Artsakh Heritage Sites

The affiliation of any territory to an independent state is defined by the legal title, which is established by an international legal document. The Azerbaijani Republic never held the title over Nagorno-Karabakh or Karabakh at all. The administrative subordination of Nagorno-Karabakh to Baku was based merely on Russian Bolshevik Party resolution of July 5th 1921 fiercely supported by Joseph Stalin.

The only legal document, which defined the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan is League of Nation’s ‘’Report and Proposals’’,1 which was proposed and adopted during the first London conference of the Paris Peace Conference, as early as February 24, 1920. 

The report had a map annexed to it.2 According to that document, taking the demographic make-up of the South Caucasus of 1920 into account, not only was Nagorno-Karabakh considered part of the Republic of Armenia, but also a large part of the Karabakh Plains.3

Sources:

1. Arbitral Award of the President of the United States of America Woodrow Wilson: Full Report of the Committee upon the Arbitration of the Boundary between Turkey and Armenia, Washington, November 22, 1920, (prepared with an introduction by Ara Papian), Yerevan, 2011, p. 98 - 112

2. ibid., p. 328

3. Longstanding International Decision on Armenian-Azerbaijani Borders as a Basis for a Conflict Resolution, By Ara Papian | June 14, 2012 | Foreign Policy Journal

The massacre in March 1920 of Armenians in Shushi, the historic centre of Artsakh, shifted its ethnic status from an Armenian-dominated town to an Azeri-dominated one.2

Sources:

1. US National Archives

2. S. Neil MacFarlane, Oliver Thränert, Balancing hegemony: the OSCE in the CIS, Centre for International Relations, 1997, p. 71 

"Based on the declaration of the Revolutionary Committee of the Azerbaijani Socialist Soviet Republic and the agreement between the SSR’s of Armenia and Azerbaijan, it is hereby declared that Mountainous Karabagh is henceforth an integral part of the Armenian SSR."1

June 12, 1921

Source:

1. Michael P. Croissant “The Armenia-Azerbaijan Conflict: Causes and Implications”, p. 19

On July 4, 1921, the Caucasian Bureau of the Russian Communist Party Central Committee decided during a plenary session that Karabakh would be integrated to Armenia. A day later, on July 5, 1921, without any deliberation or vote, Stalin decided that Karabakh would be included in Soviet Azerbaijan.1

Sources:

1. Charlotte Mathilde Louise Hille (2010). State Building and Conflict Resolution in the Caucasus. BRILL. p. 168. ISBN 978-90-04-17901-1.

2. Institute of Marxism-Leninism, Central Committee Archives, Fonds 85, Inv. 18, d.58, f.18

Attempts to present the question of Nagorno-Karabakh to USSR central government bodies were made in 1930, 1945, 1965, 1967 and 1977, but all of them were firmly suppressed.1

On July 12, 1988, the Regional Soviet in Stepanakert passed an implacable resolution: it voted to secede unilaterally from Azerbaijan and rename Nagorno-Karabakh “the Artsakh Armenian Autonomous Region.”2

Sources:

1. V.A. Ponomarev “On the genocide of the Armenian people in Turkey and Transcaucasia in XIX-ХХ centuries”, General scientific] periodical “Tomsk State University Reporter” № 320 March 2009, p. 120

2. de Waal, Thomas (2003). Black garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through peace and war / New York University.  p. 61

November 1987: People of the Nagorno-Karabakh autonomous region (NKAO) collected over 80.000 signatures (almost entire mature population) in support of transferring the NKAO from Azerbaijan SSR to the Armenian SSR. 1

September 2, 1991: Nagorno-Karabakh, now legally not a part of Azerbaijan, declares itself to be a Republic within USSR.

November 26, 1991: The Supreme Council of Azerbaijan annuls the autonomous status of Nagorno-Karabakh, but the USSR Constitutional Oversight Committee declared this decision unconstitutional.

December 10, 1991: Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR) holds a referendum on secession from the Soviet Union. The turnout was 82% and almost all (99,98%) voted in favor of secession from USSR.

Source:

1. The Karabagh File, Documents and Facts, 1918-1988, First Edition, Cambridge Toronto 1988, by the ZORYAN INSTITUTE, edited by: Gerard J. LIBARIDIAN, pp. 86-88.

The pogrom of Armenians in Sumgait (Azerbaijan) started on February 27, 1988, a week after the appeal of the Council of People’s Deputies to unify Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia: the victims were targeted based solely on Armenian ethnicity.1 2

On July 7, the European Parliament passed a resolution condemning the violence against Armenians in Azerbaijan.3

Sources:

1. De Waal, Thomas (2003). Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War, New York University Press, pp. 33-34.

2. Session of Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (in Russian), February 29, 1988. 

3. RESOLUTION on the situation in Soviet Armenia. Joint resolution replacing Docs. B2-538 and 587 88, 07 July 1988. Source: Official journal of the European Communities, No. C 94/117, o C 235/106, 07 July 1988.

Artsakh’s plea for independence led to a surge of nationalism in Azerbaijan against its Armenian population. The January 1990 massacres in Baku (Azerbaijan) led to the extremely brutal deaths of around 90 people.1 The action was not entirely (or perhaps not at all) spontaneous, as the attackers had lists of Armenians and their addresses.2

Sources:

1. de Waal, Thomas (2003). Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War. New York: New York University Press. p. 90. 

2. Robert Kushen (1991). Conflict in the Soviet Union: Black January in Azerbaidzhan, Human Rights Watch/ Helsinki, ISBN 1-56432-027-8, p. 7.

"I was trying to change the demographics there. […] I was trying to have more 

Azerbaijanis in Nagorno-Karabakh, and decrease the number of Armenians."1

Sources:

1. “Heydar Aliyev: “A state is better with an opposition” (“Гейдар Алиев: “Государство с оппозицией лучше”) (in Russian), “Echo” Azerbaijani social-political newspaper N 138 (383),  June 24, 2002.

Azerbaijan’s policy of rewriting history has always been accompanied by the destruction of Armenian historical and cultural monuments. Among the most flagrant examples is the destruction of monuments of the village of Tsar in the Karvachar region.1

Sources:

1. Council of Europe, Parliamentary Assembly Documents 2002 Ordinary Session (First Part), Volume I, “Maintenance of historical and cultural heritage in the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic”, p. 35.

The war in Artsakh deepened the wide-spread Armenophobia in Azerbaijan. In 2004, Azerbaijani army officer Ramil Safarov, attending a NATO-sponsored seminar in Budapest, broke into Armenian officer Gurgen Margaryan’s room at night and axed him to death in his sleep.1

Although sentenced to life imprisonment in Hungary, he was eventually extradited to Azerbaijan, where he was greeted as a hero and pardoned by Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev despite prior contrary assurances.2

Sources:

1. Philip Leach. Clarifying the case of Ramil Safarov, Friday, May 29, 2020.

2. “Hero’s welcome for Azerbaijan axe murderer”, Al Jazeera, 2012/09/02.

"In 1923, the Communist dictatorship of Joseph Stalin, in violation of the national, territorial, and human rights of the Armenian people, annexed part of the region of Artsakh, which was composed of a 95% Armenian population, and joined it with the region of Soviet Azerbaijan." 1

Source:

1. Maryland Senate Joint Resolution 4, March 20, 2013, p. 1, line 14-17

Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev’s territorial aspirations are not limited to Artsakh. In 2018, he claimed that large parts of modern-day Armenia’s territory were Azerbaijan’s “historic lands,” and Azerbaijanis’ return to these territories was their “political and strategic goal”. 1 2

Sources:

1. Joshua Kucera. Azerbaijan President Calls for Return to “Historic Lands” in Armenia, Eurasianet, Feb 13, 2018. 

2. Вадим Шаталин. “Ильхам Алиев хочет “вернуть” Азербайджану Ереван” (Vadim Shatalin, “Ilham Aliyev wants to ‘return’ Yerevan to Azerbaijan”), 

Deutsche Welle, 09.02.2018

Less than 100 km west of Artsakh is the historical Armenian region of Nakhichevan,1 now governed by Azerbaijan. At its height, the region was home to the expansive Armenian graveyard of Julfa with over 10 000 cross-stones.2 However, in recent years it has become the site of the greatest cultural genocide of the 21st century, conducted by 

the Azerbaijani government.3

Sources:

1. David Marshall Lang (1970). Armenia: Cradle of Civilization, London: George Allen & Unwin. 

2. Alexandre de Rhodes, Divers voyages et missions du père Alexandre de Rhodes de la Compagnie de Jésus en la Chine et autres royaumes de l’Orient, avec son retour en Europe par la Perse et l’Arménie (Various voyages and missions of Father Alexander of Rhodes of the Society of Jesus in China and other kingdoms of the East, with his return to Europe through Persia and Armenia) (in French), Paris: Sébastien Cramoisy, 1653, Part 3, 63. 

3. Dale Berning Sawa. Monumental loss: Azerbaijan and ‘the worst cultural genocide of the 21st century’, The Guardian, Friday, March 1, 2019.