Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast
The Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO) was an autonomous oblast within the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic that was created on July 7, 1923. Its capital was the city of Stepanakert. The leader of the oblast was the First Secretary of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast Committee of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan. The majority of the population were ethnic Armenians. History. The area was disputed between Armenia and Azerbaijan during their short-lived independence from 1918 and 1920. After the Sovietization of Armenia and Azerbaijan, the Kavbiuro organization decided to keep the area within the Azerbaijan  SSR while allowing it broad regional autonomy. On July 7, 1923, Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast was created and the capital was moved to Stepanakert. At the time of its formation, its area was . According to the 1926 census, the population of the region was 125,200 people, among whom the Armenians accounted for 89.2%. However, by 1989, the share of Armenians dropped to 76.9% of the population of the autonomous region. Reasons for this include the policy of Soviet Azerbaijani authorities to settle Azerbaijanis in the region and some out-migration of Karabakh Armenians, as well as the generally higher birthrate  among Azerbaijanis than among Armenians. Although the question of Nagorno-Karabakh's status did not become a major public issue until the mid-1980s, Armenian intellectuals, Soviet Armenian and Karabakh Armenian leadership periodically made appeals to Moscow for the region's transfer to Soviet Armenia. In 1945, the leader of Soviet Armenia Grigory Arutinov appealed to Stalin to attach the region to Soviet Armenia, which was rejected. In 1965, thirteen Karabakh Armenian party officials wrote to Soviet leadership with their grievances about the attitude of Soviet Azerbaijani officials towards the NKAO. Many of these Karabakh Armenian officials were dismissed or moved  to Armenia. The rise of Heydar Aliyev to the leadership of the Azerbaijani SSR in 1969 saw increasing attempts to tighten Baku's control over the autonomous region. In 1973–74 Aliyev purged the entire leadership of the NKAO, who were regarded as Armenian nationalists. He appointed Boris Kevorkov, an Armenian from outside Karabakh, as the First Secretary of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast Committee of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan. In 1977, the prominent Armenian author Sero Khanzadyan wrote an open letter to Leonid Brezhnev calling for Nagorno-Karabakh's annexation to Soviet Armenia. Administrative divisions. There were five administrative  divisions or raions in the NKAO : Demography. According to Edmund Herzig and Marina Kurkchiyan, Nagorno-Karabakh in the 1920s had a population of 131,500 people, 94.4% (124,136) of whom were ethnic Armenians and only 5.6% (7,364) of whom were ethnic Azerbaijanis. Over the course of some 70 years, the Armenian share of the population declined by 17.5% to 76.9% in 1989, whilst the Azerbaijani share of the population rose in the same period by 15.9% to 21.5% in 1989—indicative of the cultural and economic difficulties local Armenians experienced under Soviet Azerbaijani leadership which led to their expatriation to Armenia  and Baku. In 1933, Nagorno-Karabakh had a population of 147,308, 10,751 (7.30%) of whom were urban dwellers, and 136,557 (92.70%) of whom were rural residents. Military conflict. The conflict between the Armenians in the oblast and the government of the Azerbaijan SSR broke out in 1987. The fighting escalated into the First Nagorno-Karabakh War by the end of 1991. On November 26, 1991, the parliament of the Azerbaijan SSR abolished the autonomous status of the oblast. Its internal administrative divisions were also abolished, and its territory was split up and redistributed amongst the neighboring administrative raions of Khojavend , Tartar, Goranboy, Shusha, and Kalbajar. In response, the majority Armenian population of the oblast declared their independence as the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic which was supported by Armenia. Today, most of the territory of the former oblast is under the control of the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh. Azerbaijan regained control of the southern part of the former autonomous oblast during the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war. Current status. As of 2022, the central and northern part of the NKAO remains under de facto control of the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh and the Russian peacekeeping mission in Nagorno-Karabakh. The Republic  of Artsakh is not formally recognized by any country as the status of the area of the NKAO has been disputed since the First Nagorno-Karabakh War. Azerbaijan dissolved the NKAO oblast as an administrative division of Azerbaijan on November 26, 1991 through the Law on Abolishment of Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast. Soon after this event, Armenian residents of the NKAO voted in the 1991 Nagorno-Karabakh independence referendum to become independent from Azerbaijan. Since then, the territory of the autonomous oblast has been in dispute, as shown by the decades long efforts of the OSCE Minsk Group before the  2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War.