Stepanakert §

Capital of the unrecognised republic

Stepanakert, called Khankendi in Azerbaijani usage, was the administrative centre of the NKAO and later the capital of the unrecognised Republic of Artsakh. Its Soviet name honoured Stepan Shaumian, the Bolshevik Armenian leader associated with Baku in 1918. Its Azerbaijani name, Khankendi, meaning roughly "the khan's village", reflects an older local toponym. The names themselves encode the dispute: Soviet Armenian autonomy, Azerbaijani territorial title and local historical memory overlap on the same city. editorial

During the First Karabakh War, Stepanakert was heavily shelled from Azerbaijani-held positions, especially Shusha and Khojaly. Armenian narratives of the 1992 capture of Shusha and Khojaly begin with the argument that Stepanakert's civilian population was under siege. Azerbaijani narratives focus on the subsequent displacement and killings of Azerbaijani civilians. Both are necessary to understand why the war escalated so quickly in early 1992. contested

From 1994 to 2020 the city functioned as the capital of a de facto state: ministries, courts, a parliament, schools, universities, memorials and a diaspora-funded reconstruction economy. No UN member state recognised that state, but for residents the institutions were ordinary civic life, not abstraction. The 2020 war brought the front line close again; the 2022–23 blockade turned the city into a besieged capital dependent on Russian peacekeepers and humanitarian improvisation.

After the September 2023 operation, almost the entire Armenian population left through the Lachin road. Azerbaijani authorities entered and reopened the city under the name Khankendi. The change was legal restoration from Baku's standpoint and civilisational erasure from the standpoint of displaced Armenians. The atlas treats Stepanakert/Khankendi as the clearest urban site where sovereignty returned without the governed population returning with it. editorial