The Armenian party functionary who enforced Baku's control over Nagorno-Karabakh
"Although the autonomous oblast is close to the Armenian republic, they are separated by high mountains." (1977 international journal interview)
An Armenian from Shamakhi, Azerbaijan, Kevorkov was appointed by Heydar Aliyev in 1973 as First Secretary of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast and served until 1988. An outsider wholly loyal to Aliyev, he suppressed Armenian national aspirations and enforced Baku's control over the region. His 1977 claim that Karabakh was 'separated from Armenia by high mountains' made him a pariah among Armenians; in February 1988 he was dismissed after the oblast soviet voted to unify with Soviet Armenia. Arrested in Baku in 1992, he was freed under Aliyev's 1993 amnesty and spent his last years as a Moscow history teacher, dying in 1998.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1954Instructor, Deputy Head of Agitation and Propaganda, Baku City Komsomol
- 1954–1961First Secretary, Dzerzhinsky then Narimanov District Komsomol, Baku
- 1961–1970Responsible Organizer, Cadres Dept.; Inspector, Organizational-Party Work Dept., CC CPAz
- 1970–1973First Secretary, Kirov District Party Committee, Baku
- 1973–1988First Secretary, Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast Party Committee
- 1974–1989Deputy, Soviet of Nationalities, USSR Supreme Soviet (9th–11th convocations)
- 1988Expelled from the Party
- 1993–1998Middle-school history teacher, Moscow
Related historical events
Confrontation with the Karabakh movement in 1988
In February 1988, demands for unification with Armenia spread in the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast through public rallies and a resolution of the oblast soviet. On 20 February, 110 Armenian deputies unanimously adopted a resolution asking that the oblast be transferred from the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic to the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic; Azerbaijani deputies refused to vote. Kevorkov, then First Secretary of the oblast party committee, and Kamran Bagirov, First Secretary of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan, tried but failed to prevent the meeting. According to Thomas de Waal’s account, Kevorkov attempted to seize the stamp required to authenticate the resolution. A delegation sent by the Soviet leadership subsequently convened a plenum of the oblast party committee, which removed Kevorkov and appointed Genrikh Pogosyan in his place. Kevorkov’s loyalty to the party leadership in Baku put him in opposition to the movement’s leadership during the crisis over the region’s demand for unification.