The mass deportation of the Armenian population in 1949

Two years after the great repatriation in 1947, a mass deportation of Armenians took place in the Soviet Union, under Stalin. The attached is my AI aided translation of Asbed Manjikian’s article in Aztag Daily (November 12, 2025), titled “The Mass Expulsion of Armenians in 1949 - Artsakh: A Citadel for the Defense of Armenian Identity: Հայերու 1949-ի Զանգուածային Աքսորը - Արցախ` Հայկական Ինքնութեան Պաշտպանութեան Միջնաբերդ” Vaհe H Apelian

The mass deportation of the Armenian population organized in 1949 had a negative impact on the demography of Artsakh.

Preparations for the deportation of Armenians from Soviet Armenia and Artsakh began in January 1949, under strict secrecy.

The mass deportation of Armenians from their homeland had a number of motives, but as a justification, the name “Dashnaks” was attached to those sentenced to deportation.

By order of the state security bodies of the Soviet Union, lists of former Dashnaks, Armenian prisoners of war, repatriates, and their family members were compiled in the republics of Transcaucasia and the Black Sea coastal regions.

The Ministry of State Security issued an order on May 28, 1949, and the next day the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union, signed by Stalin, adopted secret resolution No. 2214-856 “On the transfer, resettlement and employment of those deported from the Georgian, Armenian and Azerbaijani Soviet Republics, as well as from the Black Sea coastal territories.”

To implement the decision, high-ranking leaders of the State Security Service arrived in Yerevan, headed by the deputy head of the Second Main Directorate, Major General Yuri Yedunov. Yedunov had experience in mass deportations of the population and had led the deportation of so-called kulak families from Latvia.

Those sentenced to exile as “Dashnaks” were divided into three subgroups. a) Persons who had ever had direct or indirect contact with the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, b) soldiers who were captured during the war or served in the Armenian Legion, and c) repatriates.

On June 11, 1949, a closed-door secret consultation of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Armenia was convened in Yerevan, with the participation of responsible state security officials and those who arrived from Moscow.

The decision to deport the “unsavory elements” to the Altai Territory was read out by the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Armenia, Grigor Harutyunyan, after which the Minister of State Security, Sergei Korkhmazyan, reported on the clarification of the lists of those to be deported, the day, time, route of the “operation”, and other details.

The next day, the same number of secret consultations were held in the regional centers. On June 13, closed trucks lined up along Abovian Street in Yerevan.

On the night of June 13, a secret meeting of party figures from the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast was held in the club of the military unit stationed in Stepanakert, headed by the first secretary of the party’s regional committee, Sedrak Abramov.

Zaylov, who had assumed the post of managing the deportation of Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh, announced that those who had previously been part of the Dashnak government, as well as those who had been in German captivity, should be arrested and deported at night, along with their families.

The night of June 13-14, 1949, was ominous and fateful for the Armenian people.

According to the plan prepared by the State Security Services, the deportation operations were to begin everywhere after midnight on June 13-14 and end between 6:00 and 7:00 in the morning.

After midnight, groups of five or six Chekists, based on lists drawn up, began knocking on the doors of the families sentenced to deportation. They informed the awakened and terrified condemned families that they had an hour and a half to gather the necessary things and get ready.

After the end of the one-and-a-half-hour period, the condemned families were loaded onto freight cars and transported to the station.

The steam cars waiting at the stations were loaded and immediately set off.

That day, 2,754 families, 12,316 people, were deported from Armenia. More than three thousand people were deported from the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast. Thousands of Armenians were also deported from Baku, Kirovabad (Gandzak) and various regions of Azerbaijan, as well as from the Black Sea regions.

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In Artsakh, the deportation was carried out throughout the autonomous region. From each village, three to four, and sometimes five to seven families were deported.

The deportees from Baku formed one train (one row of steam car cars, consisting of an average of 1,330 people) and one train from Kirovabad. The number of Armenians deported from other regions of Azerbaijan was about 2,400 people.

The deportation of the Armenian population negatively affected the ethnographic picture of Nagorno-Karabakh.

It should be noted that the deportation process did not extend to other ethnic groups living in Artsakh.

The deportees from the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast were taken from their villages to the Yevlakh and Horadiz stations, from where they were loaded onto steam cars and sent to the Altai Territory.

The steam cars arriving from Armenia were replenished with exiles from Artsakh.

The deportees traveled in freight wagons for about two weeks to reach the Altai Territory. They were settled in forest farms and state farms.

Among the lists of train sets kept in the archives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Altai Territory, the departure line of train No. 97111 reads: “Jajur Station, Armenian SSR, Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast, Azerbaijan SSR,” which is the only information in official documents about the deportation from the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast.

The mass deportation of Armenians was legalized from November 1949 to June 1950. A special consultation under the Ministry of State Security of the Soviet Union, in the name of the head of the deported family (or the family member who was the cause of the deportation), formally examined the documents that were considered the basis.

In turn, the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, by its decree of April 6, 1950, extended the decree of November 25, 1948 to the deportees, according to which the resettlement period of deportees during the war years was considered permanent, and voluntary departure was punishable by twenty years of hard labor.

The State Security Service summoned representatives of the exiled families to the commandant's office, where they were informed that the exile was irreversible, for life, and warned not to leave the settlement voluntarily, otherwise they would face twenty years of imprisonment or hard labor. The exile was obliged to appear at the commandant's office once a week and sign, confirming the exact location of his presence.

After getting acquainted with the documents of the special consultation under the Ministry of State Security of the Soviet Union, the exiles began to write letters to the higher leadership. The letters were addressed to Stalin, the head of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs (Cheka) Lavrenty Beria, the second secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party Georgy Malenkov, the deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers Anastas Mikoyan, and the first secretary of the Communist Party of Armenia Grigor Harutyunyan.

In these letters, they asked to explain their guilt and offense, told their biographies and offered to establish their innocence by interrogating this or that person, and described the living conditions in the place of exile, which were unbearable.

The exiles, with very few exceptions, received a sharp answer: "Your request is not subject to review." In very rare cases, requests or complaints were satisfied and their families were released from exile.

The able-bodied members of the exiled families were involved in agricultural or forestry work. Their education, profession, and trade were not taken into account.

The Azerbaijani authorities pursued the goal of changing the demographic picture of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast and gradually de-Armenizing it, following the example of Nakhichevan.

Periodic movements of the Armenian population from Artsakh were organized with the task of filling the labor shortage in the industrial enterprises of Azerbaijani cities.

The mobilization of labor from Nagorno-Karabakh and the placement of the mobilized in industrial centers were carried out by the relevant decisions of the Azerbaijani government.

By the resolution “On the preparation of state labor reserves in Azerbaijani factory training schools,” the Executive Committee of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast, as well as the People’s Council of the Nakhichevan Autonomous Republic and city and district executive committees, were obliged to distribute those recruited to factory training schools according to districts, collective farms and village councils.

The next decision of the Azerbaijani government was the decree “On the recruitment of urban and collective farm youth for vocational schools.”

Thus, every year thousands of young people from Artsakh were recruited and sent to Azerbaijani industrial centers to work, build and acquire arable land.