However, the current xenophobia in Azerbaijan toward Armenia and Armenians have shaped mostly during the last years of the Soviet Union, when Armenians demanded the Moscow authorities to incorporate the mostly Armenian-populated Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast with the Armenian SSR. In response to Armenian claims, the Azerbaijani nationalists, most prominently the Azerbaijani Popular Front, organized pogroms of Armenians in Sumgait, Kirovabad and Baku. An estimated of 350,000 Armenians left "in two waves in 1988 and in 1990 after anti-Armenian violence."