How a Soviet administrative decision triggered a brutal six-year war over a mountain enclave.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, a long-simmering territorial dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan exploded into full-scale war. What began as a peaceful movement for unification in 1988 devolved into ethnic cleansing, mass displacement, and a chaotic scramble for abandoned Soviet weaponry that defined the region for decades to come.
The roots of the First Nagorno-Karabakh War trace back to the early 1920s, when the Soviet Caucasus Bureau, or Kavburo, reversed a decision to assign the Armenian-majority Nagorno-Karabakh region to the Armenian SSR, instead placing it within the Azerbaijan SSR. By 1923, the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast was established. Throughout the decades of Soviet rule, Armenian residents frequently petitioned for unification with Armenia, citing cultural suppression by Azerbaijani authorities. These tensions remained largely suppressed until Mikhail Gorbachev’s policies of glasnost and perestroika in the late 1980s provided an opening for renewed political expression.
In February 1988, the regional parliament of Nagorno-Karabakh voted to unite with Armenia, sparking immediate inter-ethnic violence. As the Soviet Union disintegrated, the conflict escalated from protests to undeclared mountain warfare. The situation worsened significantly when Soviet interior troops withdrew in late 1991, leaving behind vast, unsecured caches of weaponry. Both sides, previously part of the Soviet military apparatus, scrambled to acquire these arms. Azerbaijan, which had inherited more military divisions and air bases, initially held a strategic advantage, yet Armenian forces eventually secured the enclave and surrounding territories, including the vital Lachin corridor.
The war was marked by severe humanitarian crises, including the Sumgait and Baku pogroms against Armenians and the Khojaly Massacre against Azerbaijanis. By the time a Russian-brokered ceasefire was signed in May 1994, approximately 724,000 Azerbaijanis and up to 500,000 Armenians had been displaced. The conflict left the Republic of Artsakh de facto independent but internationally unrecognized, trapped in a state of legal limbo. Despite years of mediation by the OSCE Minsk Group, no permanent peace treaty was reached, leaving the region prone to recurring clashes until the Second Nagorno-Karabakh War in 2020.
Source: First Nagorno-Karabakh War
