Stepanakert, Artsakh Republic, Azerbaijan

🇦🇿 Stepanakert, or Khankendi, is the de facto capital and the largest city of the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh, though internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan. The city is located in a valley on the eastern slopes of the Karabakh mountain range, on the left bank of the Qarqarchay river.

The area that would become Stepanakert was originally an Armenian settlement named Vararakn. During the Soviet period, the city was made the capital of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast, becoming a hub for economic and industrial activity. In addition, the city became a hotbed for political activity, serving as the centre for Armenian demonstrations calling for the unification of Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia. Stepanakert suffered extensive damage following the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the outbreak of the First Nagorno-Karabakh War and passed into the hands of local Armenians with the establishment of the Republic of Artsakh.

The city is a regional centre of education and culture, being home to Artsakh University, musical schools, and a palace of culture. The economy is based on the service industry and has varied enterprises, food processing, wine making, and silk weaving being the most important.

History According to medieval Armenian sources, the settlement was originally an Armenian village named Vararakn (Վարարակն). 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.

In the Russian Empire, the town was a part of the Shusha uezd of the Elizavetpol Governorate. 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, in the village to reconcile with the Persians and ensure the safety of the Karabakh Armenian population. In 1847, Vararakn was a village of about 132 houses, consisting of 80 Armenian households, 52 Russian households, an Armenian church, and a cemetery. That same year, the village was renamed from Vararakn to Khankendi. 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. After 1898, the tsarist government turned Khankendi into a Russian military garrison. 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.

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. 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. In the summer of 1920, the city was occupied by part of the Red Army. 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. 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. 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.

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. Several schools and two polyclinics were established, and an Armenian drama theater was founded in 1932 and named after Maxim Gorky. In 1960, the ensemble of the central square of Stepanakert was built with the building of the regional committee (now the NKR government). 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.

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. 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.

First Nagorno-Karabakh War and independence 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.

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. In 1990 the army dispatched special forces units and various other elements to Stepanakert in order to prevent its takeover by Azerbaijani forces.

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). By early 1992, that figure had dropped to 50,000.

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". 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. As of 2016, the city had not been completely restored from the war.

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. As Azerbaijani forces advanced on the city of Shusha, the Lachin corridor was shut down by Artsakh authorities.

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. 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.

Geography Stepanakert is located on the Karabakh plateau, at an average altitude of 813 m (2,667 ft) above sea level.

Politics and government During the period of the USSR, Stepanakert served as the capital of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast within the Azerbaijani Soviet Socialist Republic, between 1923 and 1991. With the self-declared independence of Artsakh in 1991, Stepanakert continued with its status as the political and cultural centre of the newly established republic, being home to all the national institutions: the Government House, the National Assembly, the Presidential Palace, the Constitutional Court, all ministries, judicial bodies and other government organizations.

Artsakh has been a presidential republic since the 2017 constitutional referendum. The post of prime minister was abolished and executive power now resides with the president, who is both the head of state and head of government. The president is directly elected for a maximum of two consecutive five-year terms. The current president is Arayik Harutyunyan, who was elected in 2020.

The National Assembly is a unicameral legislature. It has 33 members who are elected for five-year terms.

The city of Stepanakert is governed by the Stepanakert City Council and the mayor of Stepanakert. The last local elections took place in September 2019.