The large Armenian population of Baku—around 200,000 in the mid-1980s—was targeted in a January 1990 pogrom during the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. The city's Armenian population was forced to flee. Serious damage to the church was caused by an arson attack on December 25, 1989, but it remained standing. Vazgen I, head of the Armenian Church, wrote to Yuri Khristoradnov, the chairman of the Soviet Council for Religious Affairs, in January 1990 that "extremist Azeri nationalists set fire to the Armenian Church in Baku on 25 December [1989], destroying valuable ecclesiastical books, holy paintings, and all ecclesiastical clothing."