 %) | 27.179 (18,1 %) | 1.310 (0,9 %) | |
1979 | 162.181 | 123.076 (75,9 %) | 37.264 (23,0 %) | 1.265 (0,8 %) | |
189.085 | 145.450 (76,9 %) | 40.688 (21,5 %) | 1.922 (1,0 %) |
During the years of Soviet power, the percentage of the Azerbaijani population of NKAO increased to 21.5% and the Armenian population decreased to 76.9%. Armenian authors explain this by the purposeful policy of the authorities of the Azerbaijan SSR to change the demographic situation in the region in favor of the Azerbaijanis. Similar ethnic shifts towards the titular nationality were also observed in the autonomous republics of the Georgian SSR: Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Adjara. Heydar Aliyev, the third president of Azerbaijan (1993-2003), who in 1969-1982 served as the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Azerbaijan SSR, on July 22, 2002, receiving the founders of the Baku Press Club at the Presidential Palace on the occasion of National Press Day, commenting on this topic, said :
“...I’m talking about the period when I was first secretary, I helped a lot at that time in the development of Nagorno-Karabakh. At the same time, I tried to change the demographics there. Nagorno-Karabakh raised the issue of opening a university there. Everyone objected to us. I thought about it and decided to open it. But with the condition that there be three sectors - Azerbaijani, Russian and Armenian. They opened it. We sent Azerbaijanis from the surrounding areas not to Baku, but there. They opened a large shoe factory there. There was no labor force in Stepanakert itself. Azerbaijanis were sent there from places surrounding the region. By these and other measures, I tried to ensure that there were more Azerbaijanis in Nagorno-Karabakh, and the number of Armenians was reduced.”
The share of the Russian population in Nagorno-Karabakh, as follows from the table, rapidly increased in the pre-war years and, having reached a maximum in 1939, began to decline just as rapidly, which correlates with the processes occurring throughout Azerbaijan and in general throughout Transcaucasia.
Of the five districts of Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Okrug, Azerbaijanis made up the majority in the smallest area, Shusha district, where in 1989, according to the last Soviet census, 23,156 people lived, of whom 21,234 (91.7%) were Azerbaijanis and 1,620 (7%) Armenians. In the city of Shusha itself there lived 17,000 of whom 98% were Azerbaijanis. However, the 1939 census provides different data: the population of the Shusha region is 10,818, of which 6,306 (58.3%) are Azerbaijanis and 4,177 (38.6%) are Armenians. Moreover, most of the Azerbaijanis lived in Shusha, whose population was 5,424 people; in the rural part of the region, Armenians made up the majority. The population of the city of Shusha in 1883 was 25,656 people, of which 56.5% were Armenians and 43.2% Azerbaijanis, but the vast majority of Armenians were killed or left the city as a result of the Shusha massacre at the end of March 1920. In 1939, the largest proportion of Russians was in Stepanakert (5.4%).
In the remaining 4 districts and the city of Stepanakert, Azerbaijanis were a minority, however, they also had settlements with a predominantly Azerbaijani population. Azerbaijani settlements in these 4 regions were the villages of Umudlu, Khojaly and others.