The
establishment of the Soviet regime in the Southern Caucasus between
April 1920 and April of 1921 included the solution of ethno-territorial
conflicts such as that of Mountainous Gharabagh, which had been in
dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan since 1918.
Soviet
Russia had recognized the mountainous area of Gharabagh as a disputed
zone and, in August 1920, after an agreement signed by Soviet Russian
and the Republic of Armenia, Russian forces had been temporarily
deployed in the region.
On
November 30, 1920, one day after the Armenian Bolsheviks had proclaimed
Armenia as a Soviet republic (the power was actually transferred on
December 2), the Revolutionary Committee of Azerbaijan (the highest
executive power of the country at the moment) recognized that Gharabagh,
Zangezur, and Nakhichevan, territories formerly pretended by
Azerbaijan, were indivisible part of Armenia.
The
National Council of Azerbaijan, on the basis of the agreement signed by
Soviet Azerbaijan and Soviet Armenia, proclaimed Mountainous Gharabagh
as indivisible part of Armenia by the declaration of June 12, 1921. On
the basis of the November 30, 1920 declaration and the agreement signed
by the Soviet governments of Azerbaijan and Armenia, Armenia also made a
similar declaration.
The text of the decree approved by the government of Armenia was published in the Armenian and Azerbaijani press (Bakinski rabotchi,
organ of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan, June 22, 1921), thus
confirming legally the union of Mountainous Gharabagh to Armenia. In the
context of international law, this was the last legal act regarding
Mountainous Gharabagh during the Communist regime.
The
fact was totally overlooked by the Caucasian Bureau of the Communist
Party of Russia, which invited to a plenary session on July 4, 1921 in
Tbilisi, where the union of Mountainous Gharabagh to Soviet Armenia was
confirmed as a fact. However, by suggestion of Moscow and the immediate
intervention of Joseph Stalin, the decision of the previous day was
revised in the wee hours of July 5 and a new resolution was imposed,
which established that Mountainous Gharabagh would be part of Soviet
Azerbaijan as an autonomous region. This resolution was an unprecedented
legal act in the history of international law, when the party body of a
third country (Russia), without any legal grounds or jurisdiction,
decided the status of Mountainous Gharabagh after another decision had
been agreed before.
The
Soviet republics of Azerbaijan and Armenia were included in the process
of the formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in December
1922. Despite the resistance of the Armenian population, on a small
fraction of the territory of Gharabagh, by decision of the Central
Executive Revolutionary Committee of Soviet Azerbaijan, on July 7, 1923,
the Autonomous Region (Oblast) of Mountainous (Nagorno) Gharabagh was formed as part of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Azerbaijan, without having any common borders with Armenia.
This
would not solve, but just freeze the question of Gharabagh for the next
six decades and half, until the popular explosion of 1988 and the
beginning of the Gharabagh movement.
