The Shushi Massacre (Armenian: Շուշիի ջարդեր) refers to the massacre of Armenians by elements of the Azerbaijani military and Turkish army in the town of Shushi in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh, from March 22 to March 26, 1920. The massacre took place during the height of the Armenian-Azerbaijani War as Armenia and Azerbaijan both vied for control over the chiefly Armenian populated-region of Nagorno-Karabakh. The 1914 Russian census had counted the town's population to be 42,310, of which, 22,004 were Armenian. In 1922, after the Caucasus had been Sovietized, Shushi's population was reduced to 9,223 people, of which only 289 were Armenian.[1]
Background
editFollowing the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917, three new states emerged in the Caucasus: the Democratic Republic of Armenia (with the capital in Yerevan), the Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan (with the capital in Baku) and the Democratic Republic of Georgia. Almost immediately, all three countries quarreled over where the boundaries lay. Nowhere was the issue of boundaries between Armenia and Azerbaijan more contentious than in Nagorno-Karabakh. With the surrender of the Ottoman Empire in 1918 to the Allies, the British military sent its forces in Persia to Azerbaijan; in December 1918, a small force led by General William Thomson established their military mission in Shushi. In 1919, the British allowed Azerbaijan to temporarily take control of the region under the leadership of Azerbaijani Governor-General Khosrov Bek Sultanov.[2]
Sultanov, however, became a widely despised figure by the Armenians as he began issuing threats to compel them to submit under Azerbaijani rule.[3] On August 22, 1919, he and Karabakh's Armenian leaders signed an agreement in which Armenians accepted provisional Azeribaijani rule in the region in exchange for, among other things, a guarantee of not encroaching upon their rights and freedoms. The compact also stipulated that Sultanov establish a joint Armeno-Muslim administrative council which would limit the movement of the Azerbaijani forces.[4] Despite this agreement, Sultanov almost immediately violated all these terms, including increasing the sizes of Azerbaijani garrisons in Shushi and Khankhend and shifting his forces without the council's approval.[5]
Massacre
editAftermath
edit
The town laid in complete ruins as . Soviet authorities allowed it to remain so for several decades. Upon visiting the town with his wife in 1931, the prominent Russian poet Osip Mandelstam dedicated a poem to Shushi after seeing the destruction it had suffered:
I tasted terrors
that the souls know too well.
Forty thousand dead windows
stare out from all directions, there....[6]
Mandelstam's wife, Nadehzda, commented that "the scene of disaster and massacre was terrifyingly vivid, and it was the same everywhere – two rows of houses without roofs, windows, doors. Through the windows we saw empty rooms, bare walls with shreds of wallpaper, semi-destroyed stoves, and broken furniture."[7] Sergo Orjonikidze, a high-level Georgian Bolshevik, expressed similar shock, saying "I shudder to recall the images we saw in Shushi in May, 1920. The beautiful Armenian city was ruined, destroyed."[8]
References
edit- ^ Chorbajian, Levon (ed.) The Making of Nagorno-Karabagh: From Secession to Republic. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001. p. 25 ISBN 0-3337-7340-3
- ^ Hovannisian, Richard G. The Republic of Armenia: From London to Sevres, February - August 1920, Vol. 3. Berkley: University of California Press, 1996. p. 132 ISBN 0-5200-8803-4
- ^ de Waal, Thomas. Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War. New York: New York University Press, 2003. p. 128 ISBN 0-8147-1945-7
- ^ Hovannisian. Republic of Armenia, p. 132
- ^ Hovannisian. Republic of Armenia, pp. 132-133
- ^ Lieberman, Benjamin. Terrible Fate: Ethnic Cleansing in the Making of Modern Europe. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2006. pp. 138-139 ISBN 1-5666-3646-9
- ^ Lieberman. Terrible Fate, p. 139
- ^ Chorbajian. Making of Nagorno-Karabagh, p. 25
Further reading
edit- de Waal, Thomas. Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War. New York: New York University Press, 2003 ISBN 0-8147-1945-7.
- Hovannisian, Richard G. The Republic of Armenia: From London to Sevres, February - August 1920, Vol. 3. Berkley: University of California Press, 1996 ISBN 0-5200-8803-4.