Birth of Leo (April 26, 1860)

Leo was the pseudonym of an Armenian intellectual who produced an amazing output of historical and literary scholarship at the turn of the twentieth century.

Arakel Babakhanian was born on April 26, 1860, in the village of Karintak, near the town of Khankend (nowadays Stepanakert, the capital of Artsakh). In 1878 he graduated from the diocesan school of Shushi. This was the extent of his formal studies, which he would complement with self-teaching. After graduation, he worked in Shushi and Baku as a scribe for notary work, telegrapher, and manager of the “Aror” printing house. 

He was still a student when he started collaborating with the influential daily Mshak of Tiflis in 1877. His views were shaped by the ideological tenets maintained by Raffi, the novelist, and Grigor Artzruni, the founding editor of Mshak. Over the years, he would contribute to a number of publications from the Caucasus to Europe. Initially, he wrote commentary and prose (short story and novel). His most notable literary work was The Daughter of the Melik (1898). He even wrote a historical play, Vartanank, published in 1916.

In 1895 he moved to Tiflis, becoming secretary and contributing editor of Mshak until 1906 . Afterwards, he gradually shifted to scholarship and produced hundreds of articles and dozens of books. First he entered the field of literary criticism, with essays about many contemporary writers, and condensed his views in his monograph The Literary of Russian Armenians from the Beginnings to Our Days (1904). On the other hand, he offered fresh interpretations of many historical issues. He produced a spat of book of history: Armenian Printing (2 vols., 1901-1902), Catholicos Hovsep Arghoutian (1902), Grigor Artzruni (3 vols., 1902-1905), Saint Mesrop (1904), The Armenian Question (1906). After a year of teaching at the Gevorgian Seminary of Holy Etchmiatzin (1906-1907), Leo returned to Tiflis and dedicated himself to scholarship. He produced new books: The Feast of the Armenian Book (1912), The Kingdom of Van (1915), The Documents of the Armenian Question (1915), and the posthumously published Ani (1946). His most ambitious work, which remained unfinished, was the three-volume History of the Armenians, of which he only saw the first volume published in 1916 (the other two volumes were posthumously published in 1946 and 1947). This work of almost 2,000 pages introduced Armenian history from prehistory until the end of the eighteenth century (excluding the 12 ^th -15 ^th centuries). While his views were both fresh and sometimes not exempt of controversy, Leo’s works were characterized by an encyclopedic use of Armenian and foreign sources, archaeological, epigraphic, linguistic, and philological materials, travelogues and memoirs, secondary sources, et cetera.

In 1924 Leo moved to Yerevan by invitation of the government of Soviet Armenia and became a lecturer of Armenian history at Yerevan State University until his death. His classes became the first university textbooks of Armenian history, toge

ther with those of professional historian Hakob Manandian. He was given the title of professor in 1925 and became a full member of the Institute of Science and Art of Soviet Armenia (renamed Institute of Sciences in 1930).

While in his pre-Soviet writings Leo gave primacy to the role of the individual and spiritual and geographical factors, in the 1920s he tried to accommodate himself to the new ruling ideology and reversed many of his positions. The genocide appeared to have crushed his views. His work From the Past (1925) offered a picture of the Armenian liberation movement that was completely at odds with his positive approach of his formative years. He repeated his negative evaluation in the two-volume The Ideology of the Turkish Armenian Revolution (1934). In his work The Khoja Capital (1934) he regarded the commercial capital as the moving force of Armenian modern history. 

Leo passed away in Yerevan on November 14, 1932, and was buried in the Yerevan Pantheon. A street and a school in the Armenian capital have been named after him. Leo’s bust has been placed at the central building of Yerevan State University.

Birth of Nelson Stepanian (March 28, 1913)

Armenians had an important participation in the Soviet army during World War II. One of the most remarkable names in the Soviet air force was Nelson Stepanian.

Stepanian was born in Shushi (Artsakh) on March 28, 1913. He moved to Yerevan with his parents shortly thereafter and attended Maxim Gorki School. He was a fifth grader when he got interested in aviation and aeromodelism. He won competitions of aeromodelism in Moscow, Kiev, Tbilisi, and Baku.

In 1932 he graduated from the Sergo Orjonikidze preparatory military school of Baku, and three years later finished the school of Military Aviation in Bataysk, where he worked as a flight instructor until 1938. He continued his service in the city of Mineralniye Vodi, in the Northern Caucasus, until 1941.

On June 23, 1941, the day after Germany invaded the Soviet Union, Stepanian was called to service in the offensive aviation of the Black Sea fleet. He entered the 46 ^th attack squadron and got familiarized with the Il-2 fighter, participating in the defensive combats in Poltava, Zaporozhye, and Odessa. He was wounded by shrapnel flak in his twentieth sortie.

In August 1941 Stepanian was transferred to Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) as a member of the second air squadron of the 57 ^th division and participated in the defense of the city. He was designated ring commander. By decision of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet, on October 23, 1942, he was decorated as Hero of the Soviet Union, and in November of the same year, Capt. Stepanian became commander of the squadron of the 57 ^th Assault Regiment. As of November 1942, he was reported to have destroyed 78 German trucks, 67 tanks, 63 anti-aircraft guns, nineteen mortars, 36 railroad cars, twenty merchantmen and warships (including a destroyer), thirteen fuel tankers, twelve armored cars, seven long-range guns, five ammunition dumps, and five bridges.

After he was promoted to the rank of major in 1943, he became the commander of the 47th Fighter Division. He executed about 60 battle flights in the positions of Leningrad and destroyed, together with his men, eight tanks, some 90 vehicles, and more than 60 cannons and machine guns.

During the Crimean offensive in April 1944, Stepanian became commander of the 47 ^th air battalion, which was fighting in Crimea and Kuban. Under his command, the battalion participated in the fights near Feodosia, Sebastopol, and Sudak. On April 16, 1944 Stepanian, who headed a group of 12 Il-2 fighters, had personally destroyed three landing barges. He participated in the elimination of a German convoy on May 22, although his plane suffered important damage. Prior to the offensive, the 47th Division had destroyed 8 transports, 12 barges, 9 patrol boats, and more than 3,000 soldiers and officers.

In May 1944, after the liberation of Crimea, Stepanian returned to the Baltic Sea with his 47^th Fighter Division, where they were involved in the battles of the Gulf Finland. He was awarded the Order of the Red Banner on July 22.

On his final sortie against Liepaja in Latvia, on December 14, 1944, the assault group was attacked by German fighters. Stepanian’s plane was hit by anti-aircraft fire and, though wounded, he rammed his own plane into a German warship. The 31-year-old Armenian pilot died along with navigator Captain Alexander Rumyantsev. The devastating loss hit the rest of the squadron harshly. His fellow pilots sent the following letter to his parents after his death:

“[A] simple and modest man, close and beloved by all; he was a father and teacher to all of us, a friend and a commander....We all wept when Nelson Gevorgovich failed to return on that fateful day. They say that tears bring comfort. But the few tears of a soldier, like the red-hot drops of metal, burn the heart and call for vengeance.”

Stepanian was posthumously awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union title for a second time for his sacrifice. According to Soviet sources, Stepanian undertook no less than 239 combat sorties, sunk 53 ships (thirteen alone), destroyed 80 tanks, 600 armored vehicles, 105 cannons, 130 machine guns, 27 aircraft, and 5,000 soldiers.

Four statues of Stepanian were inaugurated in Liepaja, Yerevan, Stepanakert, and Shushi. The latter was destroyed by Azerbaijanis during the Gharabagh war. The statue of Liepaja was moved to Kaliningrad in the 1990s.

Stepanian’s name is also remembered by school No. 71 of Yerevan, named after him on the tenth anniversary of his death in 1954.

The Massacre of Maragha (April 10, 1992)

The massacre of Maragha was one of the forgotten and under-reported episodes of the Karabagh war. The village of the Karabagh region was occupied and destroyed by Azerbaijani troops, the remaining inhabitants were massacred, kidnapped, or disappeared, and the village is currently under Azerbaijani control.

Maragha, formerly called Leninavan, was located in the region of Martakert, just across the border from the Azerbaijani town of Terter, in the oil-rich region of Mir-Bashir, and was one of the largest villages of the region. It had a population of 4,660 people, predominantly Armenians, according to the Soviet census of 1989.

The escalation of the conflict in the spring of 1992 led first to the bombing of the village, which resulted in considerable damage. Some residents fled and temporarily settled in other regions of Karabagh. Afterwards, Azerbaijani forces attacked Maragha on April 10, 1992. Artillery fire started early in the morning, followed by a ground assault from neighboring Mir-Bashir. The village was occupied in the afternoon by 20 armored vehicles and a battalion of 1,000 soldiers, reportedly followed by looters. The village had 500 residents at that time, according to the data of Human Rights Watch (HRW).

A preliminary report published in 1992 by HRW noted that the 60 Armenian fighters who defended Maragha did not have adequate weaponry and had been unable to hold their positions. They had retreated to a spot overlooking the village. Previously, they had notified the villagers, who had mostly left, while the remaining civilians, mainly consisting of the elderly and disabled, had gone into hiding in basements and underground shelters. The Azerbaijani forces massacred the civilians. The Armenians retook the village the following day, and came across bodies of forty-three civilians, mostly mutilated.

According to eyewitness accounts, people were decapitated or killed by torture (dragged tied to a tank or burnt alive), while bodies were mutilated, dissected, and burnt. Non-combatants, including women and children, were captured and taken hostage. The Vice-Speaker of the British Parliament’s House of Lords, Caroline Cox, who personally visited the place, gave a harrowing testimony: “I, along with my team from Christian Solidarity Worldwide, arrived within hours to find homes still smoldering, decapitated corpses, charred human remains, and survivors in shock. This was truly like a contemporary Golgotha many times over.”

Maragha was attacked again two weeks later. The remaining population was deported, and thirteen civilians were taken hostage. The houses were pillaged and burnt down afterwards. As a result, most of the village was destroyed, and the bodies were later buried in a mass grave near the village.

Amnesty International reported that a total of over a hundred residents had been slain, their bodies profaned and disfigured, and forty-five residents (including nine children and twenty-nine women) were taken hostage.

The Azerbaijani officers directly involved in the massacre were never held responsible or tried for the crimes committed in Maragha, while the Azerbaijani side has not responded to the accusations of massacre.

The events in Maragha were not covered by the international media. Cox explained that she had not brought journalists together with her to Maragha on those days because it was dangerous, but she took many photographs, which are printed in her book Nagorno Karabagh: Ethnic Cleansing in Progress. Cox also said in her interview that the English newspaper Daily Telegraph had agreed to print her report on the massacre of Maragha, but then they refused to do so.

The village is currently controlled by the Azerbaijani army, and its former residents now live in Russia, Armenia, and other areas of Mountainous Karabagh. The residents who stayed in Karabagh have built a village on the ruins of another village now called Nor Maragha (New Maragha), not far from the destroyed hometown. A monument in the new village commemorates the victims of the massacre.

Declaration of Secession of Nagorno Karabagh from Azerbaijan (February 20, 1988)

The question of Karabagh started in the years of the first independent Republic of Armenia and was not solved after the South Caucasus became part of the Soviet Union. The arbitrary decision of the Caucasian Bureau of the Soviet Communist Party (July 5, 1921) to attach Karabagh to Azerbaijan only contributed to open a new Pandora’s box. Throughout the decades, the Azerbaijani discriminatory policy had the other historical Armenian region, the Autonomous Republic of Nakhichevan, as poster child: due to continuous emigration, its Armenian population went from 40% in 1926 to 2% in 1988.

It is not surprising then, that the Armenians of Mountainous Karabagh, who constituted 90% of its population in 1926, took every opportunity to address Moscow and ask for a fair solution of the issue. Various letters were sent in 1945, 1965, and 1977. The petition of 1965 was signed by 45,000 people. On its grounds, the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union assigned to the Central Committees of the party in Armenia and Azerbaijan the mission of preparing a proposal for the solution of the problem of Karabagh in 1966. However, Azerbaijan was able to put the brakes on any possible solution. The Azerbaijani KGB, led by Heydar Aliyev (future president in post-Soviet times) stimulated interethnic conflict. As a result, more than 150 Armenians were sent to prison, where 20 people were killed and ten others disappeared. More than a hundred families, after two years of persecution, were forced to leave Karabagh. The issue was again treated in 1977 during the discussions of the draft Soviet Constitution, but never went through.

After the proclamation of the policies of restructuring (perestroika) and transparency (glasnost) by the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, the movement for Karabagh entered a new phase in mid-1987. There were demonstrations and meetings, and the representatives of the autonomous region sent petitions to the party and state organs of the Soviet Union. A petition that asked for the reattachment of the autonomous region to Soviet Armenia was signed by 80,000 people.

This phase found its climax on February 20, 1988. The first secretary of the Central Committee of Azerbaijan, Kamran Baghirov; members of the Bureau of the Central Committee, and the instructor of the Soviet Communist Party, V. Yashin, arrived in Stepanakert, the capital of Mountainous Karabagh, with the intention of thwarting the extraordinary session of the Regional Council of the Nagorno (Mountainous) Karabagh Autonomous Region (NKAR), intended to pass a resolution on the issue. The visitors called for a session of the party regional committee, and the local party structure was held responsible the organization for the situation. Despite the pressure of representatives from Baku and of the first secretary of the Communist Party in Karabagh, Boris Kevorkov, the session was held on the same day and the Regional Council passed the following resolution, entitled “On a Petition to the Supreme Councils of the Azerbaijani SSR and the Armenian SSR on the NKAR’s Secession from Soviet Azerbaijan and Its Transfer to Soviet Armenia”:

After hearings and debates on a petition to the Supreme Councils of the Azerbaijani SSR and the Armenian SSR on the secession of the Nagorno Karabagh Autonomous Region from Soviet Azerbaijan and its transfer to Soviet Armenia, the special session of the Nagorno Karabagh Autonomous Oblast Regional Council of People’s Deputies have decided:  “Meeting the requests of the NKAR workers, to appeal to the Supreme Councils of the Azerbaijani SSR and the Armenian SSR to show a profound understanding of the expectations of the Armenian population of Nagorno Karabagh and to resolve the issue of NKAR’s secession from the Azerbaijani SSR and its transfer to the Armenian SSR, and at the same time to submit a petition to the Supreme Council of the USSR on a positive resolution of the issue on NKAR’s secession from the Azerbaijani SSR and its transfer to the Armenian SSR.”

This document followed the legal procedures established by Soviet law and was backed by peaceful demonstrations held in Stepanakert and Yerevan in the same day. The Karabagh Movement, the “test of the perestroika,” had started. Three years later, it would end in the independence of the Republics of Armenia and Nagorno Karabagh.

August 8, 1992: Fall of Artzvashen

The Soviet policy of “divide and rule” created ethnic enclaves (piece of land surrounded by foreign territory) under various pretexts, such as the incorporation in Azerbaijan of the highlands of the historically Armenian region of Gharabagh as an autonomous region (the lowlands were directly annexed to that country). It also created exclaves (piece of land politically attached to a larger piece, but surrounded by foreign territory), such as Artzvashen, part of the Gegharkunik province of Armenia.

The village of Artzvashen was founded in 1854 with the name of Bashkend by Armenians from Shamshadin, although an inscription on the St. Hovhannes church of the village, dated to 1607, attests to an earlier Armenian presence on the site.

The population of the village was entirely of Armenian origin. It had a surrounding territory of 40 square kilometers (15.5 square miles) and enjoyed a town status in the 1980s, managing four factories. This included a branch of Haygorg, the Armenian state carpet company.

The encircled land is the location of Artzvashen which is now in the hands of the Azeris.

In May 1991, during the last months of the Soviet Union, when the conflict for Gharabagh had already started, the inhabitants of the village surrendered their weapons to Soviet military units to avert an imminent occupation.

Indeed, Azerbaijan was prone to occupy those portions of Armenian territory that were completely landlocked, and one of them was Artzvashen. After a four-day resistance headed by the unit 016 of motorized artillery of Vanadzor, Artzvashen was surrendered to Azerbaijani armed forces on August 8, 1992. According to The New York Times, Azerbaijan announced the “liberation” of the town, destroying enemy tanks and weaponry, and killing 300 Armenian “brigands,” while Armenian reports did not mention any dead, but said that 29 people were “missing without trace.” The bodies of 12 Armenian soldiers were later delivered; one of the Azerbaijani colonels declared: “They fought until the last bullet. They are the pride of your nation.”

The Armenian population was given one hour to evacuate the village. According to the Regional Administration of Gegharkunik, 719 families (around 2,800 people) were displaced after its occupation. A total of 664 families resettled in the towns of Chambarak and nearby villages, and the rest went to other provinces. The migrants were not considered a separate commune, but the government of the Republic decided to create a separate working staff, financed by the national budget. This staff takes care of problems related to documents and workbooks of displaced people, as well as claims of property rights and improvement of living conditions.

July 5, 1921: Mountainous Gharabagh Becomes Part of Soviet Azerbaijan

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.

 

Liberation of Shushi - May 9, 1992

Shushi had historically been the capital of Karabagh and the third most important Armenian cultural center in the Southern Caucasus (after Tiflis and Baku) until 1920, when the pogrom executed by Azerbaijani forces ended in the destruction of the Armenian quarters and the extermination of the Armenian population of the city.

During Soviet times, the capital of the autonomous region of Mountainous Karabagh was moved to Stepanakert, while Shushi, located four miles to the south, became an Azerbaijani center.

In the years of the Karabagh war (1989-1994), the strategic importance of Shushi, situated on a mountaintop overlooking Stepanakert, acquired more relevance for Azerbaijani forces in Karabagh after the occupation of Khojalu by Armenians in February 1992. The town became the main base for the indiscriminate shelling of Stepanakert with Soviet-built GRAD multiple rocket launchers. These launchers were capable of shelling 40 rockets at the same time and cause enormous damage to the civilian population. Over 2,000 people were killed in Stepanakert as a result of Azerbaijani shelling in the first months of 1992.

The capture of Shushi became imperative to end the relentless bombing of Stepanakert and the suffering of its population. The plan was finalized on April 28 and the order of attack was given on May 4, 1992.  However, various reasons caused a delay of four days.
Members of the ARF battalion celebrating the liberation of Shushi in front of the Ghazanchetsots Cathedral in 1992.

The military operation was directed by Commander Arkadi Ter-Tadevosyan, who had a force of 1,200 members of the Self-Defense Forces of Karabagh, divided into five companies. The Armenian forces were complemented by four tanks and two attack helicopters. The Azerbaijani defending forces counted 1,200 people in Shushi, where the civilian population had been already evacuated, and some 800 around the town. A Chechen volunteer contingent led by guerrilla warlord Shamil Basayev (who was among the last to leave the city and was killed in 2006 in Chechnya) had reinforced the Azerbaijanis.

Shushi was attacked by the flanks and the rears in the twilight hours of May 8, as the ridge facing Stepanakert was easier to defend. There was a full engagement by midday, and the ending to the battle was envisioned in the evening, when Armenians, occupying favorable positions around Shushi, allowed the enemy forces a corridor for retreat.

Members of the ARF battalion celebrating the liberation of Shushi in front of the Ghazanchetsots Cathedral in 1992.

The ancient Armenian capital was occupied on May 9. Azerbaijani military plane and helicopters shelled the Armenian ranks, as well as Shushi and Stepanakert during midday. Later, it was discovered that the air offensive was aimed at exploding the weapon deposits abandoned in Shushi with the hope of destroying the entire city. However, the plan did not succeed, and the “clean up” of the city ended in the evening of the same day. It has been estimated that the Armenians lost 60 people, while Azerbaijanis had a total of 150 to 200 casualties.

The victory at Shushi had a crucial importance in the Karabagh war. The Armenian forces immediately launched an offensive over the corridor of Lachin, which was central to the connection between Armenia (Goris) and Karabagh (Stepanakert), and occupied Lachin (nowadays Berdzor) on May 18. The consequent falls of Shushi and Lachin triggered the deposition of Azerbaijani president Ayaz Mutalibov.

The liberation of Shushi was of enormous symbolical value, as it represented the recovery of a city that had been abandoned for more than seventy years to Azerbaijanis. In the last twenty years, Shushi has been slowly recovering its Armenian profile and population, with the white and imposing silhouette of the nineteenth-century Ghazanchetsots Cathedral (which had been converted by Azerbaijanis into a deposit of GRAD launchers) standing completely renovated as a symbol of resilience and faith in the future.