The Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region Of The Azerbaijan SSR

The Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region (NKAO) occupied the south-eastern part of the Lesser Caucasus and covered an area of 4,388 square kilometres. The territory of the region stretched for 120 kilometres from north to south and for 35-60 kilometres from east to west. It included five administrative areas - Askaran, Gadrut, Mardakert, Martuni and Shusha. The chief town is Khankandi (Stepanakert). The population of the NKAO, according to estimates for the beginning of 1989, was 187,000, consisting of: 137,200 Armenians, or 73.4 per cent; 47,400 Azerbaijanis, or 25.3 per cent; 2,400 representatives of other nationalities, or 1.3 per cent."

Contrary to the assertions of Armenian nationalist leaders concerning violations of the rights of the Armenian minority in Azerbaijan, the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region possessed all the fundamental attributes of self-government and achieved a high rate of development in the social, economic and cultural fields. The well-known historian and specialist in Turkic affairs, Audrey Alstadt, says that "..'.Armenian villages were incorporated within the territorial borders [of the former NKAO when it was artificially established by the Bolsheviks], whereas Azerbaijani villages were excluded in order to ensure an Armenian majority.""

Audrey Alstadt further notes that in the former NKAO "the Armenian language was designated as an official language for administrative purposes and in everyday life" and that "the staffs of territorial, legislative and party organs, as well as the senior staff members and employees of cultural and educational establishments, were, in the overwhelming majority, Armenians from the moment of the creation [of the former NKAO]."“ From the facts in question, the writer conclu'des that "the cultural and administrative character of the region favoured Azerbaijani emigration ... and, as regards the problems and abuses that existed [in the former NKAO], they should be laid at the door of the local Armenians who ... were administering Nagorno-Karabakh, and not of Baku."”

The legal status of the NKAO, under the Constitution of the Azerbaijan SSR, was defined by the Law on the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region adopted on the recommendation of the Soviet of People's Deputies of the NKAO by the Supreme Soviet of Azerbaijan. The Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region, as a national-territorial entity, enjoyed administrative autonomy and, accordingly, possessed a number of rights that, in practice, allowed the specific requirements of its population to be met. Under the Constitution of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), the NKAO was guaranteed representation by five deputies in the Soviet of Nationalities (one of the two equal chambers of the parliament) of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. Twelve deputies from the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region sat in the Supreme Soviet of the Azerbaijan SSR.

The Soviet of People's Deputies of the NKAO - the organ of State authority in the Region - was vested with a broad spectrum of powers. It took decisions on all local matters, on the basis of the interests of citizens living in the territory covered by the Soviet, bearing in mind national and other particularities of the Autonomous Region. The Council of People's Deputies of the NKAO participated in the consideration of issues affecting the whole Republic and made its proposals concerning them. All organs of State authority and government administration, the judiciary and the Office of the Public Prosecutor, the managements of production enterprises, and the educational and cultural institutions conducted their work in the Armenian language, in line with the linguistic needs of the population.

During the rule of the Soviet Union, the Nagorno-Karabakh region developed faster than Azerbaijan as a whole. Thus, while the industrial output of the Republic as a whole rose by a factor of 3 in the period from 1970 to 1986, the figure for the NKAO was 3.3 (annual growth rates here were above 8.3 per cent). Capital investment rose by a factor of 3.1 in the period from 1970 to 1986 in the Region, and bp a factor of 2.5 in the Republic. The basic indices for social development (living standards) in the NKAO exceeded the average indices for the Azerbaijan SSR and the Armenian SSR. Particularly noteworthy was the higher level, in comparison with the Republic, of the provision of housing, goods and services to the population. The housing space available to each inhabitant of the NKAO was nearly one-third greater than the average for the Republic. Per inhabitant of the Region, there were more intermediate-level medical personnel (by a factor of 1.3) and more hospital beds (by 3 per cent).

Possessing an advantage over practically all the other regions of Azerbaijan in terms of coverage by cultural and educational institutions (schools providing general education, specialized secondary educational establishments, general libraries, museums, clubs, and arts and crafts centres) geared to the linguistic needs of the local population, the Autonomous Region enjoyed the most favourable conditions for the preservation of the identity of the Garabagh Armenians and, in general, of the ethnic and cultural particularities of the area. Not only was there a network of music and drama clubs, but a professional company performed in the regional capital at the Drama Theatre, where most of the plays staged were by Armenian playwrights.

Persons passing the university qualification examination who wished to receive a higher education without leaving the country had the possibility of entering the Pedagogical Institute in Khankandi (Stepanakert). Scientific personnel were concentrated in two scientific institutions, in the Leninavan community and the main town of the NKAO. Five periodical publications in Armenian appeared in the Region. Unlike other administrative-territorial units of Azerbaijan located at a distance from the capital of the Republic in mountainous areas, the Region had its own infrastructure for the reception of television and radio programs.

The whole history of the development of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region within Azerbaijan, which became a kind of promised land for several generations of descendants of the Armenians who had earlier settled there, shows that not only was this development in conformity with the interests of the Armenian population of Upper Garabagh, and the economic, social and demographic features of this area, but that - more than this - the Region enjoyed, in accordance with the principle of "positive discrimination" that is widely applied in the civilized world, a privileged place in relation to the rest of Azerbaijan.

The Armenians, who were first resettled during the nineteenth century by the Tsarist authorities in the Azerbaijani lands of Nakhchivan, Iravan and Garabagh, and who in the 1920s, with the support of the Bolsheviks, created the Armenian SSR on the territory of the former Iravan Khanate and an autonomous district in the Nagorno-Garabagh region of Azerbaijan, have now waxed insolent to the point where they are demanding independence for the Armenians of Nagorno-Garabagh, with a view to uniting them, at a later stage, with Armenia itself. Will there ever be an end to this expansion?