In 1943 at the Teheran Conference when Soviet-Iranian relations were discussed, the Armenian Diaspora asked the Soviet Foreign Minister V.Molatov to allow the migration of Iranian Armenians to the Soviet Union. V.Molatov conveyed the request to I.Stalin in Teheran, and he gave his consent. Taking this opportunity G.Arutyunov, the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Armenia, managed to get the resolution of the Central government (I.Stalin) for the compulsory deportation of Azerbaijanis from Armenia in connection with the migration of the Armenians from Iran.
On December 23, 1947, the Council of Ministers of the USSR adopted a resolution “On the deportation of the Azerbaijani collective formers and other Azerbaijani population from Armenia to the Arax-Kura valley of Azerbaijan.”
In the deportation of Azerbaijanis in 1948-1953, by the sanction of I.Stalin, the Armenians paid attention to the deportation of Azerbaijanis from economically, socially, and culturally strong settlements. Therefore, in the first place they drove out the population from the settlements near Yerevan, then from the district centers and close villages and settlements.
Being the inhabitants of high lands, a part of the deported Azerbaijanis could hardly acclimate in the lowlands of the Arax-Kura valley. Therefore, tens of thousands of the deported Azerbaijanis died there.
On the other hand, not a single Azerbaijani was settled in the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan. On the contrary, to implement the creation of “Greater Armenia”, they continued to clear this territory from the Azerbaijanis. Under the pretext of internal displacement, they moved 132 families (549 people) from the Nagorno-Karabakh to the Khanlar district of Azerbaijan in 1949.
At the same time, they began to merge the administrative districts, to change the names of the Azerbaijanis settlements and villages, to close schools and cultural centers, and to rename the districts. In 1947-1953, the names of 60 Azerbaijani settlements were changed. In general, in 1921-1988 hundreds of settlements of Turkic origin were renamed.
The Armenians in the deportation of the Azerbaijani used such a treachery; they deported big settlements and left small ones. The Azerbaijanis thus formed the minority and then were deported when the “cleansing” operation was conducted.
