| The Historical Origins of the Region is the Subject of Heated Disputes ZeroHedge Comment RKKA Oct 13th 2020 The issue of the historical belonging of the region is the subject of heated disputes between Armenian and Azerbaijani historians. The former, with references to ancient sources, prove that historically Karabakh was part of the Armenian kingdom, while the latter argue that it was part of Caucasian Albania and is the ancestral home of Azerbaijanis. Later, Karabakh fell under the rule of the Safavids. After that, the territory of lowland Karabakh was Islamized, but the Armenian population predominated in the mountainous part of the region. In the middle of the 18th century, the Karabakh Khanate emerged - the protectorate of Persia. Tough pressure from the Turkic elites forced the Armenian population to leave their native lands. As a result, by the beginning of the 19th century, the majority of the inhabitants of the khanate were already Turkic peoples. At the beginning of the 19th century, the khanate came under the patronage of Russia, and in 1926 it was finally incorporated into it. After that, the migration flows of Armenians from Islamic Iran and the Ottoman Empire (and similar flows of Turks in the opposite direction) rushed to Karabakh, due to which at the end of the 19th century their number in the region exceeded 40%. The national and religious contradictions that had accumulated by the beginning of the 20th century resulted in a bloody massacre that engulfed not only Karabakh, but also the large cities of Transcaucasia simultaneously with the beginning of the 1905 revolution. The conflict was calmed down only after the suppression of the revolution, but the calm was short-lived. Aggravation of the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh at the beginning of the 20th century In 1918, after the October Revolution, national borderlands began to fall away from Russia one after another. Armenia and Azerbaijan proclaimed independence and immediately began to actively sort out relations with each other. The conflict over the disputed territories escalated into another bloody massacre and ended with the victory of Azerbaijan, which used the existing trump card - the support of the Ottoman Empire. It formed the Azerbaijani-Turkish Islamic army and invaded the Caucasus, occupying the disputed territories by force. Nagorno-Karabakh declared its independence in the hope of unification with the rest of Armenia, but soon its largest settlements were occupied by the Islamic army, although a strong insurgency remained in the region. But after a few months, everything completely changed. Germany and the Ottoman Empire capitulated in the First World War, the Turks left the Caucasus, and the British arrived in return. Realizing the fragility of their position and not wanting to delve into the intricate intricacies of local history, they decided to leave everything as it is and postponed the final decision on the territorial delimitation until the Paris Peace Conference. De jure, Karabakh remained a part of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic. This decision led to the renewal of bloody interethnic strife in the disputed regions. Attempts to resolve the situation peacefully, undertaken by members of the Entente, did not bring any results. Disputed territories - Karabakh, Nakhichevan and Zangezur By 1920, the Bolsheviks had finally dealt with their internal opponents - and their attention shifted to the fallen outskirts. With the direct participation of local communists, both Armenia and Azerbaijan were Sovietized, which led to albeit shaky, but peace in the region. Now the Bolsheviks were to decide the most difficult issue of settling territorial disputes in the region. Both Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders immediately tried to resolve the issue in their favor with the help of Moscow. Both of them filled up the Central Committee with letters demanding that the disputed territories be transferred to them, otherwise they threatened that the population of the republics would perceive the refusal as a betrayal and turn away from the new government. he decision of the Bolsheviks, taken as the most compromise, actually became only a prologue to new conflicts. The Azerbaijani communists wanted Karabakh, but without the Armenians, and even more so without the autonomy imposed as a compromise. The Armenians did not want to put up with the decision to transfer the ethnically homogeneous region to another republic. After the territorial demarcation, a fragile peace was established, rather similar to the Cold War. Every few years the leadership of the Armenian SSR tried to lobby through the union capital for the transfer of Karabakh autonomy to it. After the end of World War II, he almost managed to do it. The Politburo instructed Malenkov to consult with the head of the Azerbaijan SSR Bagirov on this issue. Bagirov replied that he would cede Nagorno-Karabakh if, in exchange, Azerbaijan would be transferred to the territories of Dagestan and Georgia, where the Azerbaijani minority lived compactly. Then they did not begin to arrange a large-scale reshaping of the map. In response to the attempts of the leadership of the Armenian Republic to regain control over the autonomy, the Azerbaijani authorities began to stimulate the resettlement of Azerbaijanis to the disputed region. During the existence of Soviet power, the national balance in the region has changed significantly. If at the time of the creation of the autonomy of Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenians made up 90% of the population there, then by the time of the collapse of the USSR they already made up 76%. In addition, the leadership of the Azerbaijani Communist Party carefully selected cadres for the leadership of the autonomy, trying to nominate for these positions the Baku Armenians loyal directly to Baku, and not the natives of Karabakh or those from the Armenian SSR. A few days after the collapse of the USSR, a full-scale war began between the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh (Karabakh), which was supported by Armenia, and Azerbaijan. It lasted two years and four months and, according to rough estimates, claimed the lives of 20-25 thousand people. As a result of the war, Artsakh / Karabakh remained de facto independent, albeit unrecognized even by Armenia itself. The Azerbaijani army failed to establish control over the region. Freezing the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh In 1994, with the mediation of Russia, the conflict was frozen, but not resolved. Active hostilities have ceased, but occasionally clashes occur on the line of contact. In 2016, there was the largest exacerbation since the war, fighting continued for four days. ========== ========== ==========
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