Deportation of the Azerbaijanis from Armenia was an ethic crime. The deportation was carried out with a special brutality by the government agencies.

 

If you review the census of population conducted by the Tsarist Russia in the Yerevan province in 1865, 1886 and 1916, we encounter interesting results there. Thus, 165.811 Azerbaijanis (37.9% of the population), and 240.000 (54.8%) Armenians resided in the Yerevan province in 1886, respectively, 251,057 Azerbaijanis (37.4%) and   375,700 Armenians (56%) resided in 1886, 374,482 Azerbaijanis (33.4%), 669.871 (59.8%) and Armenians lived in 1916.

 

According to the information of Brockhaus and Efron encyclopedia for the beginning of the twentieth century, Azerbaijanis settled “almost in all the territories of the Russian Armenia”. Their numbers were about 300 million people or 37.5 percent in the Yerevan province. They resided mainly in the rural areas and were engaged in cattle-breeding and carpet weaving. The Azerbaijanis predominated in three of the seven district of the Yerevan province, as well as, in Yerevan. 49 percent of population was Azerbaijanis, 48 percent of population was the Armenians.

 

Luigi Villari, a traveler, who visited the region in 1905, reported that the Azerbaijani population of Yerevan was richer than the Armenians. Although the majority of the villagers were Armenians, most of the lands were owned by the Azerbaijanis.

 

In the Soviet period, the process of emigration of the Azerbaijanis from the Armenian territory was started by the order of I.Stalin. With the official permission of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the Armenians residing abroad were allowed to repatriate in November, 1945 and the respective resolution of the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR was published in the press. The decision of the Council of Ministers of USSR “On the deportation of the Azerbaijani people from the Armenia USSR to the Kur-Araz lowlands of the Azerbaijan USSR” was made on December 23, 1947. According to the same decision 100 thousand Azerbaijanis were deported from Armenia in 1948-1950.

 

It was prepared on the basis of http://www.sultanov.azeriland.com site materials.