History of Nagorno-Karabakh- Prehistoric period Azykh cave ... Wikipedia

Flag of Nagorno-Karabakh- Flag of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic Flag of Nagorno-Karabakh. The design of the flag was developed on the basis of the Armenian tricolor, three equal horizontal stripes: red, blue and orange, symbolizing the historical and cultural unity with Armenia ... Wikipedia

Armed forces of Nagorno-Karabakh- Defense Army of Nagorno-Karabakh ԼՂՀ ինքնապաշտպանական ուժեր armed forces NKR Year of formation May 9, 1992 Country Nagorno-Karabakh Republic ... Wikipedia

"Security Belt" of Nagorno-Karabakh- "Security Belt" of the NKR (indicated in yellow). Shaded are the territories of the Shaumyan region and the former NKAR, which are considered by the NKR authorities to be "the territories of the NKR occupied by Azerbaijan." "Belt (Zone) of Security" ("Buffer Zone") Nagorno ... ... Wikipedia

Nagorno-Karabakh security belt- "Security Belt" of the NKR (indicated in yellow). Shaded are the territories of the Shahumyan, Martakert and Martuni regions of the NKR, which are considered by the authorities of the NKR to be the territories of the NKR occupied by Azerbaijan. “Belt b ... Wikipedia

Conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh- Nagorny Karabakh (Artsakh) region in Transcaucasia, part of Azerbaijan. The population is 138 thousand people, the vast majority are Armenians. The capital is the city of Stepanakert (population about 50 thousand people). Nagorno-Karabakh before… … Encyclopedia of Newsmakers

State awards of Nagorno-Karabakh

State awards of the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh- State awards of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic - awards that are awarded to citizens of the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Republic for exceptional services to the Fatherland. The highest title of the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh is the title of ... ... Wikipedia

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19th century

According to the censuses of the first half of the 19th century, about a third of the population of the entire territory of Karabakh (together with its flat part) were Armenians, and about two-thirds were Azerbaijanis. George Burnutyan points out that the censuses show that the Armenian population was mainly concentrated in 8 out of 21 mahals (districts) of Karabakh, of which 5 make up 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), making up an absolute majority (about 90%) there. According to Ph.D. Anatoly Yamskov, one should take into account the fact that population censuses were conducted in winter period when the nomadic Azerbaijani population was on the plains, and in summer months it rose to the highland 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 use seasonally is currently not shared by most authors, both from the post-Soviet countries and from the countries of the "far abroad", 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.

The population of Nagorno-Karabakh at the beginning of the 20th century

According to the 1923 census, Armenians made up 94% of the newly formed NKAR; of the remaining 6%, the vast majority were Azerbaijanis. Among other minorities, Kurds stood out, who have long inhabited these lands and Russians, settlers or descendants of settlers of the 19th-20th centuries; there was also a certain number of Greeks, also colonists of the 19th century.

In 1918, the Karabakh Armenians claimed:

According to statistics related to recent years, the Armenian population of Elizavetpol, Jevanshir, Shusha, Karyagin and Zangezur districts, distributed almost exclusively in the mountainous parts of these districts, is 300,000 souls and is the absolute majority in comparison with the Tatars and other ethnic groups, which only in some areas make up a more or less significant part population, while the Armenians everywhere represent a continuous 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 Caucasus Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP (b) of 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, by a new decision of July 5, it was left as part of Azerbaijan with granting wide regional autonomy. In 1923, the Autonomous Region of Nagorno-Karabakh (AONK) was formed from the Armenian-populated part of Nagorno-Karabakh (excluding the Shaumyan and part of the Khanlar regions) as part of the Azerbaijan SSR. In 1937, the AONK was transformed into the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region (NKAO). Initially, the NKAO bordered on the Armenian SSR, but by the end of the 1930s, the common border disappeared.

Ethno-linguistic dynamics

Population of NKAO

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	NKAR	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 region	27.128	25.975 (95,7 %)	727 (2,7 %)	349 (1,3 %)
	Mardakert region	40.812	36.453 (89,3 %)	2.833 (6,9 %)	1.244 (3,0 %)
	Martuni region	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 the NKAO increased to 21.5%, while the percentage of 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 Adzharia. 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 the National Press Day, commenting on this topic, said :

“...I'm talking about the period when I was the first secretary, I helped a lot at that time the development of Nagorno-Karabakh. At the same time, he tried to change the demographics there. Nagorno-Karabakh raised the issue of opening a university there. We all objected. I thought and decided to open. But with the condition that there are three sectors - Azerbaijani, Russian and Armenian. Opened. We sent Azerbaijanis from the adjacent regions not to Baku, but there. They opened a big shoe factory there. There was no labor force in Stepanakert itself. Azerbaijanis were sent there from the places surrounding the region. By these and other measures, I tried to increase the number of Azerbaijanis in Nagorno-Karabakh, and reduce the number of Armenians.”

The share of the Russian population in Nagorno-Karabakh, as follows from the table, increased rapidly in the pre-war years and, having reached a maximum in 1939, began to decline just as rapidly, which correlates with the processes that took place in all of Azerbaijan and in general in the whole of Transcaucasia.

Of the five districts of the NKAO, Azerbaijanis were the majority in the smallest Shusha district, where in 1989, according to the last Soviet census, 23,156 people lived, of which 21,234 (91.7%) were Azerbaijanis and 1,620 (7%) Armenians. In the city of Shusha itself, 17,000 people lived, of which 98% were Azerbaijanis. However, the 1939 census gives other data: the population of the Shusha region is 10818, of which 6306 Azerbaijanis (58.3%) and Armenians 4177 (38.6%). Moreover, most of the Azerbaijanis lived in Shusha, the population of which was 5424 people, in the rural part of the region, the 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% were 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 share of Russians was in Stepanakert (5.4%).

In the remaining 4 regions and the city of Stepanakert, Azerbaijanis were a minority, however, they also had settlements with a predominantly Azerbaijani population. The Azerbaijani settlements in these 4 regions were the villages of Umudlu, Khojaly and others.

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 Republic of Azerbaijan and the NKR. The Republic of Azerbaijan is populated mainly by Muslim Turks, known since the 1930s as "Azerbaijanis". Armenians who traditionally profess Christianity live in the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic.

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 approximately 144,000 inhabitants. The main legislative and representative body of the republic is the National Assembly.

Bako Sahakyan (elected in 2007) is the third President of the republic. President Sahakyan replaced President Arkady Ghukasyan, the 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 offices in Australia, Germany, Lebanon, Russia, the United States and France. The 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, which is considered one of the most combat-ready armies in the entire post-Soviet space.

In October 2008, the wedding of 675 couples of newlyweds from the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic took place in the Gandzasar Monastery.

October 2008: Group wedding ceremony at the Gandzasar Monastery, Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh). Witnesses of the wedding, along with the assumed duties of the godparents, were seven Armenian philanthropists who arrived from Russia. The main godfather and sponsor of the Big Wedding was a well-known benefactor, a devoted patriot of Karabakh - Levon Hayrapetyan, a descendant of the ancient Asan-Jalalyan family.

Nagorno-Karabakh in Antiquity and the Middle Ages

The history of the statehood of Nagorno-Karabakh is rooted in hoary antiquity. According to Movses Khorenatsi, a historian of the 5th century and the founder of Armenian historiography, Artsakh was part of the Armenian Kingdom already in the 6th century BC, when the Yervanduni (Yervandid) 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 Tigran II of Armenia (reigned 95-55 BC) built one of the four cities in Artsakh, named Tigranakert after him. The name of the area "Tigranakert" has been preserved in Artsakh for centuries, which allowed modern archaeologists to start excavations of the ancient city in 2005.

In 387 AD, when the unified Armenian Kingdom was divided between Persia and Byzantium, the rulers of Artsakh were given the opportunity to expand their possessions to the east and form their own Armenian state - the Aghvank Kingdom. “Aghvank” is named after one of the great-grandchildren of Patriarch Hayk Nahapet, the legendary progenitor of the Armenians, the great-great-grandson of righteous Noah. The administration of the Agvank Kingdom was carried out from the Armenian-populated provinces of Artsakh and Utik. Agvank controlled vast territory, including the foothills of the Greater Caucasus and part of the coast of the Caspian Sea.

In the fifth century, the Aghvank Kingdom became one of the cultural centers of the Armenian civilization. According to the 7th century Armenian historian Movses Kaghankatvatsi, author of the History of the Land of Aghvank (Arm. 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 Kertokh create masterpieces of Armenian literature. In the fifth century, the King of Agvank Vachagan II the Pious signed the famous Agven Constitution (arm. Սահմանք Կանոնական listen)) is the oldest surviving Armenian constitutional decree. Hovhannes III Odznetsi, the 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 (Arm. Կանոնագիրք Հայոց ). One of the chapters of the "History of the Aghvank Country" is completely devoted to the text of the Aghven Constitution.

In the Middle Ages, during the period of feudal fragmentation, the Agvank Kingdom broke up 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, to Armenia".

In the middle of the 9th century, the feudal lords of Artsakh recognized the power of the Bagratuni (Bagratid) dynasty, the 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), the founder of the Gandzasar Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, united all the small states of Artsakh into one single Khachen Principality. 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 unified Khachen Principality due to the Tatar-Mongolian invasion, the wars of Tamerlane and the attacks of the 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 century, power in Artsakh belonged to five united Armenian feudal formations - melikdoms, known as the Five Principalities or the 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 testimonies 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 about their country as “the region of Karabakh, as if the only remnant of ancient Armenia, which preserved its independence through many centuries” and called themselves “princes Greater Armenia". Field Marshal A. V. Suvorov begins one of his reports with the words: “The autocratic province of Karabag remained from the great Armenian state after Shah Abbas before two centuries.”

At the beginning of the 18th century, the Holy See of Gandzasar for some time became the religious center of all world Armenians. 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 denoted 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 Bahk (Ktish-Bakhk), which between the 10th and 13th centuries occupied southern part the regions of Artsakh and Syunik. The Turkic nomadic tribes that penetrated the Transcaucasus began to use the term "Karabakh" because of 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 are trying to adopt and alter in their own way geographical names indigenous population.

With the expansion of the Turkic-Islamic colonization of the Middle East, Asia Minor, the Balkans and Transcaucasia, the nomads gradually forced the indigenous Christian population into the mountains, and themselves occupied the plains. 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 hard-to-reach areas inhabited by the Armenian highlanders of Artsakh since ancient times.

In order to control the full cycle of pasture cattle breeding, the nomadic Turks planned to occupy not only the plains but also mountain pastures in Artsakh and other regions of the Armenian Highland. For many centuries, the Armenian people managed to repel the attempts of the Turks to colonize the territories of Transcaucasia. The inscription of the 13th century engraved on the wall of the Cathedral of the Holy Mother of God of Dadivank Monastery tells about the victories of the Artsakh prince Asan the Great in his 40-year war against the Seljuk Turks.

By the middle of the 18th century, the long-term Armenian-Turkish war with the Ottoman invaders ravaged Artsakh, and internal disagreements weakened the power of the Armenian princes. As a result, Muslim nomads managed to advance into the mountainous part of Artsakh, capture the fortress of Shushi and proclaim the so-called "Karabakh Khanate" - an Armenian-Turkic principality that existed for a little over 40 years. In 1805, the "Karabakh Khanate" was annexed to the Russian Empire and soon abolished. All three representatives of the dynasty of "Karabakh khans" - Panah-Ali, his son Ibrahim-Khalil and grandson Mehti-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 commercial 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", part of the Turkic colonists did not return to their former territories in the Mugan Steppe, but wished to remain in Artsakh. After the settlement of the city of Shushi by the Turks, flashes of inter-religious tensions began to appear 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 involved in the so-called "Armenian-Tatar war" (the ethnonym "Azerbaijanis" fully came into use only in the 1930s; instead, Russians called Azerbaijanis "Caucasian Tatars ").

Nagorno-Karabakh after the October Revolution of 1917

The situation in Nagorno-Karabakh worsened considerably after the fall of the Russian Empire in October 1917. In 1918, three independent states arose 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, the Transcaucasian Muslim Turks (the 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 of Shusha were killed, about 7 thousand buildings of the city were destroyed. A large number of documentary evidence of the pogrom has been preserved, including photographs showing the extent of destruction in the Armenian quarters of Shusha. The Armenian half of the city was actually 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 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 colleagues on the determination of 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 the Turkish leader Kemal Ataturk led to the fact that Joseph Stalin, who at that time served as the People's Commissar for Nationalities, forcibly changed the decision of the Soviet authorities and transferred Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan in 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 used in relation to Nagorno-Karabakh various forms ethno-religious, demographic and economic discrimination, seeking to drive Armenians out of Nagorno-Karabakh and populate the region with Azerbaijani migrants.

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 people themselves, who sent complaints to the Kremlin about the illegal actions of Azerbaijan. However, Azerbaijan acted covertly and skillfully disguised its policy with demagogy 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 his public speeches that since the mid-1960s, his government had pursued a deliberate policy of expelling Armenians from the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh by changing the demographic balance in the region. in favor of the Azerbaijanis. (Source: "Heydar Aliyev: A state with opposition is better", "Echo" newspaper (Azerbaijan), Number 138 (383) CP, July 24, 2002). Aliyev not only confessed to his deeds on the pages of the press, but also made it clear that he was proud of it.

In Nagorno-Karabakh, the Heydaraliev demographic policy led to a complete halt in the growth of the Armenian population of the region: the NKAR was the only unit of the national-territorial division of the USSR, where both the absolute and relative growth of the titular nationality (Armenians) was negative. The 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 population of the region, and Armenians 90%, then by 1986 the number of Azerbaijanis from the total population was 23%. By 1980, 85 Armenian villages had disappeared from Nagorno-Karabakh, while 10 new Azerbaijani villages were added.

One of the reasons for the demographic expansion of Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh lies in the events associated with the episode of the almost complete disappearance of the Turkic minority from the region in the 1930s. After the monstrous massacre in the city of Shushi in 1920, the 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, merchants and technicians, as well as the destruction of most of the city's urban infrastructure, came to the side of the Azerbaijanis. Despite the fact that the Azerbaijanis became the masters of Shusha, the city, or rather, what was left of it, quickly fell into decay and became unusable as a settlement 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 would be descendants of the “original” community of Muslim Turks who lived in the region since the time of the “Karabakh Khanate”. This is where the history 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 post-war years, were the descendants of migrant colonists sent to Nagorno-Karabakh from other regions of the republic.

The Armenians periodically sent petitions to Moscow, in which they asked to be protected from the policy 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 extreme negative attitude to 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 open coercion of 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 the NKAO, 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 Shahumyan region of Azerbaijan, which bordered on the NKAR.

Another vector of the anti-Armenian policy of Azerbaijan at the beginning of Gorbachev's perestroika (1985-1987) was aimed at the destruction of Armenian architectural monuments in Nagorno-Karabakh and adjacent regions, and the appropriation, or alienation, of the Armenian historical and cultural heritage. The purpose of these actions was to "cleanse" Azerbaijan from the traces of the Armenian historical and cultural presence. The methods of the Baku authorities also included the destruction of archival documents, the reprinting of 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 new wave The events in the large Armenian village of Chardakhly in the Shamkhor region of Azerbaijan served as a popular movement for the secession of Nagorno-Karabakh from the Azerbaijan SSR. Chardakhly was not included in the NKAR 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 Chardakhli state farm, the Azerbaijani authorities removed him from his post, and the village population 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. Soviet newspaper“Selskaya Zhizn” wrote about the Chardakhli incident in its issue of December 24, 1987. In October 1987, the first rally in defense of the Chardakhli people took place in Yerevan.

After the events in Chardakhly, the Armenians of NKAR came to the conclusion that history repeats itself, and further being under the rule of Baku is fraught with disaster.

Inspired by the policy 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 party apparatus of the region. The movement also spread to the territory of Armenia. Thousands of rallies were held 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 was a purely formal administrative body, officially asked the Azerbaijan SSR and the Armenian SSR to consider the possibility of secession of the region from the Azerbaijan SSR and joining it to the Armenian SSR.

This unprecedented initiative shocked the Moscow authorities, who did not expect perestroika, glasnost and democracy to 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 own "solution" to the Karabakh issue. Instead of starting a constitutional dialogue, which was what the Council of People's Deputies of the region called for, the Azerbaijani government resorted to violence, overnight transforming the legal process into a forceful one. ethnic conflict. Already two days after the announcement of the petition of the NKAR Regional Council, the Baku leadership armed a crowd of thousands of rioters from the nearby Azerbaijani city of Aghdam and sent it to the capital of the region, Stepanakert, to “punish” the Armenians of the NKAR and “put things in order”. And 5 days after the Agdam attack, Soviet Union shocked by an extraordinary event in the history of this state - massacres Armenians in the Azerbaijani city of Sumgayit, located not far from Baku. Within two days, dozens of people were brutally killed and maimed. After the belated arrival of Soviet internal troops and police units in the city, all 14,000 Armenians living in the city left Sumgayit in a 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 sung.

The Kremlin's sluggishness and its sluggishness 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 violent acts of violence in other republics of the USSR. For example, to the pogroms in the Ferghana Valley of Uzbekistan in 1989.

Actions of mass violence against Armenians in the Azerbaijan SSR made the process of secession of Nagorno-Karabakh from Azerbaijan irreversible. The nightmare of the Sumgayit 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 were killed. Basically, these were elderly people who did not have time to leave the capital of Azerbaijan after the Sumgayit events. In general, out of 475,000 Armenians living in Soviet Azerbaijan at the time of the 1979 census, 370,000 people were expelled. Most of them settled in refugee camps in Armenia.

While tens of thousands of Armenians began to leave the Azerbaijan SSR during the pogroms in the autumn of 1988, the Azerbaijanis, fearing retribution, also began to leave the Armenian SSR, succumbing to panic and rumors. The Armenian activists of the Karabakh movement tried in every possible way to stop the process of the forced exchange of population between Armenia and Azerbaijan and turn the events back into the mainstream of the constitutional process. Despite the fact that many expected responses to the Armenian pogroms, restraint and tolerance were shown in Armenia and the NKAO; the Sumgayit pogrom remained unanswered. This strategy of the 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. In Armenia and the NKAO, they quickly realized that the Kremlin leadership was opposed to the Karabakh movement and was looking for a pretext to suppress it. The Azerbaijanis, on the contrary, did not shy away from violence, since Moscow shared their position on maintaining the status quo in the Karabakh issue. Moreover, the Baku leadership tried to provoke Armenians into retaliatory violence: firstly, in order to create a pretext for Moscow to liquidate the Karabakh movement, and secondly, in order to “under the guise” bring to its logical conclusion the implementation of the project launched in the fall of 1987 to expel the Armenians 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, headed by Yegor Ligachev, a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU. The Ligachevites considered Nagorno-Karabakh a kind of "Pandora's box", from where "the harmful democratic heresy spread throughout the territory of the Union", threatening the territorial integrity of the republics and the hegemony of the Communist Party. Likhachev supported the actions of Azerbaijan, placing at its disposal units of the Soviet internal troops, who, together with the 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, jointly Soviet troops and the Azerbaijani militia organized the "Operation Ring", which led to the deportation of 30 Armenian villages in the NKAR and the Armenian regions bordering it and the killing of dozens of civilians.

Military aggression of Azerbaijan against Nagorno-Karabakh

The collapse of the USSR untied the hands of Azerbaijan. The former goal of the Azerbaijani nationalists, who 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 stationed on the territory of the republic, and overnight, having received weapons from four Soviet land 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 2,000 Mujahideen from Afghanistan and militants from Chechnya, led by the later known terrorist Shamil Basayev. A few years later, 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 number 907 to the Freedom Support Act, which limited assistance to Azerbaijan due to its use of a blockade against Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh.

Yerevan did 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 due to 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 the housing stock of Armenia was destroyed, 700 thousand people were left homeless (every fifth inhabitant of the republic), 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 the blockade of land and air communications with Nagorno-Karabakh, completely cutting off the region from the rest of the world. In Armenia, hundreds of thousands of victims of the earthquake 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 capital of the region, the city of Stepanakert. The shelling was carried out in three ways: by multiple launch rocket systems from the heights above Stepanakert, from the city of Shushi, which until May 1992 was completely controlled by the armed formations of Azerbaijan; long-range guns from the city of Aghdam and assault aircraft of the Azerbaijani Air Force. The shelling lasted for a long nine months. Up to 400 ground-to-ground and air-to-ground rockets were fired daily around the city. Just a week after the start of the bombing, central part Stepanakert turned into a heap of ruins, and a few months later most of the city was wiped off the face of the earth.

By the beginning of 1992, after 3 years of complete blockade by Azerbaijan, famine began in Nagorno-Karabakh, and an epidemic of serious infectious diseases broke out. The regions that survived from the destruction of the hospital were overflowing with the wounded and sick.

Self-defense and the proclamation of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic

The difficult situation did not break the people of Nagorno-Karabakh. In response to the military aggression of Azerbaijan, the population of Nagorno-Karabakh organized a heroic self-defense. Despite their numerical minority and the lack of adequate weapons due to the complete blockade, the Karabakh Armenians made unheard of 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, multiplied by an indestructible desire to survive, the Karabakh people managed to seize the initiative in hostilities. The factor of the lack of support for Azerbaijan from the Kremlin also had an effect.

With the help of volunteers from Armenia, who were transferred to Nagorno-Karabakh by helicopters from Yerevan under heavy fire from Azerbaijani air defense, 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, thus 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 defense system of Nagorno-Karabakh. However, some territories of Artsakh remain under the occupation of Azerbaijan to this day. These are the entire Shaumyan region, the Getashen sub-region and the eastern segments of the Mardakert and Martuni regions.

In August 1991, Azerbaijan unilaterally withdrew from the USSR, at the same time adopting a resolution on the "abolition" of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region, bypassing the Constitution of the USSR. Azerbaijan's actions allowed Nagorno-Karabakh to take advantage of the USSR Law "On the procedure for resolving issues related to the withdrawal 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 wished to leave the USSR, the referendum was to be held separately in each of these entities. Their inhabitants 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 own state status. Based on this law, the joint session of the Regional Council of People's Deputies of the NKAR and the Shahumyan 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 was held under the supervision of numerous international observers.

In May 1994, in the capital of Kyrgyzstan, Bishkek, an armistice agreement was signed between Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan and Armenia, which stopped hostilities. Since that time, the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic has begun the process of economic recovery, strengthening the foundations of liberal democracy and preparing for the formal recognition of the independence of the republic by the international community.

The policy of destruction of the 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-monarchic dictatorship of the Middle East 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 Communist Party of Azerbaijan, ruled the Azerbaijan SSR in the 70s and 80s. In 1993, two years after the declaration of independence by Azerbaijan, 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 "chosen" by rigging, as usual, the results of the vote. Ilham Aliyev continues the traditions of his father's authoritarian rule. In Ilhamov's Azerbaijan, any manifestation of dissent is suppressed: opposition parties are actually banned, there is no free press as such, the Internet is under control, and every year dozens of people are sent to jail or die under unclear circumstances for criticizing the authorities.

To date, the main target of the Aliyev regime in Azerbaijan are the 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 by the Russian Bolsheviks in 1921. However, under pressure from the Turkish government, Nakhichevan was transferred to the rule of Soviet Azerbaijan. The mass destruction of architectural monuments and khachkars (Armenian carved stone crosses) located at the world-famous medieval cemetery in Julfa in the spring of 2006 provoked protests from the international community. The Western press compared the Azerbaijani vandalism to 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, deleting all references to facts that are not directly related to the Azerbaijani (Turkic) historical heritage of their country. This task is indeed not an easy one. Azerbaijanis are a relatively young ethnic community. Being the descendants of the 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. Before 1918 “Azerbaijan” was not the name of the territory of the current republic, but the province of Persia, bordering on present-day Azerbaijan in the south and populated mainly 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 provoked 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 composition.

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 a province of Italy) - thus causing a protest from France (or Italy) and the UN.

Until the 1930s, the concept of "Azerbaijanis" as such did not exist. 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. They also 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" referred to themselves as either "Muslims" or defined themselves as members of tribes, clans, and urban communities, such as Afshars, Padars, Sarijals, Otuz-iki, etc. In the beginning, however, the Kremlin authorities decided to refer to the Azeris as "Turks"; it was this term that officially appeared in determining 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 is openly condemned by Russian and international scientists and politicians. However, the Baku ruling regime ignores the international public opinion, and continues to regard the Armenian historical and cultural monuments on the territory of Azerbaijan as a direct threat to the 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

For the term "Karabakh" and its connection with the Principality of Ktish-Bahk, 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 Compilation for the Empire of the results of the development of data from the First General Census of the Population, taken on January 28, 1897. St. Petersburg, 1905

See photographic material in: Shahen Mkrtchyan, Shchors Davtyan. Shushi: the city of tragic fate. Amaras, 1997; See also: Shagen Mkrtchyan. Treasures of Artsakh. Yerevan, Tigran Mets, 2000, pp. 226-229

Newspaper “Kommunist”, Baku, 2 Dec. 1920; see also: Karabakh in 1918-1923: a 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 Azerbaijanis feel like the full masters of the region. A lot of work was done in the 70s. All this caused an influx of the Azerbaijani population into Nagorno-Karabakh from the surrounding regions - Lachin, Aghdam, Jabrayil, Fizuli, Aghjabadi and others. All these measures, implemented 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 the 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

Story:

On September 2, 1991, at a joint session of the Nagorno-Karabakh regional and Shahumyan district Soviets of People's Deputies, a Declaration was adopted on the proclamation of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic within the borders of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region and the adjacent Shahumyan District of the Azerbaijan SSR.

On December 10, 1991, a referendum was held (while the independence of the Republic of Azerbaijan was not proclaimed through a referendum) on the status of the NKR, 99.89% of the participants in which voted for its independence. This percentage was achieved due to the fact that the referendum was boycotted by the Azerbaijani minority of the region. The referendum was not recognized by the international community. In addition to the territories of the NKAR and the Shahumyan region of the Azerbaijan SSR, the referendum was also held on a part of the territory of the Khanlar region, which later received the name Getashen sub-region in Karabakh and Armenian literature, which, as the NKR authorities point out, legally confirmed the entry of this territory into the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic. On January 6, 1992, the NKR Parliament of the first convocation - the NKR Supreme Council - adopted the Declaration "On the State Independence of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic". The declaration of independence was preceded by almost four years of Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, which led to a significant number of victims and refugees on both sides, caused by the use of mass violence and ethnic cleansing.

In 1991-1994, a military conflict broke out between the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic and Azerbaijan, during which the Azerbaijanis ousted the Armenians from the territory of the former Shahumyan region of the Azerbaijan SSR and part of Nagorno-Karabakh, and the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, supported by Armenia, established control over several regions of Azerbaijan adjacent to Nagorno-Karabakh. Karabakh, and ousted the Azerbaijani population from there, which was qualified in 1993 by the UN Security Council as the occupation of the territory of Azerbaijan by Armenian forces.

According to the administrative-territorial division of Azerbaijan, the territory currently controlled by the NKR occupies the southwestern part of the main territory of Azerbaijan (the territory of the former Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region and some adjacent territories), adjoins the state borders between Azerbaijan and Armenia in the west and Azerbaijan and Iran to the south and borders Azerbaijan-controlled territory to the north and east.

By May 1992, the NKR self-defense forces managed to take Shusha, “break through” the corridor near the city of Lachin, which reunited the territories of Nagorno-Karabakh and the Republic of Armenia, thereby partially eliminating the blockade of the NKR.

In June-July 1992, as a result of the offensive, the Azerbaijani army took control of the entire Shaumyanovsky, most of the Mardakert and Askeran regions.

In 1992, in order to provide economic support to the former Soviet republics, the United States passed the Freedom Support Act. The US Senate adopted Amendment 907 to the act, which prohibited the provision of assistance to Azerbaijan by the US government until Azerbaijan ceases the blockade and military operations against Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. According to some sources, the amendment was adopted under pressure from the Armenian lobby. According to Svante Cornell, the amendment ignores the fact that Armenia itself implemented an embargo against Nakhichevan, separated from the main part of Azerbaijan, and the closure of the border with Armenia, according to the authors of the book "Fragile Peace", was due to the occupation of Azerbaijani lands. Moreover, according to Svante Cornell, the use of the term "blockade" in itself is misleading - Armenia has close economic ties with Georgia and Iran, and in this case the term "embargo" is more appropriate.

In order to repel the actions of Azerbaijan, the life of the NKR was completely transferred to a military footing; August 14, 1992 was established State Committee defense of the NKR, and scattered detachments of the self-defense forces were reformed and organized into the Defense Army of Nagorno-Karabakh.

The NKR Defense Army managed to take control of most of the territories of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region previously controlled by Azerbaijan, occupying a number of regions of Azerbaijan adjacent to the republic during the hostilities. These actions were qualified by the UN Security Council as the occupation of the territory of Azerbaijan by Armenian forces.

May 5, 1994, with the mediation of Russia, Kyrgyzstan and Interparliamentary Assembly The CIS in the capital of Kyrgyzstan Bishkek, Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia signed the Bishkek Protocol, on the basis of which on May 12 the same parties reached an agreement on a ceasefire, which is in force to this day.

In 1992, to resolve the Karabakh conflict, the OSCE Minsk Group was established, within which a negotiation process is being carried out with the aim of preparing the OSCE Minsk Conference, designed to achieve a final solution to the issue of the status of Nagorno-Karabakh.

About a third of the Shahumyan region, as well as minor parts of the Martakert and Martuni regions of the NKR are under the control of the armed forces of Azerbaijan.

The Nagorno-Karabakh Republic is a member of the informal association CIS-2.

Recognizing countries:

Flag:

Map:

Territory:

Demography:

According to the results of the 2005 census of the population of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, the population in the republic was 137,737 people, of which 137,380 people were Armenians (99.74%), Russians - 171 people (0.1%), Greeks - 22 people ( 0.02%), Ukrainians - 21 people (0.02%), Georgians - 12 people (0.01%), Azerbaijanis - 6 people (0.005%), representatives of other nationalities - 125 people (0.1%). In 2006, 2102 children were born in the NKR - 4.9% more than in 2005. 15.3 children were born per 1,000 inhabitants compared to 14.6 in 2005. Natural population growth increased by 16.5% over the same period. In 2006, 241 families, or 872 people, 395 of which are children, moved to the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic from Armenia and other CIS countries for permanent residence. According to estimates for 2009, the population of the republic was 141,100 people

Religion:

The vast majority of the population of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic are parishioners of the Armenian Apostolic Church, which is represented on the territory of the NKR by the Artsakh diocese.

In 2010, the foundation stone ceremony of a Russian Orthodox church in honor of the Intercession of the Mother of God was held in Stepanakert. Mostly Orthodox

Languages:

[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 United Nations 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 the 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 wrong decisions and conclusions.
The attached document, which was prepared on the basis of an unbiased analysis and official sources, clarifies a number of issues and thus contributes to a better understanding of the existing reality, facts and the general situation around 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,
General Secretary UN,
New York.

Copies of the letter:

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees,
the United Nations High Commissioner for human rights,
International Organization for Migration,
Inter-Parliamentary Union,
CIS Parliamentary Assembly,
Parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE,
Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe,
Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the OSCE Minsk Group Member States for
Nagorno-Karabakh.

APPENDIX

DATA ON REFUGEES, DISPLACED PERSONS AND
EMPLOYED IN WAR TERRITORIES
IN NAGORNO-KARABAKH AND AZERBAIJAN

NAGORNO-KARABAKH

Speaking about the occupied territories of Nagorno-Karabakh, refugees and displaced persons in Nagorno-Karabakh, the NKR leadership uses such terms as “Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region” (NKAR), “Nagorno-Karabakh Republic” (NKR) and “Nagorno-Karabakh” (NKR).
The NKAR includes territories that were part of the administrative boundaries of the former Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region.
The Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR) territorially does not cover the entire Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh in its geographical and historical unity, but the territory of the former NKAR and the Shahumyan region. The Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR) was proclaimed in these territories 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 secession 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 of September 2, 1991 and the national referendum of December 10, 1991. It was the population of these territories that elected and formed the governing bodies of the NKR, 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 is a larger area. It also includes the northern part of Nagorno-Karabakh (whose population was predominantly Armenian until 1988), as well as a number of other regions.

REFUGEES AND DISPLACED PERSONS IN NAGORNO-KARABAKH

In 1918, the number of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh reached 300-330 thousand people. With the normal development of the region, the total number of the Armenian population of NK by 1988 was to be 600-700 thousand people. In 1918-1920. As a result of the Turkish-Azerbaijani aggression 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 the Transcaucasus of that time, and its environs, in March 1920, Turkish-Azerbaijani troops destroyed almost 20 thousand Armenians. Despite this, during the creation in 1923 of the Autonomous Region of Nagorno-Karabakh - AONK (as the former NKAR was called until 1936), Armenians made up 95% of the population of the autonomy, and Azerbaijanis - only 3%. Over the 75 years of Soviet-Azerbaijani domination, the number 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 discriminatory government policy that forced Armenians to emigrate (nowadays over 500,000 Armenians with Karabakh roots live in Armenia and the CIS countries); As a result, the number of Armenians in the NKAO decreased in relative terms to 77 percent, while the absolute number of Azerbaijanis increased several times as a result of a mechanical increase due to immigrants from Azerbaijan.
According to the official data of the 1989 census, the population of the NKAR was 189 thousand people, of which 145.5 thousand Armenians (76.9%), Azerbaijanis - 40.6 thousand (21.5%). According to the data for the same year, over 17 thousand Armenians (about 80% of the population of the region) and about 3 thousand Azerbaijanis lived in the Shahumyan region. Approximately 23,000 Armenian refugees from Baku, Sumgayit, and a number of other cities remained unaccounted for during the census, who, by the time the census was conducted in January 1989, actually lived in the former NKAO, without having a local residence permit, and therefore, according to the old mark in their passports about registration, were assigned to the places of their former residence.
Thus, the Armenian population of the NKAR and the Shaumyan region, taken together, totaled 185 thousand people, the Azerbaijani population - 44 thousand, another 3.5 thousand people accounted for Russians, Greeks, Ukrainians, Tatars and others.
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, into the Autonomous Region of Nagorno-Karabakh created in 1923 on the territory of the NK (the borders of which Moscow was instructed to determine Azerbaijan). The territories of the northern part of NK, where the Karabakh Armenians compactly lived, were repeatedly redrawn and 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 an overwhelming majority into a minority of the population. We are talking about the Dashkesan, Shamkhor, Gadabay, and Khanlar regions, on the territory of which the ancient Karabakh city of Ganja (Gandzak in Armenian, former Elisavetpol, Kirovabad in Soviet times) is located. However, until 1988, Armenians still constituted the overwhelming majority of the population in the zone of compact residence in the Northern NK, which covered the mountainous and partly foothill parts of the above-mentioned regions of the former AzSSR. In 1988, Armenians lived in these territories (by region):

• in Khanlar - 14.6 thousand people,
• in Dashkesan - 7.3 thousand people,
• in Shamkhor - 12.4 thousand people,
• in Gadabay - 1.0 thousand people,
• in the city of Ganja - 48.1 thousand people.
• In 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 (7,000 more Armenians lived in the city of Ganja alone than Azerbaijanis in the former NKAR as a whole, or four times more than Azerbaijanis lived in city ​​of Shusha).
Thus, by the end of 1988, the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh as a whole (NKAR, Shahumyan region and Northern NK) amounted to 268 thousand people.
The Armenian population of the northern part of NK was forcibly deported in 1988-1991. The deportations began in the autumn of 1988 and were completed after the start of the open armed phase of the conflict. The last Armenian settlements of this zone, Getashen and Martunashen, were devastated in April-May 1991 during the joint operation "Ring" of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Azerbaijan and the internal troops of the USSR, during which 24 settlements in Nagorno-Karabakh were completely deported and captured by Azerbaijan. At present, the vast majority of refugees from the Northern NKR are in Armenia, partly in Russia, and only a small part - in the NKR.
During the fighting in the summer-autumn of 1992, the Azerbaijani army completely occupied the Shahumyan region, about two-thirds of the Mardakert region, parts of the Martuni, Askeran and Hadrut regions of the NKR. As a result, 66,000 Armenians became refugees and displaced persons. After the NKR Defense Army liberated most of the occupied territories (except Shahumyan and parts of the Mardakert and Martuni regions of the NKR), 35,000 refugees returned to the territory of the NKR. However, due to the fact that their villages were either completely destroyed or continue to be 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 the Northern NK and 31 thousand - mainly from the Shaumyan and Mardakert regions of the NKR.
At present there are approximately 30,000 displaced persons in the NKR.
With a total Armenian population of the NKR in 1991 of 185 thousand people, refugees and displaced persons directly from the 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.
Including 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, 144,000 people, which is 54 percent of the total Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh (NKR and Northern NK).
Thus, since 1988 every second Karabakh Armenian, from among those living at that time in their homeland, became a refugee or a displaced person.
Despite the fact that most of the Armenians who lived in Baku, Sumgayit, a number of other cities and regions of Azerbaijan and became refugees as a result of the conflict 2 come from Nagorno-Karabakh, we deliberately limit ourselves to the geographical and demographic boundaries 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 the AR will be given below) - the first has an incomparably more difficult situation with refugees and displaced persons. It should be added to this that, unlike Azerbaijan, the NKR practically does not receive assistance for its refugees and displaced persons through international organizations. At the same time, Azerbaijani refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh receive humanitarian aid from international organizations. Thus, there is also actual discrimination of refugees on the basis of nationality by international organizations.

OCCUPIED TERRITORIES OF NAGORNO-KARABAKH

Speaking of 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 NKAR and the Shahumyan region (see above), which at the beginning of open hostilities were fully subject to the power of the NKR leadership.
As a result of hostilities between Azerbaijan and the NKR, Azerbaijani troops occupied in 1992 and are currently occupying about 750 square meters. km of the territory of the NKR, which is 15 percent of its area. We are talking about the entire Shahumyan 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 officials, at the moment, 20 percent of the territory of Azerbaijan is allegedly occupied, and there are allegedly 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 capture by Armenia of both Nagorno-Karabakh and the regions adjacent to it."
It should be noted that none of the resolutions of the UN Security Council adopted in connection with the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict contains any expressions about the “aggression” of Armenia 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 of 1993 / UN Security Council).

THE QUESTION OF OCCURATED AZERBAIJANIAN TERRITORIES

According to the maps shown by the representatives of the Azerbaijan Republic, the total area of ​​the territories occupied by the NK Defense Army is allegedly 8780 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 AR adjacent to the NKR is only 10 percent of the indicated territory. Even if we consider, as the leaders of the Azerbaijan Republic officially declare, that the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic itself is also an “occupied territory”, then these territories will also make up not 20, but 13 percent 3 .
As mentioned above, not a single UN resolution or OSCE documents anywhere, ever, said anything about the “occupation of the territories of Azerbaijan by Armenia”. This statement itself is the fruit of the falsifying 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 4300 sq. km), naturally, under no circumstances can be considered “the occupied territory of the AR”.
It should be especially noted that the maps presented by the Azerbaijani side, firstly, often have a deliberately distorted scale, in which NK and the surrounding regions are depicted larger than they actually are in relation to neighboring regions; secondly, the line of Karabakh-Azerbaijani military contact was drawn on them much to the east of the actual confrontation borders, which is easy to see if we compare Azerbaijani maps with military and other maps used in the work of the OSCE Minsk Group on NK.
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 districts of the Autonomous Republic (Lachin, Kalbajar, Kubatly, Zangelan and Jabrayil) during the hostilities. Aghdam and Fizuli regions are partially occupied, in general, by about 30 percent.
According to Azerbaijani data 4 , the area and population of these regions are:

Kalbajar - 1936 sq. km, 50.6 thousand people;

Lachin - 1835 sq. km, 59.9 thousand people;

Kubatly - 802 sq. km, 30.3 thousand people;

Jabrayil - 1050 sq. km, 51.6 thousand people;

Zangelan - 707 sq. km, 33.9 thousand people;

Agdam - 1094 sq. km, 158 thousand people;

Fizuli - 1386 sq. km, 100 thousand people.

The total area of ​​the first 5 districts is 6330 sq. km. The total area of ​​Agdam and Fizuli is 2480 sq. km, but of these, 35% of the territory of Agdam and 25% of Fizuli regions are under the control of the NK Defense Army, i.e. respectively 383 and 347 sq. km. Thus, the figures given in the Azerbaijani data on the area of ​​occupied territories - 8780 sq. km. km - is also a falsification.
The total area of ​​the territory of the AR 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.
It should be reminded 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 168,000 people, who left Armenia 8-10 months after the pogroms of Armenians in Sumgayit and the forcible expulsion of more than 350,000 Armenians from the AzSSR, mostly exchanged or sold their houses. The rest received monetary compensation from the Armenian government, while the Armenian refugees from Azerbaijan have not received any compensation so far. The former NKAO in 1991-92 during the hostilities left almost the entire Azerbaijani population - 40.6 thousand people, or 21.5% of its population (according to the 1989 census). It should be noted that Azerbaijan deliberately overestimates the number of the Azerbaijani population of the former NKAO, speaking about "60 thousand" Azerbaijanis, or about "a third of the population of the NKAO".
The Azerbaijani population of the Shahumyan region remained in their homes in all 4 Azerbaijani villages located along the perimeter of the borders of the region in its northern and eastern parts (the line of the Karabakh-Azerbaijani front passed there in 1991-1992). The Azerbaijani population did not suffer in the territories adjacent to the northern part of NK, as well as directly in settlements Northern NK, from where 83,000 Karabakh Armenians were deported in 1988-91. Moreover, more than one hundred thousand Azerbaijani refugees 6 were settled in houses and apartments of Armenians expelled from the northern part of NK.
According to the above-mentioned Azerbaijani data, the population of 7 regions fully or partially occupied by the NK Defense Army in 1989 was 483.9 thousand people. Taking into account the fact that Agdam and Fuzuli regions are partially occupied, the total number of displaced persons who left these regions amounted to approximately 420,000 people, of which 45,000, according to Azerbaijani data, returned to their homes in 1997. Thus, only 375,000 people out of the total number of inhabitants of these seven districts are displaced persons and refugees 7 .
The total number of Azerbaijani refugees and displaced persons in the AR, therefore, is the sum 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, due to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, there are 583,000 refugees and displaced persons in Azerbaijan, which is 7.9 percent of the official population of the Republic of Azerbaijan declared by Azerbaijan. The statements about "a million refugees in Azerbaijan" are the same fruit of propaganda falsifications as the statements about "20 percent of the occupied territories of Azerbaijan."
Recall that in the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, a third of the population is made up of refugees and displaced persons. According to the Republic of Armenia, refugees in Armenia are 12 percent of the population. 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 by Azerbaijan and one of the members of the OSCE Minsk Group on NK - Turkey.

KEY COMPARISONS IN PERCENTAGE

Territory of the NKR occupied by Azerbaijan - 15%

The territory of Azerbaijan under the control of the NKR Defense Army - 8%

Refugees and displaced persons in the NKR (in % of the population) - 33%

Refugees and displaced persons in Azerbaijan (% of population) - 7.9%

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1 Sources of information:

• USSR census 1989
• Department of Statistics of the Regional Council of the NKAO
• District Executive Committee of Shahumyan District
• Committee for Refugees of the NKAR

2 More than 350,000 Armenians left Azerbaijan, who are in Armenia, Russia, the CIS countries and far abroad.
3 Taking into account the real area of ​​the territories occupied by Azerbaijan and the NKR
4 Data of the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Azerbaijan, disseminated by the Embassy of the Republic of Azerbaijan in the Russian Federation in the autumn of 1994, data from population censuses, the book “Azerbaijan SSR - Administrative-territorial division, Azgosizdat, Baku, 1979, the 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 give a figure of 200 and even 250 thousand people.