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Azerbaijan The Issue of Nagorno-Karabakh
The Soviet Union created the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous
Region within Azerbaijan in 1924, when over 94 percent of the
region's population was Armenian
(see
fig. 3). (The term Nagorno-Karabakh originates from the Russian
for "mountainous Karabakh.")
As the Azerbaijani population grew, the Karabakh Armenians chafed
under discriminatory rule, and by 1960 hostilities had begun
between the two populations of the region.
On February 20, 1988, Armenian deputies to the National
Council of Nagorno-Karabakh voted to unify that region with
Armenia
(see Population
and Ethnic Composition
, this ch.;
Nagorno-Karabakh and Independence,
ch. 1). Although Armenia did
not formally respond, this act triggered an Azerbaijani massacre
of more than 100 Armenians in the city of Sumgait, just north of
Baku. A similar attack on Azerbaijanis occurred in the Armenian
town of Spitak. Large numbers of refugees left Armenia and
Azerbaijan as pogroms began against the minority populations of
the respective countries. In the fall of 1989, intensified
interethnic conflict in and around Nagorno-Karabakh led Moscow to
grant Azerbaijani authorities greater leeway in controlling that
region. The Soviet policy backfired, however, when a joint
session of the Armenian Supreme Soviet and the National Council,
the legislative body of Nagorno-Karabakh, proclaimed the
unification of Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia. In mid-January
1990, Azerbaijani protesters in Baku went on a rampage against
remaining Armenians and the ACP. Moscow intervened, sending
police troops of the MVD, who violently suppressed the APF and
installed Mutalibov as president. The troops reportedly killed
122 Azerbaijanis in quelling the uprising, and Gorbachev
denounced the APF for striving to establish an Islamic republic.
These events further alienated the Azerbaijani population from
Moscow and ACP rule. In a December 1991 referendum boycotted by
local Azerbaijanis, Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh approved the
creation of an independent state. A Supreme Soviet was elected,
and Nagorno-Karabakh appealed for world recognition.
Data as of March 1994
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