Thread by @historyarmenia

#OTD 22 Mar 1920, #Azerbaijan'i forces began a systematic massacre of #Armenia'ns living in the town of Shushi, #NagornoKarabakh. The Massacre resulted in the complete destruction of Armenian district of Shushi & an almost complete elimination of its Armenian population. #History

According to the 1917 publication of the Caucasian Calendar, there were 43,869 residents in Shushi in 1916. The city was composed of 23,396 Armenians who formed 53.3 percent of the population, and 19,091 Shia Muslims (mainly Azerbaijanis) who formed 43.5 percent of the population

The total death toll of the Shushi massacre remains a matter of dispute, with figures being offered from as low as several hundred being offered,to as high as 20,000. Citing a contemporary Armenian government report, Hovannisian places the death toll of the massacre at 500.

German historian Jörg Baberowski states that the Armenian quarter of Shushi was "wiped off the face of the earth", adding that 8,000 Armenians were massacred during the pogrom. The Great Soviet Encyclopedia entry for Shushi writes that "up to 20 percent of the population died".

According to Richard Hovannisian, "Azerbaijani troops, joined by the city's Azerbaijani inhabitants, turned Armenian Shushi into an inferno. Some 2,000 structures were consumed in the flames, including churches, cultural institutions, schools, libraries, the business section, etc

Five to six thousand Armenians managed to escape by way of Karintak to Varanda & Dizak. By 11 Apr 1920,some 30 villages in Nagorno-Karabakh had been devastated by Azerbaijani forces as a result of the uprising, leaving 25,000 homeless (including nearly 6,000 refugees from Shushi)

The prominent Russian poet Mandelstam who was in Shushi wrote a poem "The Phaeton Driver" dedicated to the massacre:

So in Nagorno-Karabakh
These were my fears
Forty thousand dead windows
Are visible there from all directions,
The cocoon of soulless work
Buried in the mountains.

Numerous other officials recalled the destruction of the town, including, Sergo Ordzhonikidze, Olga Shatunovskaya, Anastas Mikoyan. Georgian writer Anaida Bestavashvili drew a comparison between the burning of Shushi to the destruction of Pompeii in her The People & the Monuments