Most of the townsfolk were Armenians, an ethnic group whom everyone else within thousands of kilometers delighted in oppressing. Thanks to Stalin, a big lump of lost Armenians had been caught here in the middle of Azerbaijan, like a Christian prune in a Moslem fruitcake. And here they were still, with their cruddy, flyspecked stores and beat-up, dusty churches, and cracked streets blocked off for "repair" for years at a time.