Demographics of the Republic of Artsakh

Archimandrite Minas Tigranian, after completing his secret mission to Persian Armenia ordered by the Russian Tsar Peter the Great stated in a report dated March 14, 1717, that the patriarch of the Gandzasar Monastery, in Artsakh, had under his authority 900 Armenian villages.

[3] In his letter of 1769 to Russia's Count P. Panin, the Georgian king Erekle II, in his description of Artsakh wrote :[4][5] Seven families rule the region of Khamse.

[11] Additionally, several sedentary Muslim villages were listed in the 1727 Ottoman census in the historical Nagorno-Karabakh, such as Qarğabazar in Dizak (currently in Fuzuli District).

[19] During the Soviet times, the leaders of the Azerbaijan SSR tried to change the demographic balance of the Nagorno Karabakh Autonomous Region by increasing the number of Azeri residents through opening a university with Azeri, Russian and Armenian sectors and a shoe factory, sending Azerbaijanis from other parts of Azerbaijan SSR to the NKAO.

[22] Nearing the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast boasted a population of 145,593 Armenians (76.4%), 42,871 Azeris (22.4%),[23] and several thousand Kurds, Russians, Greeks, and Assyrians.

The entire Azeri and Kurdish population were expelled from the region following the heaviest years of fighting in the First Nagorno-Karabakh War, from 1992 to 1993.

[24] Conversely, in 2001, 280,000 persons — virtually all ethnic Armenians who fled Azerbaijan during the 1988–1993 war were living in refugee-like circumstances in Armenia.

[2] With the turmoil caused by the Syrian Civil War, several hundred Syrian-Armenian citizens have moved from Syria to the Republic of Artsakh.

5 districts of Azerbaijan (Kalbajar, Lachin, Gubadly, Zangilan, Jabrail) are fully occupied by the Republic of Artsakh.

[34] The population of the total 7 districts of Azerbaijan not belonging to the Nagorno-Karabach AO but for the most part under occupation of the Republic of Artsakh, was 393,569 in 1979, only a small Armenian minority (3,661 or only 0.9%).