Stepanakert

19th century Russian postcard of Shusha with the garrison of Khan-Kandy in the distance.

According to medieval Armenian sources, the settlement was originally an Armenian village named Vararakn (Armenian: Վարարակն).[5] From the 10th-16th centuries, the settlement was a part of the Armenian Principality of Khachen. Over the centuries, it would successively pass into the hands of the meliks of Karabakh and the Karabakh khans before coming under the control of the Russian Empire in 1822.[4]

Under the Russian Empire, the town was a part of the Shusha Uyezd of the Elisabethpol Governorate.[4] According to the 19th century author Raffi, in 1826, the local Armenian meliks met with the Persian crown prince Abbas Mirza, who had invaded Karabakh with his army,[10] in the village to reconcile relations with the Persians and ensure the safety of the Karabakh Armenian population.[11] In 1847, Vararakn was a village of about 132 houses, consisting of 80 Armenian households, 52 Russian households, an Armenian church, and a cemetery.[12] That same year, the village was renamed from Vararakn to Khankendi.[13] By 1886, there were 52 houses in the settlement. The population of Khankendi consisted of retired soldiers and their descendants, who belonged to the Russian Orthodox Church. The population was engaged in agriculture, as well as various crafts, carriage, the renting of apartments (mainly to military personnel), and so on.[14] After 1898, the tsarist government turned Khankendi into a Russian military garrison.[9] The garrison consisted of barracks, hospitals, and a church, as well as, several houses where officers' families and a small local population, who supplied the military units with food, lived. The local population consisted of Armenians and Azerbaijanis.[15]

The Presidential Palace, formerly the building of the Supreme Soviet of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast.

In February 1920, after a body thought to be of an Azerbaijani soldier was found, an anti-Armenian riot took place in the village that claimed several hundred lives.[16] Following the massacre of the Armenian population of Shusha in March 1920, the city received an influx of Armenians; as a result, Armenians formed the majority of the population from that time onwards.[17] In the summer of 1920, the city was occupied by part of the Red Army.[4] In 1923, Khankendi was renamed Stepanakert by the Soviet government in honor of Stepan Shahumian, a fallen Bolshevik party member and leader of the 26 Baku Commissars. The former regional capital was Shusha. However, following the depopulation of Armenians in Shusha, the capital of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO) was sited in Stepanakert.[1] At the time of the formation of the NKAO, Stepanakert was a dilapidated settlement, where the number of surviving buildings barely reached 10 to 15. Some of the buildings were completely destroyed, others lacked doors and windows, while only walls remained from a number of buildings. During the first years of the oblast, some of the buildings were restored and many were rebuilt, roads were improved, and electricity and telephone communications were installed in the city.[18] In time, Stepanakert grew to become the region's most important city (a status it received in 1940). Its population rose from 10,459 in 1939 to 33,000 in 1978.[1]

In 1926, municipal authorities adopted a new city layout designed by Aleksandr Tamanian; two additional designs for expansion were approved in the 1930s and 1960s, both of which retained Tamanian's initial plan.[7] Several schools and two polyclinics were established, and an Armenian drama theater was founded in 1932 and named after Maxim Gorky.[1] In 1960, the ensemble of the central square of Stepanakert was built with the building of the regional committee (now the NKR government).[19] This square, then named after Lenin, became the arena of many rallies demanding the transfer of the NKAO to the Armenian SSR. By 1968, the first outbreak of ethnic violence occurred in Stepanakert. In the city, a trial was held over an Azerbaijani director of the city school who was accused of murdering an Armenian girl. The Armenians, who considered the verdict of the Azerbaijani judge too lenient, gathered outside the court building and burned the car in which the criminal and judge were in.[20]

Stepanakert served as Nagorno-Karabakh's main economic hub, and by the mid-1980s there were nineteen factories in operation in the city, including an electrical and asphalt plant.[7] By the end of the Soviet era, Stepanakert had an agricultural technical school, a pedagogical institute, a medical and music school, a local history museum, and a drama theater.[19]

Renaissance Square.

Freedom Fighters' Boulevard in central Stepanakert.

The political and economic reforms that General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev undertook in 1985 saw a marked decentralization of Soviet authority. Armenians, in both the Armenian SSR and Nagorno-Karabakh, viewed Gorbachev's reform program as an opportunity to unite the two together. On 20 February 1988, tens of thousands of Armenians gathered to demonstrate in Stepanakert's Lenin Square (now Renaissance Square) to demand that the region be joined to Armenia. On the same day, the Supreme Soviet of Nagorno-Karabakh voted to join the Armenian SSR, a move strongly opposed by the Soviet Azerbaijani authorities.[21]

Relations between Stepanakert's Armenians and Azerbaijanis, who supported the Azerbaijani government's position, deteriorated in the following years. Inter-ethnic strife in the city in September 1988, encompassing physical attacks and burning of property, forced nearly all Azerbaijanis to flee the city. The Soviet Army took up positions in the city and announced a curfew three days later.[22][23] In 1990 the army dispatched special forces units and various other elements to Stepanakert in order to prevent its takeover by Azerbaijani forces.[24]

After Azerbaijan declared its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Stepanakert was renamed Khankendi by the Azerbaijani government. Fighting broke out over control of Nagorno-Karabakh, which, after three years of war, resulted in Armenian control of the region and a connecting corridor to Armenia to the west. Prior to the conflict, Stepanakert was the largest city of the NKAO, with a population of 70,000 out of a total 189,000 (Armenians at the time comprised 75% of the region's total population).[25] By early 1992, that figure had dropped to 50,000.[26]

A T-72 tank memorial from the First Karabakh War.

During the war, the city suffered immense damage from Azerbaijani bombardment, especially in early 1992 when the Azerbaijanis positioned BM-21 Grad rocket artillery in Shusha and rained down missiles over Stepanakert. A journalist for Time noted in an April 1992 article that "scarcely a single building [had] escaped damage in Stepanakert."[26] It was not until 9 May 1992, with the capture of Shusha, that the ground bombardment ceased. The city, nevertheless, continued to suffer aerial bombardment until the end of the war. As a result, the majority of the city was in a severely damaged state.[27] As of 2016, the city had not been completely restored from the war.[4]

The city came under intense bombardment once again during the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war. Residential areas were continuously hit by the Azerbaijani Army with cluster munitions throughout the war, starting on the first day of fighting, and residents were urged to use the city's bomb shelters.[28][29][30] As Azerbaijani forces advanced on the city of Shusha, the Lachin corridor was shut down by Artsakh authorities.[31]

With Azerbaijani forces 15 km (9.3 mi) from the capital, a ceasefire agreement was signed on 10 November. As part of the agreement, Russian peacekeepers were deployed to the region.[32] Following the war, the population of Stepanakert swelled to 75,000 residents as a result of some 10,000 to 15,000 displaced people who lost their homes elsewhere in the Republic of Artsakh during the war.[6]

• 
  The National Assembly
• 
  The Ministry of Foreign Affairs
• 
  Government building, 20 February Street

Stepanakert is served by a number of regular minibus lines. Old Soviet-era buses have been replaced with new modern buses. Regular trips to other provinces of Nagorno-Karabakh are also operated from the city.[57]

Stepanakert is served by the nearby Stepanakert Airport, north of the city near the village of Ivanyan. In 2009, facilities reconstruction and repair work began.[58] Though originally scheduled to launch the first commercial flights on 9 May 2011, Karabakh officials postponed a new reopening date throughout the whole of 2011.[59] In May 2012, the director of the NKR's Civil Aviation Administration, Tigran Gabrielyan, announced that the airport will begin operations in summer 2012.[60] However, the airport still remains closed due to political reasons. The OSCE Minsk Group, which mediates the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, stated that "operation of [Stepanakert Airport] cannot be used to support any claim of a change in the status of Nagorno-Karabakh" and "urged the sides to act in accordance with international law and consistent with current practice for flights over their territory."[61]

Stepanakert used to be connected through a railway line with the Yevlakh station on the Baku-Tbilisi railway.[62] However, trips have been discontinued since the start of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.[63]

The Union of Artsakh Freedom Fighters

Stepanakert is the center of higher education in Artsakh.[4] Five higher educational institutions operate in the city:

• Artsakh State University, founded in 1969 as a branch of the Baku Pedagogical Institute. In 1973, it was renamed Stepanakert Pedagogical Institute and following the independence of Nagorno-Karabakh, in 1992, it received its current status. The university offers courses spread across seven departments and has 4,500 students.[72]
• Stepanakert campus of the Armenian National Agrarian University.[73]
• Grigor Narekatsi University (private).[74]
• Mesrop Mashtots University (private).[74]
• Gyurjyan Institute for Applied Arts (private).[74]

Many new schools in Stepanakert were opened during the last decade with the help of the Armenian diaspora.[75] Existing schools were also renovated with donations from the diaspora.[76]

The Stepanakert branch of Tumo Center for Creative Technologies was opened in September 2015, as a result of continued cooperation between the Tumo Centre and the Armenian General Benevolent Union, with the support of mobile operator Karabakh Telecom.[77][78]

Stepanakert Republican Stadium

Football is a popular sport in Nagorno-Karabakh and the city has a renovated football stadium. Since the mid-1990s, football teams from Karabakh started taking part in some domestic competitions in Armenia. Lernayin Artsakh is the football club that represents the city of Stepanakert. The Artsakh national football league was launched in 2009.[79]

The non-FIFA affiliated Artsakh national football team was formed in 2012 and played their first competitive match against the unrecognized Abkhazia national football team in Sukhumi on 17 September 2012. The match ended with a 1–1 draw.[80][81] The following month, on 21 October 2012, Artsakh played the return match at the Stepanakert Republican Stadium against Abkhazia, winning it with a result of 3–0.[82]

There is also interest in other sports, including basketball and volleyball.

Artsakh athletes also take part with the representing teams and athletes in the Pan-Armenian Games, organized in Armenia.[83]

As an unrecognized entity, the athletes of Artsakh compete in international sports competitions under the flag of Armenia.[79]

Stepanakert is twinned with:

• Montebello, United States: On 25 September 2005, Montebello, California and Stepanakert became sister cities. This prompted a complaint by the ambassador of Azerbaijan to the United States, Hafiz Pashayev, who sent a letter to California leaders, stating that the decision jeopardized peace talks between his country and Armenia.[84] The letter was sent to then-California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who deferred the letter to Montebello mayor Bill Molinari since it concerned a local, not a state, issue. Molinari responded to Pashayev that the city would go ahead with its plans to inaugurate Stepanakert under the sister city program.[84] Stepanakert's relationship with Montebello is aimed at revitalizing the capital's economic infrastructure and building cultural and educational ties, as well as developing trade and health care between the two cities. Azerbaijan has described this as a contradictory foreign policy of the United States that supports the NKR government and Armenian aggression against Azerbaijan.[85]
• Mairiporã, Brazil: Since June 18, 2018, Law 3767/18 has made Eternal Armenia the name that declares Sister Cities the Municipalities of Mairiporã, State of São Paulo, and Stepanakert, capital of the self-declared Nagorno-Karabakh Republic which triggered an alert from Itamaraty, Brazilian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on the attitude of the Municipality as Brazil does not recognize the independence of Nagorno-Karabakh.[86]

• On 22 May 1998, Stepanakert and the commune of Villeurbanne in France signed a Friendship Declaration.[87]
• On 28 September 2012, Stepanakert and Yerevan, Armenia, the capitals of the two Armenian republics, became friends after signing a partnership agreement.[88]
• On 15 September 2014, San Sebastián, Spain, and Stepanakert signed a cooperation agreement.[89]
• On 17 May 2015, Stepanakert and the commune of Valence in France signed a Friendship Declaration.[87]
• On 3 February 2016, Stepanakert signed a Friendship Declaration with the municipality of Franco da Rocha, Brazil.[87]
• On 23 July 2019, Stepanakert signed a Friendship Declaration with the City of Ryde, Australia.[90]