[1 December 1920]
Simon Vratzian, the last prime minister of the Republic of Armenia, on the Azerbaijani decision ceding Karabagh, Nakhichevan and Zangezur to Armenia
On December first, when Armenia had not yet been sovietized, the formal session of the Baku Soviet took upon the issue of the ”Sovietization of Armenia.” Ordhzonokidze, the military commissar of the 11th army, orated: “Comrades, it will indeed be difficult to find a more auspicious gathering than this… Today, in this hall, the Baku proletariat welcomes the birth of the Soviet Armenian Republic…”
At the same meeting, the president of the Revolutionary Committee of Azerbaijan, Nariman Narimanov, read out the declaration of the Revkom Revolutionaty Committeee, in which it was stated that Soviet Azerbaijan is graciously ceding Mountainous Karabagh, Zangezur and Nakhichevan to brotherly Armenia.
For Ordzhonokidze, this too was an occasion for high oratory: “Comrades, the appearance of Comrade Narimanov at this meeting is very dear. He read to us his declaration. The names of Zangezur, Nakhichevan, and Karabagh are alien to Russian ears. Zangezur, all bare mountains, has no bread or water. There is nothing there. As for Nakhichevan, it is all made up of malaria-ridden swamps and nothing else. And what is there in Karabagh? Nothing. And now Comrade Narimanov states: ‘Take these for you. Take those infertile lands for Armenia.’ It was as though Azerbaijan was getting rid of an extra burden. Yet, in those infertile lands, in the Caucasus, resided the knot of the so called Armeno-Muslim conflict.”
Ordzhonokidze, recalling the bloody Armeno-Turkish clashes of the Tsarist era, continued, “And today the leader of the Azerbaijan Republic enters the scene and declares that, ‘the conflict belongs to the past… This is an act of great significance, one which is unprecedented in the history of mankind.”
Eventually it became clear that neither Narimanov’s nor Ordzhonokidze’s speeches were sincere; rather, they had the intention of deceiving the Armenian Bolsheviks and the public in general. Karabagh and Nakhichevan remained and still continue to remain under Azerbaijani rule. A deceit which, indeed,’’ is unprecedented in the history of mankind.’’
Stalin, too, expressed his fascination regarding this event. “On December 1st,” he wrote in the December 4th issue of Pravda, “Soviet Azerbaijan is willingly turning over to Soviet Armenia Zangezur, Nakhichevan and Mountainous Karabagh… The centuries-old animosity between Armenia and the surrounding Muslims was solved by one stroke, by the establishment of brotherly harmony among the proletariats of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Turkey.’’
Simon Vratzian, Republic of Armenia, p. 500
The Karabagh File, Documents and Facts, 1918-1988, First Edition, Cambridge Toronto 1988, by the ZORYAN INSTITUTE, edited by: Gerard J. LIBARIDIAN, pp. 34-35.
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