Year Total Armenians% 1851 Kavkazskii Kalendar na 1852g., pp. 305–307 7,431 405 5.5% 1886 86,611 24,490 28.3% 1897 Первая всеобщая перепись населения Российской Империи 1897 г. 111,904 19,099 17.1% 1926 ГОРОД БАКУ (1926 г.) 347,390 69,544 20% 1939 808,690 118,703 14.7% 1959 987,228 170,074 17.2% 1970 1,265,515 207,464 16.4% 1979 1,533,235 215,807 14.1% 1989 1,794,874 179,950 10.0% 1999 1,788,854 378 0% 2009 2,045,815 104 0,005 1939-1989 figures include data from the city of Baku proper and the Baku municipality (gorsovet). Armenians once formed a sizable community in Baku, the current capital of the Republic of Azerbaijan. Though the date of their original settlement is unclear, Baku's Armenian population swelled during the 19th century, when it became a major center for oil production and offered other economic opportunities to enterprising investors and businessmen.
Their numbers remained strong into the 20th century, despite the turbulence of the Russian Revolutions of 1917, but almost all the Armenians fled the city between 1988 and January 1990. By the beginning of January 1990, only 50,000 Armenians remained in Baku compared to a quarter million in 1988; most of these left after being targeted in a pogrom that occurred before the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the early stages of the first Nagorno-Karabakh War.
History
Pre-Russian Revolution Later, in the 7th-century Armenian philosopher, mathematician, geographer, astronomer and alchemist Anania Shirakatsi in his most famous work Ashkharhatsuyts (Geography) listed Alti-Bagavan as one of the 12 districts of the Province Paytakaran (one of the 15 Provinces of Armenia), which linguist and orientalist Kerovbe Patkano in his translation identifies as Baku.Армянская география VII века” Анании Ширакаци. Пер. К. Патканяна. СПб 1877 г., 50, 51
Orientalist and academician Vasily Bartold referring to the 15th-century Persian historian Hamdallah Mustawfi, speaks about the existence of an old Armenian church in BakuВ.В. Бартольд "Место прикаспийских областей в истории мусульманского мира". Курс лекций. Баку 1925 г. http://armenianhouse.org/arustamyan/town-ru.html and the 15th-century Arab geographer Abdar-Rashid al-Bakuvi in his writings mentions that the majority of the population of Baku (Bakuya) were Christian.Ал - Бакуви абд - Рашид "Сокращение книги о "памятниках" и чудеса царя могущего". Пер. 3. Бунятова. "Наука". Moscow 1971
Baku saw a large influx of Armenians following the city's incorporation into the Russian Empire in 1806. Many took up jobs as merchants, industrial managers and government administrators.Eastern Europe, Russia and Central Asia 2004. Europa Publications Limited. Azerbaijan. Armenians established a community in the city with churches, and schools, and was the scene of a lively literary culture.
The favorable economic conditions provided by the Imperial Russian government allowed many Armenians to enter the burgeoning oil production and drilling business of Baku. Armenians along with Russians constituted the financial elite of the city and local capital was concentrated mainly in their hands. The Armenians were the second most numerous group in the judiciary.
By 1900, Armenian-owned businesses formed nearly one-third of the oil companies operating in the region.Suny, Ronald Grigor. "Eastern Armenians Under Tsarist Rule" in The Armenian People From Ancient to Modern Times, Volume II: Foreign Dominion to Statehood: The Fifteenth Century to the Twentieth Century, ed. Richard G. Hovannisian, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997, p. 125. The growing tension between Armenians and Azeris (often instigated by the Russian officials who feared nationalist movements among their ethnically non-Russian subjects) resulted in mutual pogroms in 1905–1906, planting the seed of distrusts between these two groups in the city and elsewhere in the region for decades to come.Suha Bolukbasi. "Nation-building in Azerbaijan." in Identity politics in Central Asia and the Muslim world, Willem van Schendel and Erik Jan Zürcher (eds.). I. B.Tauris, 2001. "Until the 1905–6 Armeno-Tatar (the Azeris were called Tatars by Russia) war, localism was the main tenet of cultural identity among Azeri intellectuals."Joseph Russell Rudolph. Hot spot: North America and Europe. ABC-CLIO, 2008. "To these larger moments can be added dozens of lesser ones, such as the 1905–06 Armenian-Tartar wars that gave Azeris and Armenians an opportunity to kill one another in the areas of Armenia and Azerbaijan that were then controlled by Russia..."
Independent Azerbaijan
Following the proclamation of Azerbaijan's independence in 1918, the Armenian nationalist Dashnaktsutyun Party became increasingly active in the then Bolshevik-occupied Baku. There were, according to Russian statistics, at this time 120,000 Armenians living in the Baku Province.
Several members of the governing body of the Baku Commune consisted of ethnic Armenians. On April 1, 1918, after the Ottoman forces had launched their Transcaucasian campaign in February, clashes broke out between various factions of the city.
Despite the efforts of Stepan Shaumian, the Armenian head of the Baku Commune to forge an alliance between Bolshevik, Armenian, and Muslim factions, the alliance soon fell apart.
Situation escalated when the Muslims, alarmed by the growing power of the Armenians, tried to seek help from outside, inviting the former tsarist all-Muslim Savage division into the city. This caused alarm in the city, and soon the civilian fighting between the factions broke out. Despite the Armenian efforts to stay neutral and be ready only for self-defence, soon a decision was made to join the forces with the Bolsheviks to resist the Muslim military attack. The fighting resulted in the victory of the Armenian-Bolshevik coalition, which left thousands of casualties from both sides, among which many were Muslims (3000 according to the estimates of Shaumian, and 12000 according to the Azerbaijani sources).Hopkirk, Peter. Like Hidden Fire. The Plot to Bring Down the British Empire. New York: Kodansha International, 1994, p. 283-7.
Five months later, the Armenian community itself dwindled as thousands of Armenians either fled Baku or were massacred at the approach of the Turkish–Azeri army (which seized the city from the Bolsheviks).Hovannisian. Armenia on the Road to Independence, pp. 225-27, 312, note 36. Regardless of these events, on 18 December 1918, ethnic Armenians (including members of the Dashnaktsutyun) were represented in the newly formed Azerbaijani parliament, constituting 11 of its 96 members.Swietochowski, Tadeusz. Russian Azerbaijan, 1905-1920: The Shaping of National Identity in a Muslim Community. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985, p. 145.
Soviet era Following the Sovietisation of Azerbaijan, Armenians managed to reestablish a large and vibrant community in Baku made up of skilled professionals, craftsmen and intelligentsia and integrated into the political, economic and cultural life of Azerbaijan. The community grew steadily in part due to the active migration of Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians to Baku and other large cities.
The mainly-Armenian populated quarter of Baku called Armenikend grew from a tiny village of oil workers into a prosperous urban community. Baransky, Nikolai. Экономическая география СССР [An Economic Geography of the USSR]. Moscow: Government Educational-Pedagogical Publishing, 1938, p. 305. At the outset of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict in 1988, Baku alone had a larger Armenian population than Nagorno-Karabakh.Ehteshami, Anoushiravan (1994). From the Gulf to Central Asia. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, p. 164 Armenians were widely represented in the state apparatus.Encyclopedia Americana. Azerbaijan, Republic of. Grolier Incorporated, 1993
The multi-ethnic nature of Soviet-era Baku created the conditions for the active integration of its population and the emergence of a distinct Russian-speaking urban subculture, to which ethnic identity began losing ground and with which post-World War II generations of urbanized Bakuvians regardless of their ethnic origin or religious affiliations tended to identify. Rumyantsev, Sergei. "Столица, город или деревня. Об итогах урбанизации в отдельно взятой республике на Южном Кавказе." Demoscope Weekly. 10–23 October 2005. Mamardashvili, Merab. "«Солнечное сплетение» Евразии." By the 1980s, the Armenian community of Baku had become largely Russified. In 1977, 58% of Armenian pupils in Azerbaijan were receiving education in Russian. Bilodid, Ivan. Русский язык как средство межнационального общения [The Russian Language as a Means of International Communication]. Moscow: Nauka, 1977, p. 164 While in the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast, Armenians often chose to disassociate themselves from Azerbaijan and Azeris, cases of mixed Azeri–Armenian marriages were quite common in Baku.Shlapentokh, Vladimir. A Normal Totalitarian Society: How the Soviet Union Functioned and How It Collapsed. Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 2001, p. 269.
Pogrom and mass exodus
The political unrest in Nagorno-Karabakh remained a rather distant concern for Armenians of Baku until March 1988, when the Sumgait pogrom took place. The anti-Armenian feelings were aroused because of the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh resulting in the exodus of most Armenians from Baku and elsewhere in the republic.Assessment for Armenians in Azerbaijan, Minorities At Risk Project , Center for International Development and Conflict Management, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland. However, many Armenian refugees from Azerbaijan later reported that despite ethnic tensions taking place in Nagorno-Karabakh, the relationships with their Azeri friends and neighbors had been unaffected.Miller, Donald E. and Lorna Touryan Miller. Armenia: Portraits of Survival and Hope. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003, pp. 38, 56.
The massacre in Sumgait came as a shock to both Armenian and Azerbaijanis of the cities, and many Armenian lives were saved as ordinary Azeris sheltered them during the pogroms and volunteered to escort them out of the country, often risking their own lives. Novii Mir, Issues 7–9. Izvestiya Soveta Deputatov Trudyashchikhsya SSSR, 1998, p. 189.Von Voss, Huberta. Portraits of Hope: Armenians in the Contemporary World. New York: Berghahn Books, 2007, p. 301. In some cases, the Armenians who were leaving entrusted their houses and possessions to their Azeri friends.
The Baku pogrom,Britannica: Azerbaijan- The Soviet and post-Soviet periodsAzerbaijan: The status of Armenians, Russians, Jews and other minorities, report, 1993, INS Resource Informacion Center, p.6 which broke out on 12 January 1990, lasted for seven days during which many Armenians were beaten, tortured or murdered, and their apartments were raided, robbed or burned, resulting in the flight of almost all of the Armenians from the city and marked the effective end of the Armenian community of Baku.
Non-official sources estimate that the number of Armenians living on Azerbaijani territory outside Nagorno-Karabakh is around 2,000 to 3,000, and almost exclusively comprises persons married to Azeris or of mixed Armenian-Azeri descent.Этнический состав Азербайджана (по переписи 1999 года) The number of Armenians who are likely not married to Azeris and are not of mixed Armenian-Azeri descent are estimated at 645 (36 men and 609 women) and more than half (378 or 59 per cent of Armenians in Azerbaijan outside Nagorno-Karabakh) live in Baku and the rest in rural areas. They are likely to be elderly and sick, and probably have no other family members.
Economic life