This Week in 1990: Civil War in Azerbaijan

President Gorbachev arrived back in Moscow from Vilnius to face another end-of-Cold War crisis on 15 January. Ethnic rioting and civil war had broken out in Azerbaijan. The Muslims there were concerned that the largely Armenian Christian population of Nagorno-Karabakh was rebelling against their rule and manoeuvring for independence from Moscow. There were riots near the Iranian border and the Azerbaijanis mobilised. Gorbachev sent troops: in the subsequent fighting hundreds of Azerbaijanis, perhaps as many as a thousand, were killed.
Source: Jeremy Isaacs & Taylor Downing (1998), Cold War. London: Bantham Press.

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