The Armenian-Azerbaijani war (1918–1920) was a conflict that took place in the South Caucasus in regions with a mixed Armenian-Azerbaijani population, broadly encompassing what are now modern-day Azerbaijan and Armenia. It began during the final months of World War I and ended with the establishment of Soviet rule.
The conflict took place against the backdrop of the Russian Civil War and the partition of the Ottoman Empire. Mutual territorial claims, made by the newly formed Azerbaijan Democratic Republic and the Republic of Armenia, led to their respective support for Azerbaijani and Armenian militias in the disputed territories. Armenia fought against Azerbaijani militias in the Erivan Governorate of the former Russian Empire, while Azerbaijan fought Armenian claims to the Karabakh region. The war was characterized by outbreaks of massacres and ethnic cleansing (such as the March Days, the September Days, the Shusha massacre, and more broadly, the massacres of Azerbaijanis in Armenia), which changed the demographics of the region.
Hostilities broadly came to an end when the Soviet 11th Army invaded and occupied both Azerbaijan and Armenia.
War proper
On 30 March 1918, the Soviets, based on the unsubstantiated report that the Muslim crew of the ship Evelina was armed and ready to revolt against the Soviets, disarmed the crew, which tried to resist. This led to three days of fighting, resulting in the death of up to 12,000 Azerbaijanis.
Fight for Baku and Karabakh, 1918–19
At the same time the Baku Commune was involved in heavy fighting with the advancing Caucasian Ottoman Army in and around Ganja. The Ottoman Empire's Enver Pasha began to move forward with the newly established Army of Islam. Major battles occurred in Yevlakh and Agdash.
British General Lionel Dunsterville ordered the evacuation of the city on 14 September, after six weeks of occupation, and withdrew to Iran; most of the Armenian population escaped with the British forces. The Ottoman Army of Islam and its Azerbaijani allies, led by Nuri Pasha, entered Baku on 15 September and killed between 10,000 and 20,000 Armenians in retaliation for the March massacre of Muslims. The capital of Azerbaijan was finally moved from Ganja to Baku. However, after the Armistice of Mudros between the United Kingdom and the Ottoman Empire on 30 October, Turkish troops were replaced by the Triple Entente. Headed by British Gen. W. Thomson, who had declared himself the military governor of Baku, 1,000 Commonwealth soldiers arrived in Baku on 17 November 1918. By Gen. Thomson's order, martial law was implemented in Baku.
The Armenian government tried several times to seize Shusha militarily. In 1918, the Karabakh Council was declared in the region. However, throughout the summer of 1918 Armenians in the mountainous Karabag region, under the leadership of Andranik Ozanian, resisted the Ottoman 3rd Army. After the Armistice the Ottoman Empire began to withdraw its forces and Armenian forces under Andranik seized Nagorno-Karabakh. Armistice of Mudros brought Gen. Andranik the chance to create a base for further expansion eastward and form a strategic corridor extending into Nakhichevan.
In January 1919, Armenian troops advanced towards Shusha. They captured nine Azerbaijani villages on their way. Just before the Armistice of Mudros was signed, Andranik Ozanian was on his way from Zangezur to Shusha to take control of the main city of Karabakh. In January 1919, with Armenian troops advancing, the British military command asked Andranik to return to Zangezur with the assurances that this conflict could be solved at the Paris Peace Conference. Andranik pulled back his units, and the British command at Baku gave control to Khosrov bey Sultanov, a native of Karabakh and "ardent pan-Turkist", who was appointed the general-governor of Karabakh and ordered by the British to "squash any unrest in the region". Sultanov ordered attacks on Armenian villages the next day, increased the sizes of Azerbaijani garrisons in Shusha and Khankendi and drew up plans to destroy several Armenian villages to sever the link between Armenians in Karabakh and the region of Zangezur.
Fight for Nakhichevan, 1919–20
In response to a British border proposal that would have assigned Nakhichevan to Armenia, Azerbaijanis of Nakhichevan revolted under the leadership of the local landowner Jafargulu Khan Nakhichevanski in December 1918 and declared the independent Republic of Aras, with its capital in Nakhichevan. The republic, which was essentially subordinate to Azerbaijan, continued to exist until mid-June 1919, when Armenian troops led by Drastamat Kanayan advanced into it to gain control over the region. They managed to capture the city of Nakhichevan in June 1919 and destroy the Republic of Aras, but afterwards fought combined regular Azerbaijani and Ottoman troops, who reinstated Azerbaijani control over the city in July. On 10 August 1919, a ceasefire was signed.
An American Commission to Negotiate Peace telegram, speaking on the conflict, stated:
F. Tredwell Smith of the American Persian Relief Commission passed through here yesterday after varied experiences in Erivan and Nakhichevan and Tabriz and Urumia. When about August 25th he crossed the Tartar lines via Nakhichevan to Tabriz for the second time the atmosphere was completely changed, and a Britisher's life was no longer safe because the British had no troops, and Americans were also in danger. The Tartars opened battle on the Armenians in Nakhichevan on July 20th and after a three-day battle drove out the British along with the American relief workers and began a massacre of Armenian men, women and children, estimates of victims varying between 6,000 to 12,000.
Fighting resumed in March 1920 and continued until the Sovietization of Nakhichevan in 1920 by the 11th Red Army, now including former Azerbaijan Democratic Republic troops.
Fight for Zangezur / Syunik, November 1919
Following the controversial withdrawal of British forces from the Transcaucasus in mid-1919 and the subjugation of the Karabakh Council to Azerbaijan in August 1919, Dr. Khosrov bey Sultanov beseeched his government to help him "overcome 'the Armenian bandits' blocking the routes to the summer grazing lands and to convert his titular position as governor-general of Karabagh and Zangezur / Syunik into reality." His call for assistance was also prompted by the antagonizing reports of Muslim villages in Zangezur / Syunik being pillaged by irregular Armenian forces and their inhabitants fleeing into Azerbaijan as refugees. Accordingly, the Azerbaijani army began to plan its invasion of Zangezur with the strategic objective of reaching the rebelling Nakhichevan and Sharur-Daralagez uyezds and incorporating them into Azerbaijan.
On 3 November 1919, the Azerbaijani army, supplemented by auxiliary Kurdish cavalry, launched a full-scale attack into the Armenian-controlled section of Zangezur / Syunik, and was successful in briefly occupying some bordering Armenian villages before being decisively defeated and forced out by the local Armenians, led by partisan commanders Colonel Shahmazian and Garegin Nzhdeh. A notable historian on the topic, Hovannisian, describes the conflict:
Preliminary skirmishes involving the Kurdo-Tatar partisans of Haji-Samlu were followed by a general Azerbaijani offensive at dawn on November 4. Under cover of a dense fog, the advancing regiments flanked the Armenian forward trenches and captured the first line of defense. By the next afternoon Bayandur, Khnadsakh, Korindzor, and Tegh had fallen, Khoznavar was in flames, and Azerbaijani artillery was bombarding the heights (Kechel-dagh) overlooking Goris. At nightfall Azerbaijani crescent-shaped fires burned on these heights. Elsewhere, Muslim bands from Sharur-Nakhichevan invested Nors-Mazra and other villages near Sisian, and two Turkish-officered platoons cut across the rugged Zangezur mountains from Ordubad into the Muslim stronghold of Okhchichai. Throughout Zangezur the imperiled Muslim population took heart in anticipation of liberation by the Azerbaijani army.
Such hopes were cut short, however, by the counterattack Shahmazian mounted on November 6 after concentrating all available units on the Goris front. Artillerymen ... made direct hits on the Azerbaijani positions on Kechel-dagh, which was recaptured by Armenian companies ... The Kurdish irregulars were the first to break ranks and scatter into the mountains around Minkend, while the Azerbaijani regulars withdrew toward Tegh and the vale of Zabukh. Having gained the initiative, the Armenians charged the Azerbaijani lines, decimating Edigarov's cavalry regiment in cross fire, reportedly inflicting several hundred casualties on the infantry, capturing 100,000 rounds of ammunition and six machine guns near Khoznavar, and putting two cannons and more than twenty machine guns out of commission. By November 9 the Azerbaijani army was retreating in disarray toward Zabukh and the northern mountainous bypaths to Karabagh. Within a week after the invasion began, the Armenians of Zangezur were celebrating an impressive victory.
Fight for Karabakh, early 1920
The largest escalation of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict occurred in mid-March 1920 during the botched Karabakh uprising culminating in the massacre and expulsion of Shushi's majority Armenian population. Through 1918–1919, the area of Mountainous Karabakh was under the de facto administration of the local Armenian Karabakh Council, which was supported by the region's overwhelmingly Armenian population. During this period, Azerbaijan attempted several times to assert its authority over the region, backed by the British governor of Baku, Lieutenant General Thomson, who appointed Dr. Khosrov bey Sultanov as governor-general of Karabakh and Zangezur with the intention of annexing the Karabakh Council into Azerbaijan. In 1919, under threat of extermination (demonstrated by the Khaibalikend Massacre), the Karabakh Council was forced to sign an agreement to provisionally recognize and submit to Azerbaijani jurisdiction until its status was decided at the Paris Peace Conference.
Ending in early 1920, the Paris Peace Conference was inconclusive regarding the resolution of the Transcaucasian territorial disputes, and therefore Armenia, by this time in a much stronger position to assert itself, took it upon itself to emancipate the Armenians of Karabakh from their callous Azerbaijani governor. Subversive preparations began for a staged uprising in the region of the Karabakh Council, timed to coincide with Azerbaijani Novruz celebrations. The uprising, due to its poor coordination, was unsuccessful in ousting the Azerbaijani garrisons from Shushi and neighboring Khankend, resulting in a pogrom in Shusha, in which Azerbaijani soldiers and residents burned and looted half of the city, murdering, raping and expelling its erstwhile majority Armenian inhabitants.
After the uprisin, the forces of Garegin Nzhdeh and Dro Kanayan were ordered by the Armenian government to assist the Karabakh rebels, while Azerbaijan moved most of its army westward to crush the Armenian resistance and cut off any reinforcements, despite the threat of the approaching 11th Red Army of Bolshevik Russia from the north. By Azerbaijan's Sovietization barely a month after the uprising began, Azerbaijani forces were able to maintain control over the central cities of Karabakh, Shusha and Khankend, whilst its immediate surroundings were under the control of local partisans supplemented by Armenian army reinforcements. Since Dro had been explicitly ordered by the Armenian Government not to engage the Red Army, he was unable to execute the attack to capture Shusha, whose Azerbaijani defenders had been supplanted by the Red Army. The situation persisted until the overwhelming Bolshevik army drove out the Armenian army detachments from the region, after which the fears of the Armenians of Karabakh were alleviated by virtue of returning to the stability of Russian control.