The Karabakh movement, independence and the first Karabakh war
A mass movement to unite Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia grows into pogroms, the end of Soviet rule, Armenian independence in 1991 and a war that leaves Armenian forces in control of Karabakh and the surrounding districts.
- Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War — Thomas de Waal, NYU Press (2003)
- The Nagorny Karabakh Conflict in Its Fourth Decade — Thomas de Waal, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (2019)
- Armenia and Azerbaijan: Anatomy of a Rivalry — Laurence Broers, Edinburgh University Press (2019)
- Azerbaijan: Seven Years of Conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh — Human Rights Watch (1994)
- Looking Toward Ararat: Armenia in Modern History — Ronald Grigor Suny, Indiana University Press (1993)
- The History of Armenia: From the Origins to the Present — Simon Payaslian, Palgrave Macmillan (2007)
- The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union — Serhii Plokhy, Basic Books (2014)
Nagorno-Karabakh (“mountainous Karabakh”; Armenians call it Artsakh) was an autonomous region inside Soviet Azerbaijan, with a population about three-quarters Armenian. Its Armenians had long complained of discrimination and had petitioned Moscow to be transferred to Armenia in the 1960s. Gorbachev’s glasnost gave them a new chance.
- Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War — Thomas de Waal, NYU Press (2003)
- Looking Toward Ararat: Armenia in Modern History — Ronald Grigor Suny, Indiana University Press (1993)
A movement and its backlash
On 20 February 1988 Karabakh’s regional council voted to ask to join Soviet Armenia. Within days, hundreds of thousands of people were demonstrating peacefully in Yerevan’s Theatre Square, the largest protests the Soviet Union had seen. Then, on 27–29 February, mobs in the Azerbaijani industrial town of Sumgait attacked Armenians; the official toll was 32 dead, 26 of them Armenians, and Armenians believe the real figure was higher. Over the next two years almost all Armenians left Azerbaijan outside Karabakh, and almost all Azerbaijanis left Armenia, many of them driven out by violence. In January 1990 a pogrom against the remaining Armenians in Baku killed around 90 people, before Soviet troops stormed the city, killing more than a hundred Azerbaijanis.
- Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War — Thomas de Waal, NYU Press (2003)
- Armenia and Azerbaijan: Anatomy of a Rivalry — Laurence Broers, Edinburgh University Press (2019)
Independence
The Karabakh Committee, a group of intellectuals including the philologist Levon Ter-Petrosyan, turned the movement into a national one. In 1990 the communists lost power in Armenia’s elections. After the failed Moscow coup of August 1991, Armenians voted on 21 September 1991 in a referendum on independence; about 99% of those who voted said yes. Ter-Petrosyan was elected president, and by December the Soviet Union had dissolved.
- Looking Toward Ararat: Armenia in Modern History — Ronald Grigor Suny, Indiana University Press (1993)
- The History of Armenia: From the Origins to the Present — Simon Payaslian, Palgrave Macmillan (2007)
- The Last Empire: The Final Days of the Soviet Union — Serhii Plokhy, Basic Books (2014)
- Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War — Thomas de Waal, NYU Press (2003)
War
With the Soviet army gone, the conflict became a full war. Karabakh declared itself a republic in September 1991. In February 1992 Armenian forces took the town of Khojaly, and hundreds of fleeing Azerbaijani civilians were killed; Human Rights Watch called it the largest massacre of the conflict. In May 1992 Armenian forces captured Shusha and opened a corridor through Lachin to Armenia; in 1993 they took Kelbajar, Aghdam and other districts around Karabakh, emptying them of Azerbaijanis. Azerbaijani forces also committed atrocities, notably in the Armenian village of Maragha in April 1992. A Russian-brokered ceasefire took effect in May 1994.
- Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War — Thomas de Waal, NYU Press (2003)
- Azerbaijan: Seven Years of Conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh — Human Rights Watch (1994)
About 20,000 people were killed and around a million displaced, most of them Azerbaijanis from Armenia, Karabakh and the surrounding districts; some 300,000–350,000 Armenians had fled Azerbaijan.
- The Nagorny Karabakh Conflict in Its Fourth Decade — Thomas de Waal, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (2019)
- Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War — Thomas de Waal, NYU Press (2003)
- Armenia and Azerbaijan: Anatomy of a Rivalry — Laurence Broers, Edinburgh University Press (2019)
For a generation of Armenians, the victory was a source of immense pride and the veterans were heroes; two Karabakh leaders, Robert Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan, went on to rule Armenia from 1998 to 2018. For Azerbaijanis it was a humiliation and a national trauma, and the hundreds of thousands of displaced people kept the demand for return alive. Both memories would explode again in 2020.
- Armenia and Azerbaijan: Anatomy of a Rivalry — Laurence Broers, Edinburgh University Press (2019)
- The Nagorny Karabakh Conflict in Its Fourth Decade — Thomas de Waal, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (2019)
Karabakh (Artsakh) was historically Armenian land with an Armenian majority, wrongly given to Azerbaijan by Soviet decision in 1921. Its people peacefully asked to join Armenia, and were answered with pogroms in Sumgait and Baku and deportations. They fought a war of self-defence and self-determination, and won.
- Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War — Thomas de Waal, NYU Press (2003)
- Looking Toward Ararat: Armenia in Modern History — Ronald Grigor Suny, Indiana University Press (1993)
Karabakh is an inseparable part of Azerbaijan, with deep Azerbaijani history (Shusha is a cradle of its culture). Armenia launched a separatist war and occupied not only Karabakh but seven surrounding districts, about a seventh of the country, expelling their entire Azerbaijani population; the killing of Azerbaijani civilians at Khojaly in February 1992 is remembered as a massacre. Four UN Security Council resolutions of 1993 called for the withdrawal of occupying forces.
- Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War — Thomas de Waal, NYU Press (2003)
- Armenia and Azerbaijan: Anatomy of a Rivalry — Laurence Broers, Edinburgh University Press (2019)
- Azerbaijan: Seven Years of Conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh — Human Rights Watch (1994)
Both sides committed atrocities and both suffered mass displacement. Thomas de Waal estimates about 20,000 dead and around a million displaced in all, most of them Azerbaijanis. The conflict was a clash between two principles, territorial integrity and self-determination, and between two national stories that each left out the other's suffering.
- Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War — Thomas de Waal, NYU Press (2003)
- The Nagorny Karabakh Conflict in Its Fourth Decade — Thomas de Waal, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (2019)
- Armenia and Azerbaijan: Anatomy of a Rivalry — Laurence Broers, Edinburgh University Press (2019)
Why it matters today
The Karabakh movement was the founding drama of independent Armenia: it brought down Soviet rule, produced the country's leaders for a generation, and gave Armenians, for once, a sense of victory after centuries of loss. For thirty years "Artsakh" was a pillar of national identity. Its loss in 2020–23 is felt all the more painfully because of what was won here.