St Astvatsatsin (Megheretsots) Church, Shushi
St Astvatsatsin, known as Megheretsots, was one of the Armenian churches of Shushi destroyed in the 1920 violence against the Armenian quarter. Its inclusion in the heritage atlas prevents the story of Shusha from beginning in 1992 or 2020. The church belonged to a dense Armenian urban religious landscape that was shattered when the upper city was burned. Later Soviet and post-Soviet politics preserved only fragments of that world, most visibly Ghazanchetsots and Kanach Zham. The lost churches matter because absence can be made politically convenient: if only surviving monuments are counted, the scale of 1920 destruction disappears. Megheretsots is therefore evidence of a pre-Soviet Armenian Shusha that no longer exists as an urban whole.
St Astvatsatsin, known as Megheretsots, was one of the Armenian churches of Shushi destroyed in the 1920 violence against the Armenian quarter. Its inclusion in the heritage atlas prevents the story of Shusha from beginning in 1992 or 2020. The church belonged to a dense Armenian urban religious landscape that was shattered when the upper city was burned. Later Soviet and post-Soviet politics preserved only fragments of that world, most visibly Ghazanchetsots and Kanach Zham. The lost churches matter because absence can be made politically convenient: if only surviving monuments are counted, the scale of 1920 destruction disappears. Megheretsots is therefore evidence of a pre-Soviet Armenian Shusha that no longer exists as an urban whole.