The Karabakh conflict has become one of the primary problems in the development not only of modern Azerbaijan and Armenia, but the entire region as a whole, where the problems and unpredictability inherent in Transcaucasia are due to unresolved interethnic conflicts. Nevertheless, it is worth drawing attention to the arguments of the reactionary forces in Armenia and abroad, which spoke about the natural predisposition of the Armenian and Azerbaijani communities to the conflict in the late 1980s, just before the collapse of the USSR.
Many arguments do not have a reliable reasoned basis, but they are of relevance today as well, but on the contrary, growing around, one of the myths is that at in the late 1980s there was a real threat that the leadership of the Azerbaijani SSR may abolish the Armenian autonomy.
One of the most common statements was that over the years of the existence of Nagorno-Karabakh as an autonomous subject of the Azerbaijani SSR, the Armenian population has decreased from 95% to 75%, while the Azerbaijani population has increased from 4% to 23%. Moreover, it is asserted that the Armenians were displaced from Karabakh. Obviously it does not correspond to the realities of that time.
Former president of Armenia and former leader of the self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, Robert Kocharian, mentioned this, among other tings, in an interview with the Russian journalist Andrei Karaulov in 1996. It should be recalled that the establishment of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO) in 1921 was a compromise solution that met, on the one hand, the economic demands (it was required to link the region to one of the economic centers in the Transcaucasus), on the other hand, it was necessary to put an end to civilian bloodshed. In 1921 the region tried to get over the civil war, the central idea of which was creating national states. The new ideology provided for the creation of a new community - the "Soviet people", which could be called a variant of the policy of multiculturalism. Over time, all nations should be mixed up, and an absolutely new supranational society would emerge. In terms of further existence of the USSR, autonomies were a temporary element, accordingly, a change in the percentage component could not be unexceptional. In other words, the territories of autonomies were not considered the property of a particular national community.
Did the policy of the Azerbaijan SSR leadership discourage the economic development of the NKAO? In order to answer this question, one should pay attention to three factors: economic, social and geographic ones.
Nagorno-Karabakh has never been an independent economic center; on the contrary, it performed an auxiliary function, providing raw materials for Soviet Azerbaijan economy, which was the most important link in the economy of the entire Soviet Union. A similar situation was characteristic of the Georgian SSR, in which the Abkhazian and Ossetian autonomies had a similar role. In this sense, the traditional agricultural deviation of the NKAO economy was not unique, since practically all autonomies in the USSR were an agricultural sector of the Soviet Union republics.
Given the geographic conditions of the region, large enterprises could not be built everywhere, and in the case of Karabakh it was problematic due to the high-mountainous and difficult terrain. During the Soviet era, economic issues were not resolved in favor of the interests of certain nationalities. Soviet industrialists and economists were far from politics, being guided by calculations when drawing up industry projects or building the necessary infrastructure. The Transcaucasian railway, which was laid along the most favorable in economic terms route, can be an example.
One can not also ignore such an important component of the Soviet economic reality as labor migration, which corresponded to ideological policy. In Nagorno-Karabakh, the basis of emigration flows were specialists in education, agriculture and health. People should migrate inside one state, overcoming the isolation of national communities. Therefore, the autonomous region should not have become something like "Armenian patrimony," especially since Soviet Georgia and Azerbaijan were much more multinational than Armenia.
Finally, the period of the NKAO's stay in the Azerbaijani SSR was accompanied by the destruction of monuments of cultural and historical heritage (churches, monasteries). There is no need to recall what kind of policy was applied to the religion throughout the history of the USSR. Atheism, being an element of state ideology, was actively supported by party and state bodies until 1988. The state closely followed the activities of religious organizations. This could not but affect the policy regarding the monuments of temple architecture. As a rule, the Union republics' budgets did not provide funds for their preservation. It would not be correct to say that that the Azerbaijani authorities pursued a policy of destroying the Armenian cultural heritage, since in the USSR the church was not protected.
Thus, the likely threat of the liquidation of the Armenian autonomy proceeded from the policy of national construction of the entire Soviet Union, and not from a single republic, whose leadership did not discuss the issue of the possible abolition of the Karabakh autonomy in the end of the 1980s. A similar issue was not discussed in the Supreme Council of the Georgian SSR in relation to the Abkhaz ASSR, where the percentage of Abkhazians was 17-18% by 1989. Soviet autonomies were protected by law and could not be abolished by the authorities of the Union republics. If anyone could abolish autonomy, it's be the leadership of the USSR. But is it worthwhile for current Armenian politicians to criticize the Soviet Union for its policy towards the people, considering the fact that it became possible to restore the Armenian statehood that served as the basis of modern Armenia only within the framework of the USSR?
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