Old Armenian Cemetery of Baku (Vagzal/Razin)
The old Armenian cemetery of Baku belonged to a large urban Armenian community that effectively disappeared during the January 1990 pogrom and preceding violence. The cemetery had already suffered Soviet urban pressure, but the late-Soviet and post-Soviet removal of Armenian stones made the loss part of the wider end of Armenian Baku. Cemeteries are central to urban memory because they prove duration, family networks and belonging. Their disappearance makes it easier for a city to narrate itself without its former Armenian population. Azerbaijani accounts focus on the violence and displacement of Azerbaijanis from Armenia and the occupied districts; Armenian accounts focus on Baku, Sumgait and Kirovabad. The old cemetery is one material trace of the Armenian side of that reciprocal urban unmaking.
The old Armenian cemetery of Baku belonged to a large urban Armenian community that effectively disappeared during the January 1990 pogrom and preceding violence. The cemetery had already suffered Soviet urban pressure, but the late-Soviet and post-Soviet removal of Armenian stones made the loss part of the wider end of Armenian Baku. Cemeteries are central to urban memory because they prove duration, family networks and belonging. Their disappearance makes it easier for a city to narrate itself without its former Armenian population. Azerbaijani accounts focus on the violence and displacement of Azerbaijanis from Armenia and the occupied districts; Armenian accounts focus on Baku, Sumgait and Kirovabad. The old cemetery is one material trace of the Armenian side of that reciprocal urban unmaking.