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The First World War also contributed to the
increase in numbers of Armenians in the South
Caucasus. That process, accompanied by the
imposition of artificial territorial division, laid
the basis for long-term instability, tension and
conflict in the area. Between 1905 and 1907
the Armenian nationalists conducted a series of
large-scale bloody attacks against Azerbaijan-
is. The atrocities began in Baku and extended
over the whole of Azerbaijan and Azerbaijani
villages in the lands of present-day Armenia.
Hundreds of settlements were destroyed and
wiped off the face of the earth, and thousands
of civilians were brutally slain.
Taking advantage of the situation created
by the First World War and the February and
October 1917 revolutions in Russia, the Arme-
nian nationalists pursued their plans under the
banner of Bolshevism. Thus, with the pretext
of combating counter-revolutionary elements,
in March 1918 the Baku commune began to
implement a plan to eliminate Azerbaijanis
from the whole of Baku province. Apart from
Baku, and solely because of their ethnic iden-
tity, thousands of Azerbaijanis were also anni-
hilated in the Shamakhy and Guba districts, as
well as in Karabakh, Zangezur, Nakhchivan,
Lankaran and other regions of Azerbaijan. In
those areas, the civilian population was exter-
minated
en masse
, villages were burned and
national cultural monuments were obliterated.
Following the establishment of Soviet rule
in Armenia in late 1920, the Armenians were
presented with a real opportunity to fulfil their
dream of extending the Armenian State onto the
lands of other nations. Over the 70-years of Sovi-
et rule, they did this systematically and methodi-
cally at Azerbaijan’s expense, using every means
possible to expel Azerbaijanis from their lands.
Thus, in 1920 the Armenians declared Zangezur
and a number of other Azerbaijani lands to be
part of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic
(SSR). Moreover, although the mountainous part
of Karabakh was retained within Azerbaijan, it
was nevertheless given the status of autonomy
with its administrative borders defined in such a
way as to ensure that the Armenian population
constituted a majority. Thus, an artificial entity
was created on the territory of Azerbaijan, while
more than half-a-million Azerbaijanis living
compactly in Armenia at the time were refused
the same privilege.
Apart from that, during the Soviet period, pur-
poseful efforts have been taken towards changing
the demographic composition of the population in
Armenia. Thus, under the pretext of resettling Ar-
menians arriving from abroad, many Azerbaijanis