"The four-day war in Karabakh added interest in this region, but confusion with terminology can be seen in most of the media. Not all experts separate the concepts of 'Karabakh' and 'Nagorno-Karabakh'. The thing is that historically such a political and geographical space as 'Nagorno-Karabakh' did not exist. The mountains and plains of those places were under the general concept of 'Karabakh'. And the phrase 'Nagorno-Karabakh' is the product of a later period. Nagorno-Karabakh is located in the central part of Azerbaijan, and an autonomous region was established there at the beginning of the 1920s. It was designed to promote the creation of a second Armenian state on Azerbaijani lands, which became a territory of mass resettlement of Armenians to Azerbaijan from the 1820s.
As the writer and expert in literature Professor Chingiz Huseynov explained to Vestnik Kavkaza, "even Griboyedov offered the tsar to TEMPORARILY resettle Armenians living in Iran to Azerbaijani lands, even though he knew that it may cause dissatisfaction among the local population. The numerical superiority of Armenians in the mountainous part of Karabakh was formed due to Griboyedov's policy of 'saving Christians from Muslims'. The separation of Karabakh into the mountainous part and the plain was forced. The capital of the Karabakh khanate was located in the mountainous part, in Shusha. At the same time, lowlands that were close to the mountains have also been added to the mountainous part, and they were called 'Nagorno-Karabakh'," Huseynov said.
In his opinion, "the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict played a huge role in the collapse of Soviet Union. The center, headed by Gorbachev, withdrew from resolving internal problems. They said: 'Yes, this is Azerbaijani land, but still, we must think how give it ... '. The authorities became weak. It was necessary to say that the lands were split in 1922, and nothing should be changed."
Huseynov admits that at one time there were many flaws in the demarcation of the republics: "I'm not even talking about the fact that it was a mistake to divide the country, put the ethnic principle first, the Russian Empire was not based on ethnic principles, but taking into account economic and geographic factors. And the division on the ethnic principle became a time bomb and destroyed the Soviet Union. The trend towards the formation of large multinational states is always a plus, not a minus."
