As an inevitable consequence, the first hundreds of Azerbaijani refugees from Armenian regions appeared in adjacent areas of Azerbaijan in January 1988. By February, the scale of forced displacement had significantly increased.
According to a report from Azerinform dated December 3, 1988: “On the night of December 1-2, 3,800 people were evacuated from the Masis region, 400 from Spitak, 450 from Ararat, 150 from Kalinin, 482 from Kirovakan, and 614 from Stepanavan. The Council of Ministers of the Azerbaijan SSR reported that by December 2, the number of refugees had exceeded 78,000. Most of them were now located in the Nakhchivan ASSR, Kirovabad, Kelbajar, Absheron, Zangilan, Mir-Bashir, Shamkhor, Khanlar, and Tavuz regions.”
According to data from the State Statistics Committee of the Azerbaijan SSR, by the beginning of February 1990, 186,000 Azerbaijanis had fled from Armenia to Azerbaijan, along with 11,000 Kurds and 3,500 Russians. By mid-1990, the State Statistics Committee of Azerbaijan had registered 233,000 refugees from Armenia and Uzbekistan (Meskhetian Turks) in the republic.
By 1994, Azerbaijan was grappling with hundreds of thousands of refugees, territories occupied by Armenia, and a shattered economy. All these issues remained to be addressed.
In this article, preserved photographs taken by Paul Grover, a photographer from the British Daily Telegraph who visited Azerbaijan in 1994, capture how local refugees lived at that time.
