cism of a literary work in the concluding remarks of the number one

person in the Republic at the highest forum of the then ruling party?

The post-WW2 period in fact launched a new wave of a large-

scale Armenian aggression against Azerbaijan. The new territorial

claims were accompanied by the expulsion of ethnic Azerbaijanis from

the places of their indigenous residence by the Soviet authorities of

the day. Just a year prior to this, in 1947, under the guise of repatria-

tion of the Armenians to the “historic homeland’, 130 thousand eth-

nic Azerbaijanis were deported from the Azerbaijani-populated areas

overtaken by the Republic of Armenia in 1918 and retained within the

Soviet Armenia afterwards. Despite the efforts by that-time Soviet au-

thorities to substantiate the “relocation” by “economic developments

in both republics”, they still had to admit that “the lands and premises

vacated as a result of relocation of the Azerbaijani population could

be used to accommodate repatriating Armenian peasants”. (97)

Shortly prior to that, it took M.Baghirov substantial efforts and

a smart trick to prevent the new Armenian claims to Garabagh. In

autumn 1945, the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Armenia

Arutyunov applied to the Central Committee of the Communist Party

of the Soviet Union with a motion to transfer the Autonomous Region

of Nagorno-Garabagh from the Soviet Socialist Republic of Azerbai-

jan to the Soviet Socialist Republic of Armenia. Arutyunov’s letter was

passed over to M.Baghirov for further comments. M.Baghirov repu-

diated arguments presented by Arutyunov, however, realizing that the

latter one’s actions were sanctioned by the higher authorities in the

Communist hierarchy, Baghirov expressed his readiness to accept the

proposal provided the transfer of three Azerbaijani-populated dis-

tricts of Armenia to Azerbaijan in exchange. Meanwhile M.Baghirov

clearly opposed the transfer of Nagorno-Garabagh’s Shusha District

to Armenia. No more did the Soviet leadership get back to this issue

after such a response. (98)

That being said, provocations by the Armenian nationalists did

not end up with this. Besides the purely political steps mentioned

above, there were dozens of cases of misrepresenting Azerbaijan’s

history, culture and art by the Armenian authors. Published in both

the Armenian and Central scientific magazines and periodicals, they

invariably caused a wave of dissatisfaction and dissent of broad public

and political leadership in Azerbaijan. The book by Kholopov (Khala-

Events of 1918 in Guba in the Context of Plans for Mass Extermination

of Azerbaijan’s Muslim Population