Tragedy of Shushi on March 23-26, 1920,

as Exposed in Domestic and Foreign Historiography

Summary

Key words: Shushi, March 23-26, 1920, Mountainous Karabakh, Artsakh, 8^th Congress of Karabakh Armenians, self-defense, insurrection, preemptive strike, historiography.

On March 23-26, 1920, Turkish-Azerbaijani troops with the Moslem dwellers profited of the preemptive strike, undertook by the small detachment under plenipotentiary of the ARFD Bureau Arsen Mikayelian, and fulfilled a massacre of the Shushi Armenians with a burning the city down. This events are testified in the memoirs of the witnesses together with great amount of archival material. The total destruction of Shushi is elucidated by historians of the Republic of Armenia as well as by Diaspora and foreign specialists.

All the scholars in accord point out that the mass murder of the civil population at Shushi and complete destruction of its Armenian sector was a crime against humanity, which constitutes the Genocide. //-133