Causes of conflict between Armenians and Azerbaijanis. Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh

The history of the Karabakh conflict is a small episode in the almost 200-year chronicle of contact between the Armenian ethnic group and the Caucasian peoples. Dramatic changes in the South Caucasus are associated with the large-scale resettlement policy of the 19th-20th centuries. started by Tsarist Russia and then continued by the USSR, until the collapse of the Soviet state. The resettlement process can be divided into two phases:

1) XIX-early XX centuries, when the Armenian people moved from Persia, Ottoman Turkey, the Middle East to the Caucasus.

2) During the 20th century, when intra-Caucasian migration processes were carried out, as a result of which autochthons (local population) were forced out from territories already inhabited by Armenians: Azerbaijanis, Georgians, and small Caucasian peoples, and thereby an Armenian majority was created on these lands, with the aim of further substantiation of territorial claims to the peoples of the Caucasus.

To clearly understand the causes of the Karabakh conflict, one should make a historical and geographical excursion into the path traversed by the Armenian people. The self-name of the Armenians is Hay, and their mythical homeland is called Hayastan.

N and the current geographical area of ​​their residence is the South Caucasus, the Armenian (Hai) people fell due to historical events and the geopolitical struggle of world powers in the Middle East, Asia Minor and the Caucasus. In today's world historiography, most scholars of the Ancient East agree that the initial homeland of the Hay people was the Balkans (South-Eastern Europe).

“The Father of History” - Herodotus, pointed out that the Armenians are the descendants of the Phrygians who lived in the south of Europe. The Russian Caucasus scholar of the 19th century I. Chopin also believed that “Armenians are aliens. This is a tribe of Phrygians and Ionians that moved to the northern valleys of the Anatolian mountains."

The famous Armenian scholar M. Abeghyan pointed out: “it is assumed that the ancestors of the Armenians (Hays), long before our era, lived in Europe, near the ancestors of the Greeks and Thracians, from where they crossed to Asia Minor. During the time of Herodotus in the 5th century BC. they still clearly remembered that the Armenians came to their country from the west.”

The ancestors of the current Armenian people, the Hays, migrated from the Balkans to the Armenian Highlands (East of Asia Minor), where the ancient Medes and Persians who lived in the neighborhood called them by the name of their former neighbors - the Armenians. The ancient Greeks and Romans began to call the new people and the territory they occupied in the same way, through whom these names - the ethnonym “Armenians” and the toponym “Armenia” - spread in modern historical science, although the Armenians still continue to call themselves Hays, which further confirms them arrival in Armenia.

Russian Caucasus expert V.L. Velichko noted at the beginning of the 20th century: “Armenians, a people of unknown origin, with undoubtedly a significant admixture of Jewish, Syro-Chaldean and Gypsy blood...; Not everyone who considers themselves Armenian belongs to the indigenous Armenian tribe.”

From Asia Minor, Armenian settlers began to arrive in the Caucasus - in present-day Armenia and Karabakh. In this regard, researcher S.P. Zelinsky noted that the Armenians who appeared at different times in Karabakh did not understand each other’s language: “The main difference between the Armenians of different areas of Zangezur (which was part of the Karabakh Khanate) is the dialects they speak. There are almost as many dialects here as there are districts or individual villages.”.

From the above statements of Russian Caucasus scholars of the 19th and early 20th centuries, several conclusions can be drawn: the Armenian ethnos could not be autochthonous not only in Karabakh or Azerbaijan, but also in the South Caucasus as a whole. Arriving in the Caucasus at different periods of history, the “Armenians” did not suspect each other’s existence and spoke different dialects, that is, at that time there was no concept of a single Armenian language and people.

Thus, gradually, the ancestors of the Armenians found their homeland in the South Caucasus, where they occupied the ancestral lands of the Azerbaijanis. Massive e The migration of Armenians to the South Caucasus was marked by the friendly attitude of the Arab Caliphate towards them , who was looking for social support in the conquered territories, and therefore treated the resettlement of Armenians favorably. The Armenians found shelter in the Caucasus on the territory of the state of Caucasian Albania, but very soon such hospitality cost the Albanians (the ancestors of today's Azerbaijanis) dearly. With the help of the Arab Caliphate in 704, the Armenian Gregorian Church tried to subjugate the Albanian Church, and the library of the Albanian Catholicos Nerses Bakur, which passed into the hands of Armenian church dignitaries, was destroyed. The Arab Caliph Abd al-Malik Umayyad (685-705) ordered the merger of the Aftocephalous Albanian Church and Albanian Christians who had not converted to Islam with the Armenian Gregorian Church. But at that time it was not possible to fully implement this plan, and the Albanians managed to defend the independence of their church and statehood.

At the beginning of the 15th century, the situation of the Armenians in Byzantium worsened, and the Armenian Church turned its gaze to the loyal Caucasus, where it set the goal of creating its own statehood. The Armenian high priests made a number of trips and wrote a large number of letters to the Albanian patriarchs with a request to give them refuge in the Caucasus “as Christian brothers in distress.” The Armenian Church, forced to wander through the cities of Byzantium, eventually lost most of the Armenian flock, who converted to Catholicism, thereby threatening the very existence of the Armenian Church. As a result, with the permission of the Albanian Patriarch, some of the Armenian dignitaries, around 1441, moved to the South Caucasus, to the monastery of Etchmiadzin (Three Muezzins) - Uchkilise: on the territory of present-day Armenia, where they received long-awaited peace and a place to implement further political plans.

From here, Armenian settlers began to move to Karabakh, which they now decided to call Artsakh, thereby trying to prove that these were Armenian lands. It is worth noting that the toponym ARTSAKH, as Nagorno-Karabakh is sometimes called, is of local origin. In the modern Udi language, which belongs to one of the languages ​​of Caucasian Albania, Artsun means “to sit, to sit down.” From this verb form is derived artsi - “sedentary; people leading a sedentary lifestyle." In Azerbaijan and the North Caucasus, dozens of geographical names with formants such as -ah, -eh, -uh, -oh, -ih, -yuh, -yh are known. In Azerbaijan, toponyms with the same formants are preserved to this day: Kurm-uh, Kokhm-uh, Mamr-uh, Mukhakh, Jimdzhim-ah, Sam-uh, Arts-ah, Shad-uh, Az-ykh.

In the fundamental academic work “Caucasian Albania and the Albanians,” a specialist in ancient Armenian language and history, Albanian scholar Farida Mamedova, who in Soviet times studied medieval Armenian manuscripts and revealed that many of them were written 200-300 years ago, but are presented as “ancient.” Many Armenian chronicles are collected on the basis of ancient Albanian books that fell into the hands of the Armenians after the Russian Empire abolished the Albanian Church in 1836 and transferred all its heritage to the Armenian Church, which collected the “ancient” Armenian history on this basis. In fact, the Armenian chroniclers, having arrived in the Caucasus, hastily scribbled the history of their people literally on the grave of Albanian culture.

During the XV-XVII centuries, during the times of the powerful Azerbaijani states of Ak-Koyunlu, Gara-Koyunlu and Safavids, Armenian Catholicoses wrote humble letters to the rulers of these states, where they swore allegiance and begged for help with the resettlement of Armenians to the Caucasus for the sake of salvation from “the yoke of the treacherous Ottomans." Using this method, taking advantage of the confrontation between the Ottoman and Safavid empires, a large number of Armenians moved to the Safavid territories bordering these states - present-day Armenia, Nakhchivan and Karabakh.

However, the period of power of the Azerbaijani Safavid state was replaced by feudal fragmentation by the beginning of the 18th century, as a result of which 20 khanates were formed, where there was practically no single centralized power. The heyday of the Russian Empire began when, under the reign of Peter I (1682-1725), the Armenian Church, which had high hopes for the Russian crown in restoring Armenian statehood, began to expand its contacts and ties with Russian political circles. In 1714, the Armenian vardaped Minas submitted to Emperor Peter I “a proposal, in the interests of the proposed war between Russia and the Safavid state, to build a monastery on the shores of the Caspian Sea, which could replace a fortress during hostilities.” The main goal of the vardaped was for Russia to accept into its citizenship the Armenians scattered around the world, which the same Minas asked Peter I to do later, in 1718. At the same time, he interceded on behalf of “all Armenians” and asked “free them from the infidel yoke and accept them into Russian citizenship.” However, the Caspian campaign of Peter I (1722) was not completed due to its failure, and the emperor did not have time to populate the Caspian coast with Armenians, whom he considered “the best means” for securing the territories acquired in the Caucasus for Russia.”

But the Armenians did not lose hope and sent numerous appeals to Emperor Peter I and continued to cry out for intercession. Responding to these requests, Peter I sent the Armenians a letter according to which they could freely come to Russia for trade and “it was ordered to reassure the Armenian people with imperial mercy, to assure them of the sovereign’s readiness to accept them under his protection.” At the same time, on September 24, 1724, the emperor gave instructions to A. Rumyantsev, who was sent to Istanbul, to persuade the Armenians to move to the Caspian lands, on the condition that the local residents “will be expelled, and they, the Armenians, will be given their lands.” The policy of Peter I in the “Armenian question” was continued by Catherine II (1762-1796), “having expressed consent to the restoration of the Armenian kingdom under the auspices of Russia.” That is, the Russian Empire decided to “restore” at the expense of the Caucasian lands the Armenian state of Tigran I that once existed in Asia Minor (now Turkey) for only a few decades.

The dignitaries of Catherine II developed a plan, which indicated “in the first case, you should establish yourself in Derbend, take possession of Shamakhi and Ganja, then from Karabakh and Sygnakh, having collected a sufficient number of troops, you can easily take possession of Erivan.” As a result, already at the beginning of the 19th century, Armenians in noticeable numbers began to move to the South Caucasus, since the Russian Empire had already taken possession of this region, including Northern Azerbaijan.

During the 17th - early 19th centuries, the Russian Empire waged eight wars with the Ottoman Empire, as a result of which Russia became the mistress of three seas - the Caspian, Azov, Black - took possession of the Caucasus, Crimea, and gained advantages in the Balkans. The territory of the Russian Empire expanded further in the Caucasus after the end of the Russian-Persian wars of 1804-1813 and 1826-1828. All this could not but affect the change in the orientation of the Armenians, who, with each new victory of Russian weapons, leaned more and more towards Russia.

In 1804-1813. Russia negotiated with the Armenians of the Ottoman Erzerum Vilayet in Asia Minor. The talk was about their resettlement to the South Caucasus, mainly to Azerbaijani lands. The answer of the Armenians was: “When, by the grace of God, Erivan is occupied by Russian troops, then all Armenians will certainly agree to enter into the patronage of Russia and live in the Erivan province.”

Before continuing to describe the process of resettlement of Armenians, we should dwell on the history of Yerevan, so named after the capture of the Irevan Khanate and the city of Irevan (Erivan) by Russian troops. Another fact of the arrival of Armenians to the Caucasus and in particular to modern Armenia is the history of the celebration of the founding of the city of Yerevan. Seems, many have already forgotten that until the 1950s of the last century there were Armenians, and did not know how old the city of Yerevan was.

Making a slight digression, we note that according to historical facts, Irevan (Yerevan) was founded at the beginning of the 16th century as a stronghold of the Safavid (Azerbaijani) Empire on the border with the Ottoman Empire. To stop the advance of the Ottoman Empire to the east, Shah Ismail I Safevi in ​​1515 ordered the construction of a fortress on the Zengi River. The construction was entrusted to the vizier Revan-guli khan. Hence the name of the fortress - Revan-kala. Subsequently, Revan-kala became the city of Revan, then Iravan. Then, during the weakening of the Safavid Empire, over 20 independent Azerbaijani khanates were formed, one of which was Iravan, which existed until the invasion of the region by the Russian Empire and the capture of Iravan at the beginning of the 19th century.

However, let us return to the artificial ancientization of the history of the city of Yerevan that took place in Soviet times. This happened after the 1950s. Soviet archaeologists found a cuneiform tablet near Lake Sevan (the former name of Goycha). Although the inscription mentions three cuneiform characters "RBN" (in ancient times there were no vowels), this was immediately interpreted by the Armenian side as "Erebuni". This is the title Urartian fortress of Erebuni, supposedly founded in 782 BC, which immediately became the basis for the authorities of the Armenian SSR to celebrate the 2750th anniversary of Yerevan in 1968.

Researcher Shnirelman writes about this strange story: “At the same time, there was no direct connection between the archaeological discovery and the celebrations that took place later (in Soviet Armenia). Indeed, the magnificent national holiday was organized not by archaeologists, but by the Armenian authorities, who spent huge amounts of money on it. ... And what does the capital of Armenia, Yerevan, have to do with the Urartian fortress, whose connection with the Armenians still requires proof? The answer to the questions posed is no secret to those who know the modern history of Armenia. We must look for it in the events of 1965, which, as we will see below, shook up the whole of Armenia and gave a powerful impetus to the rise of Armenian nationalism.” (Memory Wars, Myths, Identity and Politics in Transcaucasia, V.A. Shnirelman).

That is, if there had not been an accidental and incorrectly deciphered archaeological find, the Armenians would never have known that their “native” Yerevan is now over 2800 years old. But if Yerevan is part of ancient Armenian culture, then this would be preserved in the memory, history of the Armenian people, and the Armenians would have to celebrate the founding of their city all these 28 centuries.

Returning to the process of resettlement of the Armenian people to the Caucasus, Armenia and Karabakh, let us turn to famous Armenian scientists. In particular, the Armenian historian, professor at Columbia University George (Gevorg) Burnoutyan writes: “A number of Armenian historians, speaking about statistics after the 1830s, incorrectly estimate the number of Armenians in Eastern Armenia (by this term Burnoutyan means present-day Armenia) during the years of Persian rule (i.e. before the Turkmenchay Treaty of 1828), citing a figure from 30 to 50 percent of the total population. In fact, according to official statistics after the Russian conquest, Armenians barely reached 20 percent of the total population of Eastern Armenia, while Muslims made up more than 80 percent... Thus, there is no evidence of an Armenian majority in any district during the Persian era. administration (before the conquest of the region by the Russian Empire) ... only after the Russian-Turkish wars of 1855-56 and 1877-78, as a result of which even more Armenians arrived in the region from the Ottoman Empire, even more Muslims left, did Armenians finally reach the majority of the population here . And even after this, until the beginning of the 20th century, the city of Iravan remained predominantly Muslim.». The same data is confirmed by another Armenian scientist Ronald Suni. (George Burnoutian, article “The Ethnic Composition and the Socio-Economic Condition of Eastern Armenia in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century”), in the book “Transcaucasia: nationalism and social change" (Transcaucasua, Nationalism and Social Change. Essays in the History of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia), 1996,ss. 77-80.)

Regarding the settlement of Karabakh by Armenians, Armenian scientist, University of Michigan professor Ronald G. Suny, in his book “Looking Toward Ararat,” writes: “From ancient times and in the Middle Ages, Karabakh was part of the principality (in the original “kingdom”) of the Caucasian Albanians. This independent ethno-religious group, no longer existing today, was converted to Christianity in the 4th century and became close to the Armenian Church. Over time, the upper layer of the Albanian elite became Armenian... These people (Caucasian Albanians), who are the direct ancestors of today's Azerbaijanis, spoke a Turkic language and accepted Shiite Islam, widespread in neighboring Iran. The mountainous part (of Karabakh) remained predominantly Christian, and over time the Karabakh Albanians merged with the (settled) Armenians. The center of the Albanian church, Gansasar, became one of the bishoprics of the Armenian Church. Echoes of the once independent national church were preserved only in the status of the local archbishop, called the Catholicos.” (Prof. Ronald Grigor Suny, “Looking Towards Ararat”, 1993, p. 193).

Another Western historian, Svante Cornell, relying on Russian statistics, also cites the dynamics of the growth of the Armenian population in Karabakh in the 19th century: « According to the Russian census, in 1823 Armenians made up 9 percent of the total population of Karabakh(the remaining 91 percent were registered as Muslims), in 1832 - 35 percent, and in 1880 they already reached the majority - 53 percent."(Svante Cornell, “Small Nations and Great Powers: A Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict in the Caucasus”, Routledge Curzon Press), 2001, p. 68).

At the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries, the Russian Empire, pushing out the Persian and Ottoman empires, expanded its possessions to the south into the territory of the Azerbaijani khanates. In this complex geopolitical situation, the further fate of the Karabakh Khanate, which became a struggle between the Russian, Ottoman Empire and Persia, developed interestingly.

A particular danger for the Azerbaijani khanates was Persia, where in 1794, Agha Muhammad Khan Qajar of Azerbaijani origin, becoming Shah, decided to restore the former greatness of the Safavid state, relying on the idea of ​​​​unifying the Caucasian lands with the administrative and political center in South Azerbaijan and Persia. This idea did not inspire many khans of Northern Azerbaijan, who gravitated toward the rapidly growing Russian Empire. In such a responsible and difficult time, the initiator of the creation of the anti-Qajar coalition was the ruler of the Karabakh Khanate, Ibrahim Khalil Khan. Bloody wars began on Karabakh soil, the Persian Shah Qajar personally led campaigns against the Karabakh khan and his capital, the city of Shusha.

But all the attempts of the Persian Shah to conquer these lands were unsuccessful, and in the end, despite the successful capture of the Shusha fortress, he was killed here by his own courtiers, after which the remnants of his troops fled to Persia. The victory of Karabakh Ibrahim Khalil Khan allowed him to begin final negotiations on the entry of his possessions under the citizenship of the Russian Empire. On May 14, 1805 it was signed Treatise between the Karabakh Khan and the Russian Empire on the transition of the Khanate to Russian rule, which linked the future fate of these lands with Tsarist Russia. It is worth noting that in the treatise signed by Ibrahim Khan of Shusha and Karabakh and the Russian general, Prince Tsitsianov, consisting of 11 articles, the presence of Armenians is not mentioned anywhere. At that time, there were 5 Albanian melikates subordinate to the Karabakh Khan, and there is no talk of Armenian political entities, otherwise their presence would certainly have been noted in Russian sources.

Despite the successful end of the Russian-Persian War (1826-1828), Russia was in no hurry to conclude a peace treaty with Persia. Finally, on February 10, 1828, the Turkmenchay Treaty was signed between the Russian Empire and the Persian state, according to which the Iravan and Nakhchivan khanates went to Russia. According to its terms, Azerbaijan was divided into two parts - North and South, and the Araz River was designated as a demarcation line.

A special place was occupied by Article 15 of the Turkmenchay Treaty, which gave“All residents and officials of the Azerbaijan region have a one-year period for free transition with their families from the Persian regions to the Russian ones.” First of all, it concerned "Persian Armenians". In pursuance of this plan, the “highest decree” of the Russian Senate was adopted on March 21, 1828, which stated: “By virtue of the treaty with Persia concluded on February 10, 1828, we command that the Khanate of Erivan and the Khanate of Nakhichevan, annexed to Russia, be called the Armenian region in all matters from now on.”

Thus, the foundation of the future Armenian statehood in the Caucasus was laid. A Resettlement Committee was created, which controlled the migration processes, settling the resettled Armenians in new places in such a way that the residents of the established settlements did not come into contact with existing Azerbaijani villages. Not having time to settle the huge flow of migrants in the Iravan province, the Caucasian administration decides to persuade most of the Armenian migrants to settle in Karabakh. As a result of the mass resettlement of Armenians from Persia in 1828-1829, 35,560 migrants ended up here in Northern Azerbaijan. Of these, 2,558 families or 10,000 people. stationed in Nakhichevan province. Approximately 15 thousand people were stationed in the Garabagh (Karabakh) province. During 1828-1829, 1,458 Armenian families (about 5 thousand people) were settled in the Iravan province. Tsatur Aghayan cited data for 1832: then in the Armenian region there were 164,450 residents, of which 82,317 (50%) were Armenians, and, as Tsatur Aghayan noted, of the indicated number, local Armenians were 25,151 (15%) of all residents , and the rest were immigrants from Persia and the Ottoman Empire.

In general, as a result of the Turkmenchay Treaty, 40 thousand Armenian families moved from Persia to Azerbaijan within a few months. Then, relying on an agreement with the Ottoman Empire, in 1830 Russia resettled another 12,655 Armenian families from Asia Minor to the Caucasus. In 1828-30, the empire resettled another 84,600 families from Turkey to the Caucasus and settled some of them on the best lands of Karabakh. During the period 1828-39. 200 thousand Armenians were resettled to the mountainous parts of Karabakh. In 1877-79, during the Russian-Turkish War, another 185 thousand Armenians were resettled to the south of the Caucasus. As a result, significant demographic changes occurred in Northern Azerbaijan, which were further intensified due to the departure of the indigenous population from the territories inhabited by Armenians. These counter-flows were completely “legal” in nature, since the official Russian authorities, relocating Armenians to Northern Azerbaijan, did not prevent the Azeri Turks from leaving here for the Iranian and Ottoman borders .

The largest resettlement took place in 1893-94. Already in 1896, the number of Armenians who came reached 900 thousand. Due to the resettlement in Transcaucasia in 1908, the number of Armenians reached 1 million 300 thousand people, 1 million of whom were resettled by the tsarist authorities from foreign countries. Due to this, in 1921, the Armenian state appeared in Transcaucasia. Professor V.A. Parsamyan in “History of the Armenian people - Ayastan 1801-1900.” writes: “Before the union with Russia, the population of Eastern Armenia (Iravan Khanate) was 169,155 people - of which 57,305 (33.8%) were Armenians... After the capture of the Kars region of the Armenian Dashnak Republic (1918), the population increased to 1 million 510 thousand people. Of these, 795 thousand were Armenians, 575 thousand Azerbaijanis, 140 thousand were representatives of other nationalities.”

By the end of the 19th century, a new phase of activation of the Armenian community began, associated with the national awakening of peoples, a phenomenon that migrated from Europe to Asia. In 1912-1913 The Balkan Wars began between the Ottoman Empire and the Balkan peoples, which directly affected the situation in the Caucasus. During these years, Russia dramatically changed its policy towards the Armenians. On the eve of the First World War, the Russian Empire began to assign the Ottoman Armenians the role of its ally against Ottoman Turkey, where the Armenians rebelled against their state, hoping, with the support of Russia and European countries, to create an Armenian state on Turkish lands.

However, victories in 1915-16. The Ottoman Empire on the fronts of the First World War prevented these plans: mass deportation of Armenians began from the war zone in Asia Minor towards Mesopotamia and Syria. But the bulk of the Armenians - more than 300,000 - fled along with the retreating Russian army to the South Caucasus, mainly to Azerbaijani lands.

After the collapse of the Russian Empire in Transcaucasia in 1917, the Transcaucasian Confederation was formed and the Seimas was created in Tiflis, in which Georgian, Azerbaijani, and Armenian parliamentarians played an active role. However, disagreements and the difficult military situation did not allow maintaining the confederal structure and, following the results of the last meetings of the Sejm in May 1918, independent states appeared in the South Caucasus: Georgian, Ararat (Armenian) and Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (ADR). On May 28, 1918, the ADR became the first democratic Republic in the East and in the Muslim world with a parliamentary form of government.

But the leaders of Dashnak Armenia began the massacre of the Azerbaijani population of the former Erivan province, Zangezur and other regions that now make up the territory of the Republic of Armenia. At the same time, Armenian troops, made up of detachments deserting from the fronts of the First World War, began to advance across the territory in order to “clear the way” for the creation of the state of Armenia. At this difficult time, trying to stop the bloodshed and massacre of civilians committed by Armenian troops, a group of representatives of the leadership of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic agreed to cede the city of Yerevan and its surroundings to create an Armenian state. The condition of this concession, which still causes great controversy in Azerbaijani historiography, was that the Armenian side would stop the massacre of the Azerbaijani population and would no longer have territorial claims to the ADR. When in June 1918 Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia signed, each separately, “treaties of peace and friendship with Turkey,” the territory of Armenia was defined as 10,400 sq. km. The undisputed territory of the ADR was about 98 thousand sq. km. (together with the disputed areas 114 thousand sq. km.).

However, the Armenian leadership did not keep its word. In 1918, some Russian and Armenian soldiers were withdrawn from the Turkish front, and as a result, detachments consisting of Armenians deserting from the fronts of the First World War were skillfully directed towards Azerbaijan and its oil capital Baku. Along the way, they used scorched earth tactics, leaving behind the ashes of Azerbaijani villages.

The hastily formed Armenian militia consisted of those who agreed, under Bolshevik slogans, to carry out the orders of the Dashnak leaders led by Stepan Shaumyan, sent from Moscow to lead the Baku communists (Baksovet). Then, on their basis, Shaumyan managed in Baku to staff and fully arm a 20,000-strong group consisting of 90% Armenians.

Armenian historian Ronald Suni, in his book “The Baku Commune” (1972), described in detail how the leaders of the Armenian movement, under the auspices of communist ideas, created the Armenian national state.

It was with the help of a shock and well-armed group of 20 thousand, consisting of soldiers and officers who served on the fronts of the 1st World War, that in the spring of 1918, the Dashnak leaders, under the guise of the ideas of Bolshevism, managed to carry out an unprecedented massacre of the civilian population of Baku and the regions of Azerbaijan. In a short period of time, 50-60 Azerbaijanis were killed, in total, 500-600 thousand Azerbaijanis were massacred in the Caucasus, Azerbaijan, Turkey and Persia.

The Dashnak groups then decided for the first time to try to seize the fertile lands of Karabakh from Azerbaijan. In June 1918, the 1st congress of Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians took place in Shusha, and here they declared themselves independent. The newly formed Armenian Republic, sending troops, committed unprecedented pogroms and bloodshed in Azerbaijani villages in Karabakh. Objecting to the Armenian unfounded demands, on May 22, 1919, in the information given to V. Lenin by the Baku communist Anastas Mikoyan, it was reported: “The agents of the Armenian leadership - the Dashnaks - are trying to annex Karabakh to Armenia. For the Karabakh Armenians, this would mean leaving their places of residence in Baku and uniting their destinies with nothing that binds them to Yerevan. The Armenians at their 5th congress decided to accept Azerbaijani power and unite with it.”

Then the efforts of Armenian nationalists to conquer Nagorno-Karabakh and annex it to Armenia were unsuccessful. On November 23, 1919, in Tbilisi, thanks to the efforts of the Azerbaijani leadership, it was possible to conclude a peace agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan and stop the bloodshed.

But the situation in the region continued to remain tense, and on the night of April 26-27, 1920, the 72 thousandth 11th Red Army, crossing the borders of Azerbaijan, headed to Baku. As a result of the military assault, Baku was occupied by the troops of Soviet Russia, and Soviet power was established in Azerbaijan, under which the positions of the Armenians were further strengthened. And during these years, the Armenians, without forgetting their plans, continued the fight against Azerbaijan. The issue of Nagorno-Karabakh was discussed many times at the Caucasian Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP(b), the Transcaucasian branch of the RCP(b), and at the bureau of the Central Committee of the AKP(b).

On July 15, 1920, at a meeting of the Central Committee of the Azerbaijan Communist Party (b), a decision was made to annex Karabakh and Zangezur to Azerbaijan. But the situation did not turn out in favor of Armenia, and on December 2, 1920, the Dashnak government transferred power to the Military Revolutionary Committee, headed by the Bolsheviks, without resistance. Soviet power was established in Armenia. Despite this, the Armenians again raised the issue of dividing Karabakh between Armenia and Azerbaijan. On July 27, 1921, the political and organizational bureau of the Central Committee of the AKP(b) considered the issue of Nagorno-Karabakh. This bureau did not agree with the proposal of the representative of Soviet Armenia A. Bekzadyan and stated that dividing the population by nationality and annexing part of it to Armenia and the other to Azerbaijan was unacceptable, both from an administrative and economic point of view.

Regarding this adventure, the Dashnak leader and leader of Armenia Hovhannes Kachaznuni wrote in 1923: « From the very first day of our state life, we perfectly understood that such a small, poor, ruined and cut off from the rest of the world country as Armenia could not become truly independent and independent; that support is needed, some kind of external force... There are two real forces today, and we must take them into account: these forces are Russia and Turkey. By coincidence, today our country is entering the Russian orbit and is more than sufficiently protected from the invasion of Turkey... The issue of expanding our borders can only be resolved by relying on Russia.”

After the establishment of Soviet power in the Caucasus in 1920-1921, Moscow decided not to redraw the existing borders between the former independent local states that were formed as a result of Armenian aggression in the region.

But this did not dampen the appetites of the ideologists of Armenian national separatism. In Soviet times, the leaders of the Armenian SSR repeatedly in the 1950-1970s. addressed the Kremlin with requests and even demands to transfer the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region (NKAO) of Azerbaijan to Armenia. However, at that time the Union leadership categorically refused to satisfy the baseless claims of the Armenian side. Changes in the position of the USSR leadership occurred in the mid-1980s. during the era of Gorbachev's "perestroika". It is no coincidence that it was with the beginning of perestroika innovations in the USSR in 1987 that Armenia’s claims to the NKAO gained new impetus and character.

Appearing like mushrooms after the “perestroika rain,” the Armenian organizations “Krunk” in the NKAO itself and the “Karabakh” Committee in Yerevan began implementing the project of the actual rejection of Nagorno-Karabakh. The Dashnaktsutyun party became active again: at its XXIII Congress in 1985 in Athens, it decided to consider “the creation of a united and independent Armenia” as its priority task and to implement this slogan at the expense of Nagorno-Karabakh, Nakhchivan (Azerbaijan) and Javakheti (Georgia). As always, the Armenian Church, nationalistically minded layers of the intelligentsia and the foreign diaspora were involved in the implementation of the idea. As Russian researcher S.I. Chernyavsky later noted: « Unlike Armenia, Azerbaijan did not have and does not have an organized and politically active diaspora, and the Karabakh conflict deprived the Azerbaijanis of any support from leading Western countries, taking into account their traditionally pro-Armenian positions.”

The process began in 1988 with the deportation of new groups of Azerbaijanis from Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. On February 21, 1988, the Regional Council of the NKAO announced its secession from the Azerbaijan SSR and annexation to Armenia. The first blood was shed in the Karabakh conflict on February 25, 1988 in Askeran (Karabakh), when two young Azerbaijanis were killed. Later, in Baku, in the village of Vorovskoye, an Armenian killed an Azerbaijani police officer. On July 18, 1988, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR confirmed that Nagorno-Karabakh should be part of Azerbaijan and no territorial changes are possible.

But the Armenians continued to distribute leaflets, threatened the Azerbaijanis and set fire to their houses. As a result of all this, on September 21, the last Azerbaijani left the administrative center of Nagorno-Karabakh, the city of Khankendi (Stepanakert).

An escalation of the brewing conflict followed, accompanied by the expulsion of Azerbaijanis from Armenia and the entire Nagorno-Karabakh. In Azerbaijan, power was paralyzed, the flow of refugees, and the growing anger of the Azerbaijani people would inevitably lead to massive Armenian-Azerbaijani clashes. In February 1988, a tragedy-provocation occurred in the city of Sumgayit (Azerbaijan), as a result of which Armenians, Azerbaijanis and representatives of other nations died.

Anti-Azerbaijani hysteria was organized in the Soviet press, where they tried to present the Azerbaijani people as cannibals, monsters, “pan-Islamists” and “pan-Turkists.” Passions around Nagorno-Karabakh were heating up: Azerbaijanis expelled from Armenia were placed in 42 cities and regions of Azerbaijan. Here are the tragic results of the first phase of the Karabakh conflict: About 200 thousand Azerbaijanis, 18 thousand Muslim Kurds, and thousands of Russians were expelled from Armenia by force, at gunpoint. 255 Azerbaijanis were killed: two had their heads cut off; 11 people were burned alive, 3 were cut into pieces; 23 were crushed by cars; 41 were beaten to death; 19 froze in the mountains; 8 were missing, etc. Also, 57 women and 23 children were brutally killed. After this, on December 10, 1988, modern Dashnaks declared Armenia a “republic without Turks.” The books of a Baku Armenian tell about the nationalist hysteria that gripped Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh and the difficult fate of the Armenians who moved here. Roberta Arakelova: “Karabakh notebook” and “Nagorno-Karabakh: The perpetrators of the tragedy are known.”

After the Sumgait events initiated by the Soviet KGB and emissaries from Armenia in February 1988, an open anti-Azerbaijani campaign began in the Soviet press and television.

The Soviet leadership and the media, which were silent when Armenian nationalists expelled Azerbaijanis from Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, suddenly “woke up” and raised hysteria about “Armenian pogroms” in Azerbaijan. The leadership of the USSR openly accepted the position of Armenia and sought to blame Azerbaijan for everything. The main target of the Kremlin authorities was the growing national liberation movement of the Azerbaijani people. On the night of January 19-20, 1990, the Soviet government, led by Gorbachev, committed a criminal act in Baku that was terrible in its cruelty. As a result of this criminal operation, 134 civilians were killed, 700 people were injured, and 400 people went missing.

Perhaps the most terrible and inhumane action of Armenian nationalists in Nagorno-Karabakh was the genocide of the population of the Azerbaijani city of Khojaly. From February 25 to 26 at night in 1992, the biggest tragedy of the 20th century took place - the Khojaly genocide. First, the sleeping city was surrounded by Armenian troops with the participation of the 366th CIS motorized rifle regiment, after which Khojaly was subjected to massive shelling from artillery and heavy military equipment. With the support of armored vehicles of the 366th regiment, the city was captured by the Armenian occupiers. Everywhere, armed Armenians shot fleeing civilians, mercilessly dealing with them. Thus, on a cold, snowy February night, those who were able to escape from the ambushes set up by the Armenians and escape to the nearby forests and mountains, most died from the cold and frost.

As a result of the atrocities of the criminal Armenian troops, 613 people from among the population of Khojaly were killed, 487 people became crippled, 1275 civilians - old people, children, women - were captured and subjected to incomprehensible Armenian torture, insults and humiliation. The fate of 150 people is still unknown. This was real genocide. Of the 613 people killed in Khojaly, 106 were women, 63 children, 70 old people. 8 families were completely destroyed, 24 children lost both parents, and 130 children lost one of their parents. 56 people were killed with extreme cruelty and mercilessness. They were burned alive, their heads were cut off, the skin of their faces was torn off, the eyes of babies were gouged out, the bellies of pregnant women were opened with bayonets. Armenians even insulted the dead. The Azerbaijani state and its people will never forget the Khojaly tragedy.

The Khojaly events put an end to any previously existing chance of a peaceful settlement of the Karabakh conflict. Two Armenian presidents - Robert Kocharyan and the current Serzh Sargsyan, as well as Defense Minister Seyran Ohanyan, took an active part in military operations in the Karabakh War, in the destruction of the Azerbaijani civilian population, in particular in Khojaly.

After the Khojaly tragedy of February 1992, the just anger of the Azerbaijani people at the atrocities and impunity of the Armenian nationalists resulted in the open phase of the Armenian-Azerbaijani military confrontation. Bloody military operations began using aviation, armored vehicles, rocket launchers, heavy artillery and large military units.

The Armenian side used prohibited chemical weapons against the civilian Azerbaijani population. In an environment of virtual absence of serious external support from world powers, Azerbaijan, as a result of a series of counter-offensives, was able to liberate most of the occupied Nagorno-Karabakh.

In this situation, Armenia and the separatists of Karabakh several times, through the mediation of world powers, achieved a ceasefire and sat down at the negotiating table, but then, treacherously violating ongoing negotiations, unexpectedly launched a military offensive at the front. So, for example, on August 19, 1993, on the initiative of Iran, negotiations between the Azerbaijani and Armenian delegations were held in Tehran, but it was at that moment that the Armenian troops, having thwarted all agreements, treacherously went on the offensive on the Karabakh front in the direction of the Aghdam, Fuzuli and Jabrayil regions . The blockade of Nakhchivan by Armenia also continued with the aim of subsequently separating it from Azerbaijan.

On June 4, 1993, in Ganja, the rebellion of Suret Huseynov began, who turned his troops from the Karabakh front line to Baku, with the aim of seizing power in the country. Azerbaijan found itself on the verge of a new civil war. In addition to Armenian aggression, Azerbaijan faced open separatism in the south of the country, where the rebel field commander Alikram Gumbatov announced the creation of the “Talysh-Mugan Republic”. In this difficult situation, on June 15, 1993, the Milli Majlis (Parliament) of Azerbaijan elected Heydar Aliyev as head of the country's Supreme Council. On July 17, President Abulfaz Elchibey resigned his presidential powers, which the Milli Majlis transferred to Heydar Aliyev.

In the north of Azerbaijan, separatist sentiments arose among Lezgin nationalists, who also intended to seize the Azerbaijani regions bordering Russia. The situation became even more complicated as Azerbaijan was also on the brink of civil war between various political and paramilitary groups within the country. As a result of the crisis of power and an attempted military coup in Azerbaijan, where there was a struggle for power, neighboring Armenia went on the offensive and occupied the Azerbaijani lands adjacent to Nagorno-Karabakh. On July 23, the Armenians captured one of the ancient cities of Azerbaijan - Agdam. On September 14-15, the Armenians tried to break into the territory of Azerbaijan from military positions in Kazakh, then in Tovuz, Gadabay, Zangelan. On September 21, villages and hamlets of Zangelan, Dzhabrail, Tovuz and Ordubad regions were subjected to massive shelling.

On November 30, 1993, at the OSCE meeting in Rome, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Azerbaijan G. Hasanov stated that as a result of the aggressive policy pursued by Armenia, in the name of creating “Great Armenia”, it occupied 20% of Azerbaijani lands. More than 18 thousand civilians were killed, about 50 thousand people were wounded, 4 thousand people were captured, 88 thousand residential areas, more than a thousand economic facilities, 250 schools and educational institutions were destroyed.

After Azerbaijan and Armenia joined the UN and the OSCE, Armenia, declaring that it would follow the principles of these organizations, captured the city of Shusha. While a group of UN representatives was in Azerbaijan to collect facts indicating Armenian aggression, Armenian troops captured the Lachin region, thereby connecting Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia. During the informal meeting of the Geneva Five, the Armenians occupied the Kalbajar region, and during the visit of the head of the OSCE Minsk Group to the region, they captured the Aghdam region. After adopting a resolution that the Armenians must unconditionally liberate the Azerbaijani territories they had captured, they captured the Fizuli region. And while the head of the OSCE, Margaret af-Iglas, was in the region, Armenia occupied the Zangelan region. After this, at the end of November 1993, the Armenians captured the area near the Khudaferin Bridge and thus took control of 161 km of the Azerbaijani border with Iran.

Finally, on December 23, 1993, through the mediation of Turkmen President S. Niyazov, a meeting took place between Ter-Petrosyan and G. Aliyev. Numerous meetings took place with representatives of Russia, Turkey, and Armenia. On May 11, 1994, a temporary truce was declared. On December 5-6, 1994, at the summit of heads of state in Budapest and on May 13-15 in Morocco, at the 7th summit of Islamic States, Heydar Aliyev in his speech condemned Armenian policy and aggression against Azerbaijan. He also pointed out that they did not comply with UN resolutions No. 822, 853, 874 and 884 in which the aggressive actions of Armenia were condemned and a demand was put forward to immediately liberate the occupied Azerbaijani lands.

Following the results of the First Karabakh War Armenia occupied Nagorno-Karabakh and seven more Azerbaijani regions - Agdam, Fizuli, Jabrail, Zangilan, Gubadli, Lachin, Kelbajar, from where the Azerbaijani population was expelled, and all these places turned into ruins as a result of aggression. Now about 20% of the territory (17 thousand sq. km): 12 districts and 700 settlements of Azerbaijan are under the occupation of Armenians. As a result of the struggle of the Armenians for the creation of “Great Armenia”, during the entire period of confrontation they brutally killed 20 thousand and captured 4 thousand people of the Azerbaijani population.

In the occupied territories they destroyed about 4 thousand industrial and agricultural facilities with a total area of ​​6 million square meters. m, about a thousand educational organizations, about 180 thousand apartments, 3 thousand cultural and educational centers and 700 medical institutions. 616 schools, 225 kindergartens, 11 vocational schools, 4 technical schools, 1 higher education institution, 842 clubs, 962 libraries, 13 museums, 2 theaters and 183 cinema facilities were destroyed.

There are 1 million refugees and internally displaced persons in Azerbaijan - that is, every eighth citizen of the country. The wounds inflicted by the Armenians on the Azerbaijani people are innumerable. In total, 1 million Azerbaijanis were killed during the 20th century, and 1.5 million Azerbaijanis were expelled from Armenia.

Armenia organized mass terror on Azerbaijani soil: explosions continued on buses, trains, and the Baku metro. In 1989-1994, Armenian terrorists and separatists carried out 373 terrorist attacks on the territory of Azerbaijan, as a result of which 1,568 people were killed and 1,808 were injured.

Let us note that the adventure of the Armenian nationalists to recreate “Great Armenia” was very costly for the ordinary Armenian people. Nowadays, the population in Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh has almost halved. There are 1.8 million left in Armenia, and 80-90 thousand Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh, which is half the figure for 1989. The resumption of hostilities on the Karabakh front could lead to the fact that eventually the Armenian population will almost completely leave the South Caucasus region and, as statistics show, will move to the Krasnodar and Stavropol regions of Russia and to the Ukrainian Crimea. This will be the logical result of the mediocre policy of nationalists and criminals who usurped power in the Republic of Armenia and occupied Azerbaijani lands.

The Azerbaijani people and leadership are making every effort to quickly restore the territorial integrity of the country and liberate the territories occupied by the Armenian side. To this end, Azerbaijan is pursuing a comprehensive foreign policy, and is also building its military-industrial complex, modernizing its army, which will forcefully restore the sovereignty of Azerbaijan if the aggressor country Armenia does not liberate the occupied Azerbaijani lands peacefully.

Armenian soldiers in positions in Nagorno-Karabakh

The Nagorno-Karbakh conflict became one of the ethnopolitical conflicts of the second half of the 1980s on the territory of the then existing USSR. The collapse of the Soviet Union led to large-scale structural changes in the sphere of ethnonational relations. The confrontation between the national republics and the union center, which caused a systemic crisis and the beginning of centrifugal processes, reanimated old processes of an ethnic and national nature. State-legal, territorial, socio-economic, geopolitical interests are intertwined into one knot. The struggle of some republics against the union center in a number of cases turned into a struggle of autonomies against their republican “metropoles”. Such conflicts were, for example, the Georgian-Abkhazian, Georgian-Ossetian, Transnistrian conflicts. But the largest and bloodiest, which developed into an actual war between two independent states, was the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict in the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region (NKAO), later the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR). In this confrontation, a line of ethnic confrontation between the parties immediately arose, and opposing sides were formed along ethnic lines: Armenians-Azerbaijanis.

The Armenian-Azerbaijani confrontation in Nagorno-Karabakh has a long history. It is worth noting that the territory of Karabakh was annexed to the Russian Empire in 1813 as part of the Karabakh Khanate. Interethnic contradictions led to major Armenian-Azerbaijani clashes in 1905-1907 and 1918-1920. In May 1918, in connection with the revolution in Russia, the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic appeared. However, the Armenian population of Karabakh, whose territory became part of the ADR, refused to submit to the new authorities. The armed confrontation continued until the establishment of Soviet power in this region in 1920. Then units of the Red Army, together with Azerbaijani troops, managed to suppress the Armenian resistance in Karabakh. In 1921, by decision of the Caucasian Bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh was left within the Azerbaijan SSR with the provision of broad autonomy. In 1923, the regions of the Azerbaijan SSR with a predominantly Armenian population were united into the Autonomous Region of Nagorno-Karabakh (ANK), which in 1937 became known as the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region (NKAO). At the same time, the administrative boundaries of the autonomy did not coincide with the ethnic ones. The Armenian leadership from time to time raised the issue of transferring Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia, but the center decided to establish the status quo in the region. Socio-economic tensions in Karabakh escalated into riots in the 1960s. At the same time, Karabakh Armenians felt infringed on their cultural and political rights on the territory of Azerbaijan. However, the Azerbaijani minority both in the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Okrug and as part of the Armenian SSR (which did not have its own autonomy) made counter-accusations of discrimination.

Since 1987, dissatisfaction of the Armenian population with its socio-economic situation has intensified in the region. There were accusations against the leadership of the Azerbaijan SSR of maintaining the economic backwardness of the region, of infringing on the rights, culture and identity of the Armenian minority in Azerbaijan. In addition, existing problems that were previously kept silent quickly became widely known after Gorbachev came to power. At rallies in Yerevan, caused by dissatisfaction with the economic crisis, there were calls to transfer NKAO to Armenia. Nationalist Armenian organizations and the nascent national movement fueled the protests. The new leadership of Armenia was openly in opposition to the local nomenklatura and the ruling communist regime as a whole. Azerbaijan, in turn, remained one of the most conservative republics of the USSR. Local authorities, headed by Heydar Aliyev, suppressed all political dissent and remained faithful to the center to the last. Unlike Armenia, where most party functionaries expressed their readiness to cooperate with the national movement, the Azerbaijani political leadership was able to retain power until 1992 in the fight against the so-called. national democratic movement. However, the leadership of the Azerbaijan SSR, state and law enforcement agencies, which used the old levers of influence, were not prepared for the events in NKAO and Armenia, which, in turn, provoked mass protests in Azerbaijan, which created conditions for uncontrollable behavior of the crowd. In turn, the Soviet leadership, fearing that protests in Armenia regarding the annexation of the NKAO could lead not only to a revision of the national-territorial boundaries between the republics, but could also lead to the uncontrolled collapse of the USSR. He considered the demands of the Karabakh Armenians and the Armenian public as manifestations of nationalism, contrary to the interests of the workers of the Armenian and Azerbaijani SSR.

During the summer of 1987 - winter of 1988. Mass protests of Armenians took place on the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Okrug, demanding separation from Azerbaijan. In a number of places, these protests escalated into clashes with the police. At the same time, representatives of the Armenian intellectual elite, public, political, and cultural figures tried to actively lobby for the reunification of Karabakh with Armenia. Signatures were collected among the population, delegations were sent to Moscow, representatives of the Armenian diaspora abroad tried to attract the attention of the international community to the aspirations of the Armenians for reunification. At the same time, the Azerbaijani leadership, which declared the unacceptability of revising the borders of the Azerbaijan SSR, pursued a policy of using the usual levers to regain control of the situation. A large delegation of representatives of the leadership of Azerbaijan and the republican party organization was sent to Stepanakert. The group also included the heads of the republican Ministry of Internal Affairs, the KGB, the Prosecutor's Office and the Supreme Court. This delegation condemned “extremist-separatist” sentiments in the region. In response to these actions, a mass rally was organized in Stepanakert about the reunification of the NKAO and the Armenian SSR. On February 20, 1988, a session of people's deputies of the NKAO addressed the leadership of the Azerbaijan SSR, the Armenian SSR and the USSR with a request to consider and positively resolve the issue of transferring the NKAO from Azerbaijan to Armenia. However, the Azerbaijani authorities and the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee refused to recognize the demands of the NKAO regional council. The central authorities continued to declare that the redrawing of borders was unacceptable, and calls for Karabakh to join Armenia were declared the machinations of “nationalists” and “extremists.” Immediately after the appeal of the Armenian majority (Azerbaijani representatives refused to take part in the meeting) of the NKAO regional council about the separation of Karabakh from Azerbaijan, a slow slide into armed conflict began. The first reports of acts of ethnic violence in both ethnic communities appeared. The explosion of Armenian rally activity caused a response from the Azerbaijani community. Things escalated into clashes with the use of firearms and the participation of law enforcement officers. The first victims of the conflict appeared. In February, a mass strike began in NKAO, which lasted intermittently until December 1989. On February 22-23, spontaneous rallies were held in Baku and other cities of Azerbaijan in support of the decision of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee on the inadmissibility of revising the national-territorial structure.

The turning point in the development of the interethnic conflict was the pogrom of Armenians in Sumgait on February 27-29, 1988. According to official data, 26 Armenians and 6 Azerbaijanis died. Similar events occurred in Kirovabad (now Ganja), where an armed crowd of Azerbaijanis attacked the Armenian community. However, the densely living Armenians managed to fight back, which led to casualties on both sides. All this happened with the inaction of authorities and law enforcement, as some eyewitnesses claimed. As a result of the clashes, streams of Azerbaijani refugees began to flow from Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Okrug. Armenian refugees also appeared after the events in Stepanakert, Kirovabad and Shusha, when rallies for the integrity of the Azerbaijan SSR developed into interethnic clashes and pogroms. Armenian-Azerbaijani clashes also began on the territory of the Armenian SSR. The reaction of the central authorities was the replacement of party leaders in Armenia and Azerbaijan. On May 21, troops were sent to Stepanakert. According to Azerbaijani sources, the Azerbaijani population was expelled from several cities of the Armenian SSR; in the NKAO, as a result of the strike, obstacles were created for local Azerbaijanis who were not allowed to work. In June-July the conflict took on an inter-republican dimension. The Azerbaijani SSR and the Armenian SSR unleashed the so-called “war of laws.” The Supreme Presidium of the AzSSR recognized the resolution of the NKAO regional council on secession from Azerbaijan as unacceptable. The Supreme Council of the Armenian SSR agreed to the entry of NKAO into the Armenian SSR. In July, mass strikes began in Armenia in connection with the decision of the Presidium of the CPSU Central Committee on the territorial integrity of the Azerbaijan SSR. The Union leadership actually sided with the Azerbaijan SSR on the issue of maintaining existing borders. After a series of clashes in the NKAO, on September 21, 1988, a curfew and a special state were introduced. Protest activity on the territory of Armenia and Azerbaijan led to outbreaks of violence against civilians and increased the number of refugees, forming two counter streams. In October and the first half of November, tension increased. Rallies of many thousands took place in Armenia and Azerbaijan; representatives of the “Karabakh” party, who took a radical position on the annexation of Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Okrug to Armenia, won early elections to the Supreme Council of the Republic of the Armenian SSR. The visit of members of the Council of Nationalities of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR to Stepanakert did not bring any results. In November 1988, the accumulated discontent in society as a result of the policy of the republican authorities regarding the preservation of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Okrug resulted in rallies of many thousands in Baku. The death sentence of one of the defendants in the Sumgait pogrom case, Akhmedov, passed by the Supreme Court of the USSR, provoked a wave of pogroms in Baku, which spread throughout Azerbaijan, especially to cities with an Armenian population - Kirovabad, Nakhichevan, Khanlar, Shamkhor, Sheki, Kazakh, Mingachevir. The army and police in most cases did not interfere in the events taking place. At the same time, shelling of border villages on Armenian territory began. A special situation was also introduced in Yerevan and rallies and demonstrations were prohibited; military equipment and battalions with special weapons were brought to the streets of the city. This time saw the largest flow of refugees caused by violence in both Azerbaijan and Armenia.

By this time, armed formations began to be created in both republics. At the beginning of May 1989, the Armenians living north of the NKAO began to create the first combat detachments. In the summer of the same year, Armenia imposed a blockade of the Nakhichevan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. As a response, the Popular Front of Azerbaijan introduced an economic and transport blockade of Armenia. On December 1, the Armed Forces of the Armenian SSR and the National Council of Nagorno-Karabakh at a joint meeting adopted resolutions on the reunification of NKAO with Armenia. From the beginning of 1990, armed clashes began - mutual artillery shelling on the Armenian-Azerbaijani border. During the deportation of Armenians from the Shahumyan and Khanlar regions of Azerbaijan by Azerbaijani forces, helicopters and armored personnel carriers were used for the first time. On January 15, the Presidium of the USSR Armed Forces introduced a state of emergency in the NKAO, in the border regions of the Azerbaijan SSR, in the Goris region of the Armenian SSR, as well as on the state border of the USSR on the territory of the Azerbaijan SSR. On January 20, internal troops were sent to Baku to prevent the Popular Front of Azerbaijan from seizing power. This led to clashes that killed up to 140 people. Armenian militants began to penetrate into populated areas with an Azerbaijani population, committing acts of violence. Clashes between militants and internal troops have become more frequent. In turn, units of the Azerbaijani riot police took actions to invade Armenian villages, which led to the death of civilians. Azerbaijani helicopters began shelling Stepanakert.

On March 17, 1991, an all-Union referendum was held on the preservation of the USSR, which was supported by the leadership of the Azerbaijan SSR. At the same time, the Armenian leadership, which adopted the declaration of independence of Armenia on August 23, 1990, did its best to prevent the holding of a referendum on the territory of the republic. On April 30, the so-called “Operation Ring” began, carried out by the forces of the Azerbaijani Ministry of Internal Affairs and the internal troops of the USSR. The purpose of the operation was declared to be the disarmament of illegal armed groups of Armenians. This operation, however, led to the death of a large number of civilians and the deportation of Armenians from 24 settlements on the territory of Azerbaijan. Before the collapse of the USSR, the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict was escalating, the number of clashes was growing, and the parties were using various types of weapons. From December 19 to 27, the internal troops of the USSR were withdrawn from the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. With the collapse of the USSR and the withdrawal of internal troops from the NKAO, the situation in the conflict zone became uncontrollable. A full-scale war between Armenia and Azerbaijan began for the secession of NKAO from the latter.

As a result of the division of military property of the Soviet army, withdrawn from Transcaucasia, the largest part of the weapons went to Azerbaijan. On January 6, 1992, a declaration of independence of the NKAO was adopted. Full-scale hostilities began using tanks, helicopters, artillery and aircraft. Combat units of the Armenian armed forces and Azerbaijani riot police took turns attacking enemy villages, suffering heavy losses and causing damage to civilian infrastructure. On March 21, a temporary one-week truce was concluded, after which on March 28, the Azerbaijani side launched its largest attack on Stepanakert since the beginning of the year. The attackers used the Grad system. However, the assault on the capital of NKAO ended in vain, the Azerbaijani forces suffered heavy losses, the Armenian military took up their original positions and drove the enemy away from Stepanakert.

In May, Armenian armed forces attacked Nakhichevan, an Azerbaijani exclave bordering Armenia, Turkey and Iran. Azerbaijan fired at the territory of Armenia. On June 12, the summer offensive of Azerbaijani troops began, lasting until August 26. As a result of this offensive, the territories of the former Shaumyan and Mardakert regions of NKAO came under the control of the Azerbaijani armed forces for a short time. But this was a local success for the Azerbaijani forces. As a result of the Armenian counter-offensive, strategic heights in the Mardakert region were recaptured from the enemy, and the Azerbaijani offensive itself fizzled out by mid-July. During the fighting, weapons and specialists from the former USSR Armed Forces were used, mainly by the Azerbaijani side, in particular aviation and anti-aircraft installations. In September-October 1992, the Azerbaijani army made an unsuccessful attempt to block the Lachin corridor, a small section of Azerbaijani territory located between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Okrug, controlled by Armenian armed forces. On November 17, a full-scale offensive by the NKR army against Azerbaijani positions began, which made a decisive turning point in the war in favor of the Armenians. The Azerbaijani side refused to carry out offensive operations for a long time.

It is worth noting that from the very beginning of the military phase of the conflict, both sides began to accuse each other of using mercenaries in their ranks. In many cases these accusations were confirmed. Afghan Mujahideen and Chechen mercenaries fought as part of the Azerbaijani armed forces, including famous field commanders Shamil Basayev, Khattab, Salman Raduyev. Turkish, Russian, Iranian and presumably American instructors also operated in Azerbaijan. Armenian volunteers who came from Middle Eastern countries, in particular from Lebanon and Syria, fought on the side of Armenia. The forces of both sides also included former soldiers of the Soviet Army and mercenaries from the former Soviet republics. Both sides used weapons from the warehouses of the armed forces of the Soviet Army. At the beginning of 1992, Azerbaijan received a squadron of combat helicopters and attack aircraft. In May of the same year, the official transfer of weapons from the 4th Combined Arms Army to Azerbaijan began: tanks, armored personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles, artillery mounts, including Grad. By June 1, the Armenian side received tanks, armored personnel carriers, infantry fighting vehicles and artillery also from the arsenal of the Soviet Army. The Azerbaijani side actively used aviation and artillery in the bombing of settlements in the NKAO, the main goal of which was the exodus of the Armenian population from the territory of the autonomy. As a result of the raids and shelling of civilian targets, a large number of civilian casualties were noted. However, the Armenian air defense, initially quite weak, managed to resist air raids by Azerbaijani aviation due to the increase in the number of anti-aircraft installations among the Armenians. By 1994, the first aircraft appeared in the Armenian armed forces, in particular thanks to Russian assistance within the framework of military cooperation in the CIS.

After repelling the Summer offensive of the Azerbaijani troops, the Armenian side switched to active offensive actions. From March to September 1993, Armenian troops, as a result of military operations, managed to take a number of settlements in the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Okrug, controlled by Azerbaijani forces. In August–September, Russian envoy Vladimir Kazimirov achieved a temporary ceasefire, extended until November. At a meeting with Russian President Boris Yeltsin, Azerbaijani President Heydar Aliyev announced his refusal to resolve the conflict by military means. Negotiations took place in Moscow between the Azerbaijani authorities and representatives of Nagorno-Karabakh. However, in October 1993, Azerbaijan violated the truce and attempted an offensive in the southwestern sector of NKAO. This offensive was repulsed by the Armenians, who launched a counter-offensive on the southern sector of the front and by November 1 occupied a number of key areas, isolating parts of the Zangelan, Jebrail and Kubatli regions from Azerbaijan. The Armenian army thus occupied the regions of Azerbaijan to the north and south of the NKAO itself.

In January-February, one of the bloodiest battles took place at the final stage of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict - the Battle of Omar Pass. This battle began with the January 1994 offensive of Azerbaijani forces on the northern sector of the front. It is worth noting that the fighting took place in devastated territory, where there was no civilian population left, as well as in difficult weather conditions, in the highlands. In early February, the Azerbaijanis came close to the city of Kelbajar, which had been occupied by Armenian forces a year earlier. However, the Azerbaijanis failed to develop their initial success. On February 12, Armenian units launched a counter-offensive, and Azerbaijani forces had to retreat through the Omar Pass to their original positions. The losses of Azerbaijanis in this battle amounted to 4 thousand people, Armenians 2 thousand. The Kelbajar region remained under the control of the NKR defense forces.

On April 14, 1994, the Council of Heads of State of the CIS, on the initiative of Russia and with the direct participation of the presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia, adopted a statement clearly stating the issue of a ceasefire as an urgent need for a settlement in Karabakh.

In April-May, Armenian forces, as a result of an offensive in the Ter-Ter direction, forced Azerbaijani troops to retreat. On May 5, 1994, at the initiative of the Interparliamentary Assembly of the CIS, the Parliament of Kyrgyzstan, the Federal Assembly and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, a meeting was held, as a result of which representatives of the governments of Azerbaijan, Armenia and the NKR signed the Bishkek Protocol calling for a ceasefire on the night of May 8-9, 1994 of the year. On May 9, the Plenipotentiary Representative of the Russian President in Nagorno-Karabakh, Vladimir Kazimirov, prepared the “Agreement on an Indefinite Ceasefire,” which was signed by Azerbaijani Defense Minister M. Mamedov on the same day in Baku. On May 10 and 11, the “Agreement” was signed, respectively, by the Minister of Defense of Armenia S. Sargsyan and the commander of the NKR army S. Babayan. The active phase of the armed confrontation has ended.

The conflict was “frozen”; according to the terms of the agreements reached, the status quo following the results of the hostilities was maintained. As a result of the war, the de facto independence of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic from Azerbaijan and its control over the southwestern part of Azerbaijan up to the border with Iran were declared. This also included the so-called “security zone”: five regions adjacent to the NKR. At the same time, five Azerbaijani enclaves are controlled by Armenia. On the other hand, Azerbaijan retained control over 15% of the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.

According to various estimates, the losses of the Armenian side are estimated at 5-6 thousand people killed, including civilians. Azerbaijan lost from 4 to 7 thousand people killed during the conflict, with the bulk of the losses falling on military units.

The Karabakh conflict has become one of the bloodiest and largest in the region, second only to the two Chechen wars in terms of the amount of equipment used and human losses. As a result of the fighting, severe damage was caused to the infrastructure of the NKR and adjacent regions of Azerbaijan, causing an exodus of refugees from both Azerbaijan and Armenia. As a result of the war, the relationship between Azerbaijanis and Armenians was dealt a strong blow, and the atmosphere of hostility continues to this day. Diplomatic relations were never established between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and the armed conflict was mothballed. As a result, isolated cases of military clashes continue on the demarcation line of the warring parties even today.

Ivanovsky Sergey

The Karabakh conflict is an ethnopolitical conflict in the Transcaucasus between Azerbaijanis and Armenians. Nagorno-Karabakh, populated predominantly by Armenians, twice (1905–1907, 1918–1920) at the beginning of the 20th century became the scene of a bloody Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict. Autonomy in Nagorno-Karabakh was created in 1923, since 1937 - Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region. After the end of the Second World War, the leadership of Armenia raised the issue of transferring NKAO to the republic, but did not receive the support of the leadership of the USSR. In an interview with the Zerkalo newspaper, Heydar Aliyev claims that as the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Azerbaijan SSR (1969-1982), he pursued a policy aimed at changing the demographic balance in the region in favor of the Azerbaijanis. (see Appendix 3)

The policy of democratization of Soviet public life, initiated by M. S. Gorbachev, provided completely different opportunities. Already in October 1987, at rallies in Yerevan dedicated to environmental problems, demands were made for the transfer of NKAO to Armenia, which were subsequently repeated in numerous appeals sent to the Soviet leadership. In 1987-1988 In the region, discontent among the Armenian population is intensifying, the reason for which was the socio-economic situation.

The Karabakh Armenians felt themselves to be the object of various restrictions on the part of Azerbaijan. The main reason for the discontent was that the Azerbaijani authorities deliberately led to the severance of the region’s ties with Armenia and pursued a policy of cultural de-Armenization of the region, the systematic settlement of it by Azerbaijanis, squeezing out the Armenian population from the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region, while neglecting its economic needs. By this time, the share of the Armenian majority in the population had dropped to 76%, the region exploited by the authorities in Baku was economically impoverished, and the Armenian culture of the region was suppressed. Despite the proximity of the region to Armenia, people were not able to receive broadcasts from Yerevan Television, and teaching Armenian history in schools was prohibited.

From the second half of 1987, Armenians actively carried out a campaign to collect signatures for the annexation of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region to the Armenian SSR. Delegations from the Karabakh Armenians were sent to Moscow to “push” their cause in the Central Committee of the CPSU. Influential Armenians (writer Zori Balayan, historian Sergei Mikoyan) actively lobbied for the Karabakh issue abroad.

The leaders of national movements, trying to secure mass support for themselves, placed special emphasis on the fact that their republics and peoples “feed” Russia and the Union Center. As the economic crisis deepened, this instilled in people's minds the idea that their prosperity could only be ensured by secession from the USSR. For the party leadership of the republics, an exceptional opportunity was created to ensure a quick career and prosperity. “Gorbachev’s team” was not ready to offer ways out of the “national impasse” and therefore constantly delayed making decisions. The situation began to get out of control.

In September-October 1987, the first secretary of the Shamkhor region of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan, M. Asadov, came into conflict with the residents of the Armenian village of Chardakhly, Shamkhor region (northern Karabakh, outside the NKAO) in connection with the protests of the village residents against the dismissal of the director of the state farm, an Armenian, and incidents occurred beatings and arrests of several dozen village residents (see Appendix 4). A small protest demonstration is taking place in Yerevan in connection with this.

In November 1987, as a result of interethnic clashes, Azerbaijanis living in the Kafan and Meghri regions of the Armenian SSR left for Azerbaijan. The Azerbaijani authorities use party levers to condemn “nationalist”, “extremist-separatist” processes.

On February 11, 1988, a large group of representatives of the government of Azerbaijan and the leadership of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan, headed by the second secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan Vasily Konovalov, left for Stepanakert. The group also includes the head of the department of administrative bodies of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan M. Asadov, deputy heads of the republican KGB, Ministry of Internal Affairs, prosecutor's office, Supreme Court and law enforcement officers ensuring their safety.

On the night of February 11-12, an extended meeting of the bureau of the regional committee of the KPAz is held in Stepanakert with the participation of leaders who arrived from Baku. The bureau makes a decision to condemn the “nationalist”, “extremist-separatist” processes that are gaining strength in the region, and to hold “party-economic assets” on February 12-13 in the city of Stepanakert and in all regional centers of the NKAO, and then at the level of the autonomous region , in order to counter the growing popular discontent with the full power of a single party-economic apparatus.

On February 12, in the assembly hall of the Stepanakert City Committee of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan, a city party and economic activity was held with the participation of representatives from Baku, local party leaders, heads of government agencies, enterprises, trade union committees and party organizers. At the beginning of the meeting it was stated that behind the events in Karabakh there are “extremists” and “separatists” who are unable to lead the people. The meeting proceeds according to a pre-prepared scenario, the speakers declare the indestructible brotherhood of Azerbaijanis and Armenians and try to reduce the problem to criticism of individual economic shortcomings. After some time, Maxim Mirzoyan bursts onto the podium, sharply criticizing everything said for indifference and neglect of the national specification of Karabakh, “Azerbaijanization” and the implementation of a demographic policy that contributes to a decrease in the share of the Armenian population in the region. This speech leads to the fact that the meeting goes out of the control of the party leaders and the members of the presidium leave the hall. The news of the failure of the meeting reaches Askeran, and the district party and economic assets also do not go according to the planned scenario. An attempt to hold a party and economic activity in the Hadrut region on the same day generally leads to a spontaneous rally. The plans of the Azerbaijani leadership to resolve the situation were thwarted. The party and economic leaders of Karabakh not only did not condemn “extremism”, but, on the contrary, actively supported it.

On February 13, the first rally takes place in Stepanakert, at which demands are made for the annexation of NKAO to Armenia. The City Executive Committee gives permission to hold it, outlining the goal - “the demand for the reunification of NKAO with Armenia.” Head Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Azerbaijan SSR M. Asadov unsuccessfully tries to prevent the meeting. Meanwhile, according to participants in the events, the executive authorities of the autonomous region are split and are losing control over the situation. Management is assumed by the Board of Directors, which includes the heads of large enterprises in the region and individual activists. The council decides to hold sessions of city and district councils, and then convene a session of the regional Council of People's Deputies.

On February 14, the Azerbaijani party leadership tries to appeal to the population of NKAO through the regional newspaper “Soviet Karabakh” with an appeal in which the ongoing events are regarded as “extremist and separatist”, inspired by Armenian nationalists. As a result of the intervention of the Board of Directors, the appeal was never published.

On February 20, 1988, an extraordinary session of people's deputies of the NKAO appealed to the Supreme Soviets of the Armenian SSR, the Azerbaijan SSR and the USSR with a request to consider and positively resolve the issue of transferring the NKAO from Azerbaijan to Armenia. After this, Azerbaijani refugees arrived in Baku with signs of beatings.

On February 21, the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee adopted a resolution according to which the demand for the inclusion of Nagorno-Karabakh into the Armenian SSR is presented as adopted as a result of the actions of “extremists” and “nationalists” and contrary to the interests of the Azerbaijan SSR and the Armenian SSR. The resolution is limited to general calls for the normalization of the situation, the development and implementation of measures for the further socio-economic and cultural development of the autonomous region. The central authorities will continue to be guided by this decree, despite the aggravation of the situation, continuously declaring that “there will be no redrawing of borders.”

On February 22, 1988, near the Armenian settlement of Askeran, a clash occurred between a large crowd of Azerbaijanis from the city of Agdam, heading to Stepanakert to express their protest against the decision of the regional authorities to separate Karabakh from Azerbaijan, police and military cordons placed on their way, and the local population, some of whom were armed with hunting rifles. As a result of the clash, two Azerbaijanis were killed.

About 50 Armenians were wounded. The leadership of Azerbaijan tried not to advertise these events. 2 More massive bloodshed was avoided that day. Meanwhile, a demonstration is taking place in Yerevan. The number of demonstrators by the end of the day reaches 45-50 thousand. The Vremya program touches on the topic of the decision of the regional council of the NKAO, where it is called inspired by “extremist and nationalist-minded individuals.” This reaction from the central press only increases the indignation of the Armenian public.

February 26, 1988 - a rally is held in Yerevan, in which almost half a million people participate. Later, at a meeting of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee, Mikhail Gorbachev said that after the clash in Askeran, leaflets began to be distributed in Yerevan calling on the Armenians to “take up arms and crush the Turks, but in all the speeches it did not reach either anti-Sovietism or hostile antics.” And on the same day, a rally of 40-50 people is held in Sumgait in defense of the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan, which the very next day develops into an Armenian pogrom.

February 27, 1988 - Deputy Prosecutor General of the USSR A.F. Katusev, who was then in Baku in Baku, appears on television and reports the death of two Azerbaijanis in a skirmish near Askeran that occurred on February 22.

February 27-29 - Armenian pogrom in the city of Sumgait - the first mass outbreak of ethnic violence in modern Soviet history. Tom de Waal, author of a book on the history of the Karabakh conflict, says that "the Soviet Union in peacetime never experienced what happened" in Sumgayit. According to official data from the USSR Prosecutor General's Office, 26 Armenians and 6 Azerbaijanis died during these events. Armenian sources indicate that these data are underestimated.

In the spring - autumn of 1988, the Resolutions of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, the Council of Ministers of the USSR and the Central Committee of the CPSU were adopted in March 1988 regarding the interethnic conflict in the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Okrug, but did not lead to stabilization of the situation, since the most radical representatives of both conflicting sides rejected any compromise proposals. The majority of members of the regional council of deputies and the regional party committee supported the demands for the transfer of NKAO from Azerbaijan to Armenia, which were formalized in the relevant decisions of the sessions of the regional council and the plenum of the regional party committee, headed by Henrikh Poghosyan. In NKAO (especially in Stepanakert) there were daily crowded marches, rallies, strikes by collectives of enterprises, organizations, and educational institutions in the region demanding separation from Azerbaijan. An informal organization is being created - the Krunk Committee, headed by the director of the Stepanakert Construction Materials Plant Arkady Manucharov.

In fact, the committee assumed the functions of an organizer of mass protests. By decree of the Supreme Council of the AzSSR, the committee was dissolved, but in fact continued its activities. A movement to support the Armenian population of NKAO grew in Armenia. A “Karabakh” committee has been created in Yerevan, whose leaders are calling for increased pressure on government bodies with a view to transferring the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Okrug to Armenia. At the same time, calls continue in Azerbaijan for “decisive restoration of order” in the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Okrug. Social tension and national enmity between the Azerbaijani and Armenian populations are increasing every day. In summer and autumn, cases of violence in NKAO become more frequent, and the mutual flow of refugees increases.

Representatives of the central Soviet and state bodies of the USSR are sent to NKAO. Some of the identified problems that have been building up in the national sphere for years are becoming public. The Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR urgently adopted a resolution “On measures to accelerate the socio-economic development of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region of the Azerbaijan SSR in 1988-1995.”

June 14, 1988 The Supreme Council of Armenia agrees to the inclusion of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region into the Armenian SSR.

On June 17, 1988, the Supreme Council of Azerbaijan decides that Nagorno-Karabakh should remain part of the republic: “In response to the appeal of the Supreme Council of the Armenian SSR, the Supreme Council of the Azerbaijan SSR, based on the interests of preserving the existing national-territorial structure of the country, enshrined in the Constitution of the USSR “, guided by the principles of internationalism, the interests of the Azerbaijani and Armenian peoples, other nations and nationalities of the republic, considered the transfer of NKAO from the Azerbaijan SSR to the Armenian SSR impossible.”

In July 1988, multi-day strikes by collectives of enterprises, organizations, educational institutions, and mass rallies took place in Armenia. As a result of a clash between protesters and soldiers of the Soviet Army at Yerevan Zvartnots airport, one of the protesters was killed. The 130th Catholicos of All Armenians Vazgen I (1955-1994) addresses on republican television with a call for wisdom, calm, a sense of responsibility of the Armenian people, and to end the strike. The call remains unheard. Enterprises and organizations have not been operating in Stepanakert for several months, processions and mass rallies are held every day through the streets of the city, the situation is becoming increasingly tense.

Meanwhile, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan is trying to normalize the situation in areas where Azerbaijanis live densely in Armenia. Refugees from Azerbaijan continue to arrive in the Armenian SSR. According to local authorities, as of July 13, 7,265 people (1,598 families) arrived in Armenia from Baku, Sumgait, Mingachevir, Kazakh, Shamkhor and other cities of Azerbaijan.

On July 18, 1988, a meeting of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR was held in the Kremlin, at which the decisions of the Supreme Councils of the Armenian SSR and the Azerbaijan SSR on Nagorno-Karabakh were considered and a resolution was adopted on this issue. The resolution noted that, having considered the request of the Supreme Council of the Armenian SSR dated June 15, 1988 for the transfer of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region to the Armenian SSR (in connection with the petition of the Council of People's Deputies of the NKAO) and the decision of the Supreme Council of the Azerbaijan SSR dated June 17, 1988 On the unacceptability of the transfer of NKAO to the Armenian SSR, the Presidium of the Supreme Council considers it impossible to change the borders and the national-territorial division of the Azerbaijan SSR and the Armenian SSR established on a constitutional basis.

In September 1988, the Azerbaijani population was expelled from Stepanakert, the Armenian population from Shushi. On the 20th of September, a special situation and curfew were introduced in the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region and the Agdam region of the Azerbaijan SSR. In Armenia, the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the Armenian SSR decided to dissolve the Karabakh Committee. However, attempts by party and government bodies to calm the population had no effect. In Yerevan and some other cities of Armenia, calls continue to organize strikes, rallies, and hunger strikes. On September 22, the work of a number of enterprises and urban transport in Yerevan, Leninakan, Abovyan, Charentsavan, as well as the Etchmiadzin region was stopped. In Yerevan, military units, along with the police, are involved in ensuring order on the streets.

In November - December 1988, mass pogroms took place in Azerbaijan and Armenia, accompanied by violence and killings of civilians.

Slogans appeared: “Glory to the heroes of Sumgayit.” During the end of November 1988, more than 200 thousand Armenians became refugees from Azerbaijan, mainly to Armenia. According to various sources, pogroms on the territory of Armenia lead to the death of 20 to 30 Azerbaijanis. According to the Armenian side, 26 Azerbaijanis died in Armenia on interethnic grounds in three years (from 1988 to 1990), including 23 from November 27 to December 3, 1988, one in 1989, and two in 1990. According to Azerbaijani data, as a result of pogroms and violence in 1988-1989, 216 Azerbaijanis died in Armenia. The bulk of those killed were in the northern regions, where refugees from the Kirovabad regions had previously poured into; especially in the Gugark region, where, according to the KGB of Armenia, 11 people were killed.

In a number of cities in Azerbaijan and Armenia, a special situation is being introduced. December 1988 saw the largest flow of refugees - hundreds of thousands of people on both sides. In general, by 1989 the deportation of Azerbaijanis from Armenia and Armenians from rural areas of Azerbaijan (except Karabakh) was completed. On January 12, by decision of the Soviet government, direct control was introduced in NKAO for the first time in the USSR with the formation of the Committee for Special Administration of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region, chaired by Arkady Volsky, head of the department of the CPSU Central Committee. The powers of regional party and government bodies were suspended, and the constitutional rights of citizens were limited. The committee was called upon to prevent further aggravation of the situation and contribute to its stabilization.

A state of emergency was declared in Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. By decision of the Soviet leadership, members of the so-called “Karabakh Committee” (including the future President of Armenia Levon Ter-Petrosyan) were arrested.

From the end of April - beginning of May 1989, a new round of aggravation of the situation in the region began, caused by the continuous and ever-increasing actions of the “Karabakh movement”. The leaders of this movement and their like-minded people switched to the tactics of openly provoking clashes between the Armenian population of NKAO and internal troops and Azerbaijanis.

In July, an opposition party was formed in Azerbaijan - the Popular Front of Azerbaijan. An extraordinary session of the Council of People's Deputies of the Shaumyanovsky District of the Azerbaijan SSR adopted a decision on the inclusion of the region into the NKAO.

In August, a congress of representatives of the region's population was held in the NKAO. The congress adopted an appeal to the Azerbaijani people, which expressed concern about the growing alienation between the Armenian and Azerbaijani peoples, which had developed into interethnic hostility, and called for mutual recognition of each other's inalienable rights. The congress also addressed the commandant of the Special Region, officers and soldiers of the Soviet army and units of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs with a proposal for active cooperation in order to ensure peace in the region. The Congress elected the National Council (chaired by People's Deputy of the USSR V. Grigoryan), which was tasked with the practical implementation of the decision of the session of the regional Council of People's Deputies of February 20, 1988. The Presidium of the National Council sent an appeal to the UN Security Council with a request for assistance in ensuring the protection of the Armenian population of the region.

The leadership of the Azerbaijan SSR, as a measure of pressure on the NKAO and Armenia, is undertaking an economic blockade of them, cutting off the delivery of national economic goods (food, fuel and building materials) by rail and road transport through its territory. NKAO was practically isolated from the outside world. Many enterprises were stopped, transport was idle, and crops were not exported.

On November 28, 1989, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted a resolution on the abolition of the Special Administration Committee of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region, according to which, in particular, Azerbaijan was to “create a republican organizing committee on a parity basis with the NKAO and restore the activities of the Council of People's Deputies of the NKAO.” The created organizing committee, which was headed by the second secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan Viktor Polyanichko, did not include representatives from the NKAO, the activities of the Council of People's Deputies of the NKAO were not resumed, the requirements of the Decree to ensure the status of real autonomy of the NKAO, compliance with the rule of law, protection of life and safety of citizens were not met, preventing changes in the existing national composition in NKAO. Subsequently, it was this body that developed and carried out, with the help of the police, riot police and internal troops, operations to deport (evict) the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh and neighboring areas. The session of the Council of People's Deputies of the NKAO independently proclaimed the resumption of its activities and did not recognize the Republican Organizing Committee, which led to the creation of two centers of power in the NKAO, each of which was recognized by only one of the conflicting ethnic groups.

On December 1, the Supreme Council of the Armenian SSR and the National Council of the NKAO, “based on the universal principles of self-determination of nations and responding to the legitimate desire for the reunification of two forcibly separated parts of the Armenian people,” at a joint meeting adopted a resolution “On the reunification of the Armenian SSR and the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region” .

From January 13 to January 20, 1990, Armenian pogroms took place in Baku, where by the beginning of the year only about 35 thousand Armenians remained. The central authorities of the USSR are showing criminal slowness in making decisions in order to stop the violence. Only a week after the start of the pogroms, troops were brought into Baku to prevent the seizure of power by the anti-communist Popular Front of Azerbaijan. This action led to numerous casualties among the civilian population of Baku, who tried to prevent the entry of troops.

January 14 - The Supreme Council of the Azerbaijan SSR unites two neighboring districts - the Armenian-populated Shaumyanovsky and the Azerbaijani Kasum-Ismailovsky into one - Goranboysky. In the new administrative region, Armenians make up only 20 percent of the population.

On January 15, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR introduces a state of emergency in the NKAO, the border regions of the Azerbaijan SSR, in the Goris region of the Armenian SSR, as well as in the border zone along the state border of the USSR on the territory of the Azerbaijan SSR. The Commandant's Office of the region of the state of emergency was formed, responsible for the implementation of this regime. Subordinate to her were the units of the internal troops of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs assigned to her.

In connection with the introduction of a state of emergency, the activities of the regional and district councils of people's deputies of the NKAO, the Nagorno-Karabakh regional committee of the CPAZ, party and all public organizations and associations in Stepanakert and four Armenian-populated regions were suspended. At the same time, in the Shusha region, where almost only Azerbaijanis lived, the activities of all constitutional authorities were preserved. Unlike the Armenian settlements, party organizations were not abolished in the Azerbaijani villages of the NKAO; on the contrary, party committees were created in them with the rights of district committees of the KPAz. The supply of food and industrial goods to the residents of the NKAO was carried out intermittently, passenger traffic by rail was stopped, and the number of flights Stepanakert - Yerevan was sharply reduced. Due to a shortage of food, the situation in Armenian settlements became critical; the Armenians of Karabakh did not have land communications with Armenia, and the only means of delivering food and medicine there, as well as evacuating the wounded and refugees, was civil aviation. The USSR internal troops stationed in Stepanakert tried to sharply reduce such flights - even to the point of withdrawing armored vehicles to the runway. In connection with this, the Armenians in Martakert, in order to maintain contact with the outside world, built a dirt runway capable of receiving AN-2 aircraft. However, on May 21, the Azerbaijanis, with the support of the military, plowed open the runway and destroyed the equipment.

On April 3, the USSR Law “On the Legal Regime of a State of Emergency” was adopted. Illegal armed groups began to play an increasingly important role, receiving the support of the local population, who saw in them their defenders and avengers for the grievances inflicted. During 1990 and the first half of 1991, as a result of the unwinding spiral of violence and the growing activity of these formations, military personnel, employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and civilians were killed and injured. Armed groups also penetrated into places where the Armenian population was densely populated on the territory of Azerbaijan (NKAO and adjacent areas) from the territory of Armenia. There were numerous cases of attacks on civilians, livestock thefts, hostage-takings, and attacks on military units using firearms. On July 25, the Decree of the President of the USSR “On the prohibition of the creation of illegal formations not provided for by the legislation of the USSR and the seizure of weapons in cases of illegal storage” was issued. On September 13, units of the Azerbaijani riot police stormed the village of Chapar in the Martakert region. During the attack, in addition to small arms, mortars and grenade launchers were used, as well as helicopters from which hand grenades were dropped. As a result of the assault, 6 Armenians died. On September 25, two Azerbaijani helicopters bombed Stepanakert in the same way.

On April 30, 1990, the beginning of the so-called Operation “Ring” to implement the Decree of the President of the USSR dated July 25, 1990 “On the prohibition of the creation of illegal formations not provided for by the legislation of the USSR, and the seizure of weapons in cases of their illegal storage,” carried out by units of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Azerbaijani Republic, internal troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR and the Soviet Army from the end of April to the beginning of June 1991 in the NKAO and adjacent regions of Azerbaijan. The operation, which had as its official goal the disarmament of Armenian “illegal armed groups” and verification of the passport regime in Karabakh, led to armed clashes and casualties among the population. During Operation Ring, the complete deportation of 24 Armenian villages of Karabakh was carried out.

On May 1, the US Senate unanimously adopted a resolution condemning the crimes committed by the authorities of the USSR and Azerbaijan against the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia and Azerbaijan. On May 15, the landing of Azerbaijani riot police near the Armenian villages of Spitakashen and Arpagyaduk led to the complete deportation of the residents of these villages

On July 20, as a result of an attack by Armenian militants near the village of Buzuluk, Shaumyanovsky district, three Mi-24s were damaged, and one of the pilots was wounded.

On August 28, 1990, Azerbaijan declared independence. The declaration “On the restoration of state independence of the Azerbaijan Republic” states that “the Azerbaijan Republic is the successor to the Azerbaijan Republic that existed from May 28, 1918 to April 28, 1920.”

On September 2, a joint session of the Nagorno-Karabakh regional and Shaumyanovsky district Councils of People's Deputies was held, which proclaimed the formation of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR) within the borders of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region (NKAO) and the adjacent Shaumyanovsky region of the Azerbaijan SSR, populated by Armenians. According to the deputies, they were guided by the USSR Law of April 3, 1990 “On the procedure for resolving issues related to the withdrawal of a union republic from the USSR.”

In the fall of 1990, the Agdam branch of the Popular Front of Azerbaijan created the Agdam militia battalion under the command of Bagirov. On September 25, a 120-day shelling of Stepanakert with Alazan anti-hail installations begins. The escalation of hostilities is unfolding throughout almost the entire territory of the NKR. On November 23, Azerbaijan will revoke the autonomous status of Nagorno-Karabakh. On November 27, the USSR State Council adopted a resolution calling on the parties to ceasefire, withdraw all “illegal armed groups” from the conflict zone and cancel resolutions changing the status of NKAO. The National Army of Azerbaijan was created in December. December 10 - a referendum on independence was held in the self-proclaimed NKR.

Since the conclusion of the Bishkek ceasefire agreement on May 5, 1994, the fate of more than four thousand Azerbaijani citizens who are still listed as missing remains unclear. Since 1992, the International Committee of the Red Cross has worked closely with the Azerbaijan Red Crescent Society to assist authorities in fulfilling their obligations under international humanitarian law and the right of families of missing persons to information about the fate of their loved ones.

The result of the military confrontation was the victory of the Armenian side. Despite the numerical advantage, superiority in military equipment and manpower, with incomparably greater resources, Azerbaijan was defeated.

During the war between Azerbaijan and the unrecognized NKR, as a result of bombing and shelling of the civilian population of NK by the Azerbaijani army, 1,264 civilians died (of which more than 500 were women and children). 596 people (179 women and children) were missing. In total, from 1988 to 1994, more than 2,000 civilians of Armenian nationality were killed in Azerbaijan and the unrecognized NKR.

Armenian formations knocked out more than 400 armored vehicles (31% of those available to the Republic of Azerbaijan at that time), including 186 tanks (49%), shot down 20 military aircraft (37%), more than 20 combat helicopters of the National Army of Azerbaijan (more than half helicopter fleet of the Armed Forces of the Republic of Azerbaijan).

As a result of the military confrontation between the unrecognized NKR and the Republic of Azerbaijan, the territory of 7 districts of the former Azerbaijan SSR came under the control of Armenian formations - 5 completely and 2 partially (Kelbajar, Lachin, Kubatli, Dzhabrail, Zangelan - completely, and Agdam and Fizuli partially) with a total area of ​​7060 square meters. km., which is 8.15% of the territory of the former Azerbaijan SSR. The National Army of Azerbaijan controls 750 sq. km of the territory of the unrecognized NKR - Shaumyansky (630 sq. km.) and small parts of the Martuni and Mardakert regions, which constitutes 14.85% of the total area of ​​the NKR. In addition, part of the territory of the Republic of Armenia - the Artsvashensky enclave - came under the control of Azerbaijan.

390,000 Armenians became refugees (360,000 Armenians from Azerbaijan and 30 thousand from NKR). It should be taken into account that many Azerbaijanis from Armenia were able to sell their houses or apartments and purchase housing in Azerbaijan before leaving. Some of them exchanged housing with Armenians leaving Azerbaijan.

The basis of any conflict is based on both objective and subjective contradictions, as well as a situation that includes either contradictory positions of the parties on any issue, or opposing goals, methods or means of achieving them in given circumstances, or a divergence of interests.

According to one of the founders of the general theory of conflict, R. Dahrendorf, the concept of a free, open and democratic society does not at all solve all the problems and contradictions of development. Not only developing countries, but also those with established democracies are not immune from them. Social conflicts pose a threat, the danger of the collapse of society.

 It's hard to believe, but Armenians and Azerbaijanis have been killing and hating each other for decades over a small geographical area of ​​just under four and a half thousand square kilometers. This region is divided into a mountainous region, where the majority of the population was Armenians, and a lowland region, where Azerbaijanis predominated. The peak of clashes between peoples occurred at the time of the collapse of the Russian Empire and the civil war. After the Bolsheviks won, and Armenia and Azerbaijan became part of the USSR, the conflict was frozen for many years.

Nagorno-Karabakh has a total area of ​​just under four and a half thousand square kilometers // Photo: inosmi.ru

By the decision of the Soviet government, Nagorno-Karabakh became part of Azerbaijan. The Armenian population could not come to terms with this for a long time, but did not dare to resist this decision. All manifestations of nationalism were harshly suppressed. And yet, the local population always said that they were part of the USSR, and not the Azerbaijan SSR.

Perestroika and Chardakhlu

Even during Soviet times, clashes on ethnic grounds occurred in Nagorno-Karabakh. However, the Kremlin did not attach any importance to this. After all, there was no nationalism in the USSR, and Soviet citizens were a single people. Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika, with its democratization and glasnost, thawed the conflict.

In the disputed territory itself, no dramatic events took place, unlike the village of Chardakhlu in the Azerbaijan SSR, where a local party leader decided to replace the head of the collective farm. The former Armenian leader was shown the door and an Azerbaijani was appointed instead. This did not suit the residents of Chardakhlu. They refused to recognize the new boss, for which they were beaten, and some were arrested on false charges. This situation again did not cause any reaction from the center, but the residents of Nagorno-Karabakh began to be indignant at what the Azerbaijanis were doing to the Armenians. After this, demands to annex Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia began to sound very loudly and persistently.

The position of the authorities and first blood

At the end of the eighties, Armenian delegations flocked to Moscow, trying to explain to the center that Nagorno-Karabakh is a primordially Armenian territory, which, by a huge mistake, was annexed to Azerbaijan. The leadership was asked to correct historical injustice and return the region to its homeland. These requests were supported by mass rallies in which the Armenian intelligentsia participated. The center listened attentively, but was in no hurry to make any decisions.

Requests to return Nagorno-Karabakh to their homeland were reinforced by mass rallies in which the Armenian intelligentsia participated. The center listened carefully, but was in no hurry to make any decisions // Photo: kavkaz-uzel.eu

Meanwhile, in Nagorno-Karabakh, aggressive sentiment against its neighbor grew by leaps and bounds, especially among young people. The last straw was the march of the Azerbaijanis to Stepanakert. Its participants sincerely believed that in the largest city of Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenians were brutally killing Azerbaijanis, which in fact was not even close to the truth. A crowd of distraught avengers was met by a police cordon near Askeran. Two Azerbaijanis were killed during the suppression of the riot. These events led to mass pogroms in Sumgait, a satellite city of Baku. Azerbaijani nationalists killed twenty-six Armenians and inflicted various injuries on hundreds. The pogrom was stopped only after troops were brought into the city. After this, war became inevitable.

A crisis

The pogrom in Sumgait led to the fact that Azerbaijanis abandoned everything they had acquired and fled from Armenia, fearing death. The Armenians, who by the will of fate ended up in Azerbaijan, did the same. Real military operations in Nagorno-Karabakh began in 1991 after the collapse of the USSR and the declaration of independence by Azerbaijan and Armenia. Nagorno-Karabakh also declared itself a sovereign state, but no foreign countries were in a hurry to recognize its independence.

In the nineties, gangs began an open war in Nagorno-Karabakh, and the number of victims went from dozens to hundreds. The Karabakh war flared up with renewed vigor after the troops of the defunct USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, which had prevented the massacre from beginning until the very end, were withdrawn from the disputed territory. The armed conflict lasted for three years and was stopped by the signing of an armistice agreement. More than thirty thousand people became victims in this war.

Our days

Despite the truce, clashes in Nagorno-Karabakh did not stop. Neither Armenia nor Azerbaijan wanted to cede the disputed territory. This situation led to an extraordinary rise in nationalism. A neutral, rather than hateful, comment about a neighbor was viewed with suspicion.

The Karabakh conflict between the Armenian and Azerbaijani populations of the autonomous republic of Nagorno-Karabakh within Azerbaijan is the first large-scale ethnic clash on the territory of the Soviet Union.

It demonstrated the weakening of central power and became a harbinger of the upheavals that led to. The conflict is not over; it continues today, 25 years later.

Periods of calm alternate with local hostilities. The intensification of fighting from April 2 to 5, 2016 led to the death of more than 70 people on both sides. There is no solution that suits everyone and is not expected in the foreseeable future.

Neighbours

The conflict did not start suddenly. In the confrontation between the Ottoman and Russian empires, Russia traditionally supported the Armenians, and Turkey the Azerbaijanis. Geographically, Karabakh found itself between opponents - on the Azerbaijani side of the mountain range, but populated mainly by Armenians in the mountainous part, and the Azerbaijani population on the plain, centered in the city of Shushi.

Strange, but during the entire 19th century not a single open conflict was recorded. Only in the 20th century, with the weakening of the central government, contradictions began to move into a hot phase. During the revolution of 1905, the first interethnic clashes occurred, which lasted until 1907.

During the Russian Civil War of 1918–1920, the conflict again entered a hot phase, sometimes called the Armenian-Azerbaijani war. At the end of the Civil War, during the formation of the union republics, a decision was made to form the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region as part of the Republic of Azerbaijan. The reasons for this decision are still unclear.

According to some reports, Stalin wanted to improve relations with Turkey in this way. Moreover, in the 1930s, during administrative changes, several regions of Nagorno-Karabakh bordering Armenia were transferred to Azerbaijan. Now the Autonomous Region did not have a common border with Armenia. The conflict has entered a smoldering phase.

In the 40s - 70s, the leadership of Azerbaijan pursued a policy of settling the NKAO with Azerbaijanis, which did not contribute to good relations between neighbors.

War

In 1987, Moscow's control over the union republics weakened and the frozen conflict began to flare up again. Numerous rallies took place on both sides. In 1988, Armenian pogroms swept across Azerbaijan, and Azerbaijanis left Armenia en masse. Azerbaijan blocked communications between Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia; in response, Armenia declared a blockade of the Azerbaijani enclave of Nakhichevan.

In the ensuing chaos, weapons began to flow from army garrisons and military warehouses to the participants in the confrontation. In 1990, the real war began. With the collapse of the USSR, the warring parties received full access to the weapons of the Soviet army in Transcaucasia. Armored vehicles, artillery and aviation appeared on the fronts. Russian military personnel in the region, abandoned by their command, often fought on both sides of the front, especially in aviation.

The turning point in the war occurred in May 1992, when the Lachin region of Azerbaijan, bordering Armenia, was captured by the Armenians. Now Nagorno-Karabakh was connected to Armenia by a transport corridor, through which military equipment and volunteers began to flow. In 1993 and the first half of 1994, the advantage of the Armenian formations became obvious.

Systematically expanding the Lachin corridor, the Armenians captured the regions of Azerbaijan lying between Karabakh and Armenia. The Azerbaijani population was expelled from them. Active operations ended in May 1994 with the signing of a ceasefire agreement. The Karabakh conflict was suspended, but did not end.

Results

• Up to 7 thousand dead in Karabakh (no exact figures)
• 11,557 Azerbaijani military deaths
• More than half a million refugees
• Armenians control 13.4% of the territory of Azerbaijan, which was not part of the NKAO before the war
• Over the past 24 years, several attempts have been made to bring the positions of the parties closer together, with the participation of Russia, the United States and Turkey. None of them were successful
• The common cultural traditions that have developed over centuries of living together have been completely destroyed. Both sides developed their own, diametrically opposed versions of history, theories and myths.