The area of
Nagorno-Karabakh was disputed between the
First Republic of Armenia and the
Azerbaijan Democratic Republic during their short-lived independence from 1918 to 1920. After the
Sovietization of both republics, the
Kavbiuro of the
Bolshevik Party decided to keep the area within the newly-formed Azerbaijan SSR, whilst granting it broad regional autonomy. Initially, the principal city of
Karabakh,
Shusha, and its surrounding villages were to be excluded from the autonomy as they were predominantly
Azerbaijani, particularly after the
massacre and expulsion of the majority
Armenian population of Shusha—this decision was later reversed in 1923 when Shusha was joined to the NKAO despite protests from Muslim villages who favoured its inclusion into the
Kurdistan uezd instead. On July 7, 1923, the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast was formally established and the capital was moved to
Stepanakert, named after the revolutionary
Stepan Shaumian. At the time of its formation, area of the oblast was . According to the
1926 Soviet census, its population was 125,200 people, among whom Armenians accounted for 89.2 percent. However, by the
1989 census, the share of Armenians dropped to 76.9 percent of the population. Reasons for this include the policy of Soviet Azerbaijani authorities to settle Azerbaijanis in the region and some out-migration of Karabakh Armenians, as well as the generally higher birthrate among Azerbaijanis than among Armenians. Although the question of Nagorno-Karabakh's status did not become a major public issue until the late 1980s, Karabakh Armenian activists, Armenian intellectuals, and Soviet Armenian leaders periodically appealed to Moscow for the oblast's transfer to the
Armenian SSR. In November 1945, Armenian First Secretary
Grigory Arutinov appealed to
Joseph Stalin to attach the NKAO to Soviet Armenia, a proposal vetoed by Azerbaijan's
Mir Jafar Baghirov. Following
Nikita Khrushchev's "
Secret Speech" in 1956, Armenian Catholicos
Vazgen I raised the matter of the NKAO's status in a letter to
Nikolai Bulganin. In 1962, Karabakh Armenian residents appealed to Khrushchev, "enumerating their grievances with official Baku and requesting the transfer of their territories from the jurisdiction of Soviet Azerbaijan to that of either Soviet Armenia or the
Russian SFSR." The demands from the NKAO were boosted in 1966 by an appeal signed by 1,906 Soviet Armenian intellectual and cultural figures, including
Martiros Saryan,
Yervand Kochar,
Hamo Sahyan, and
Paruyr Sevak. Although their appeal was endorsed by Armenian First Secretary
Anton Kochinyan and
Badal Muradyan, it was vetoed by Baku, "reportedly with backstage support from
Mikhail Suslov." The rise of
Heydar Aliyev to the leadership of the Azerbaijani SSR in 1969 saw increasing attempts to tighten Baku's control over the autonomous oblast and alter its demographics. In 1973–74, Aliyev purged the entire NKAO leadership, who Baku regarded as "Armenian nationalists." He appointed
Boris Kevorkov, an Armenian from outside the NKAO, as the oblast's First Secretary. In 1977, the prominent Armenian author
Sero Khanzadyan wrote an open letter to
Leonid Brezhnev calling for Nagorno-Karabakh's annexation to Soviet Armenia. Inspired by
Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms of
glasnost and
perestroika, the Karabakh Armenians began a democratic
mass movement to unite their region with the Armenian SSR. On February 20, 1988, the Supreme Soviet of the NKAO voted to unify with Soviet Armenia. Open conflict soon broke out between the local Armenian population and the government of the Azerbaijan SSR. The fighting escalated into the
First Nagorno-Karabakh War by the end of 1991. On November 26 of that year, the
Supreme Soviet of Azerbaijan formally
abolished the autonomous status of the oblast. In response, the majority Armenian population
declared their independence as the
Nagorno-Karabakh Republic on December 10, with the support of
Armenia. == Administrative divisions ==