Background

The Kavbiuro decision promised Nagorno-Karabakh autonomy inside Soviet Azerbaijan. For two years the exact form remained unsettled. Armenian leaders pushed for a broader, more contiguous Armenian unit; Azerbaijani authorities sought an autonomy narrow enough not to weaken Baku's territorial control.

Formation

On 7 July 1923 Soviet Azerbaijan created the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast, or NKAO. Its boundaries included the highland Armenian-majority core around Stepanakert but left out some surrounding Armenian-populated areas, including Shahumyan and parts of northern Karabakh. Saparov reads the boundary-making as a political process in which autonomy was granted while its territorial coherence was constrained. sourced opinion

Consequences

The NKAO settlement institutionalised contradiction. It recognised the distinct Armenian character of Karabakh, but placed that Armenian autonomy inside Soviet Azerbaijan. It created a local parliament and cultural space, but left ultimate authority in Baku and Moscow. For decades, Armenian petitions for transfer to Soviet Armenia returned to this contradiction.

The 1923 borders later mattered enormously. In 1988 the NKAO Soviet vote rested on the oblast as a legal Soviet entity. In 1991 Azerbaijan's abolition of the oblast tried to erase that same entity. The unit was therefore both compromise and time capsule editorial.