GALLERY

    After elimination of the ruins of the Armenian part of Shushi, the Baku daily "Stroitel" ("Workman") No. 9 (1189) of February 2, 1966, published an article by architect K, Saidov that unceremoniously proposed to implement an ooperatlon called "The dead consumed the living."
    The idea was quite simple and extremely cynical. In Shushi, "... there are many cemeteries... In short,... the dead consumed the living (the Azerbaijanis)." There were eight cemeteries. (Not a word about those buried in these cemeteries and to whom these cemeteries belonged). That seemed to be too much for a city with a population of 10 thousand people (not a word about the fact that 4 to 5 times more people used 10 live there, about who these people were and what happened to them). The road leading to the city doages through the cemetery (not a word about to whom this huge cemetery belonged, what historical value the thousands of tombstones in this cemetery had. And why a two-way street was put through the cemetery by destroying thousands of graves?)... even the popular mosque of Chidlrdyuz is occupied by a cemetery (not a word about the fact that this was the oldest cemetery of the city (18th century) with thousands of magnificent steles, khachkars and tombstones with Armenian engravings). The "angel of death" did not even spare the centre of the resort and spread its malicious tent on both sides of it (not a word mentioning that this was a Russian cemetery with graves of General Paskevich's officers and soldiers and Czar's officials and with the Greco-Russian Church that was there in 1840s - 1860s).
    It went without saying that the cemeteries at the entrance of the city, around the beloved mosque and other inactive cemeteries had to be destroyed, and the national sanitary and epidemlological control station and the city council of Shushi had to once and for all settle this issue by prohibiting burials around Chidirdyuz (i.e. Armenians were not allowed to bury their dead at the cemeteries that were there since the beginning of the 18th century).

    Thus, according to the delirious idea of K. Saidov, only one "functioning" Azeri cemetery had to remain in Shushi, and the rest had to be eliminated. This vicious plan was included in the general reconstruction layout of the city (1974) that confined the borders of the historical reserve part of Shushi to the Moslem quarters, and envisaged new construction in the Armenian part. Even the masterpieces of the Armenian miniature architecture and decorative art of the 19th and 20th centuries - the Upper and Lower Armenian Cemeteries - were not Included in the list of monuments. The plan also envisaged construction of a public park in the place of the old (18th century) Armenian cemetery, and the territories of the Upper and Lower Cemeteries had to be covered with dense forestation The other cemeteries were not even referred to in the plan, which meant that these were already destroyed, This is how "the living consumed the dead."
    What was the purpose of all these activities for elimination of the Armenian cemeteries? In view of the fact that the thousands of Armenian tombstones at these cemeteries dated back to 18th-19th centuries, these became a serious counter-argument in the context of historical ambitions of the Azeri pseudo-historians. They kept shouting that "Shushi is an Azeri city of the 18th century" and that "the first Armenian refugees came to the hospitable land of Azerbaijan only after 1838," The Azeri politicians kept asserting that there were no Armenian graves in Karabagh before 1826. This is all really remarkable, since there are at least 2 thousand Armenian cemeteries in Karabagh with tombstones dating back to 7th - 18th centuries. It is hard to believe that our neighbours are not aware of this in spite of numerous publications on these tombstones and khachkars in many languages. It becomes really difficult to consider Shushi an Azeri city when out of eight cemeteries there seven are Christian and only one is Moslem and started functioning only after 1920, i.e. the massacre of Armenians In order to avoid such strong arguments, theAzeris started destroying the Armenian cemeteries. The photos in this chapter are a vivid and terrifying illustration to this deed.

    Shushi deserved the right to be considered one of the most important cultural centres not only of the Transcaucausus, but of the entire Russian Empire. Shushi neighbored on such famous spiritual and religious centres of Artsakh like Amaras Monastery (4th - 5th centuries), Hakobavank (7th century), Gandzasar, Grchavank, Dadivank (12th - 13th century) and many other well-known monasteries and sanctuaries that played a huge role in the history of the Armenian culture. In Amaras, at the beginning of the 5th century the creator of the Armenian alphabet Mesrop Mashtots opened the first school In the Armenian script, and the monasteries of Charek, Tiramayr, Hatr and others for many centuries housed matenadarans with thousands of medieval manuscripts.
    The culture of Artsakh, like of entire Armenia, was boosted by the adoption of Christianity as an official faith in the 301 A.D.
    The Hovhannes Mkrtich Church - a pearl of the Armenian architecture and a part of Gandzasar monastery - for centuries served as the Holy Sea of Eastern Armenia and as an abode to many outstanding persons of medieval Armenia.
    Shushi nurtured on the traditions of national culture, and at the same time contributed to the development of modern Armenian culture. The city had gymnasiums, schools, libraries with thousands of volumes, charity and benevolent unions, clubs. It was a city of active social life, theatre and music, folk arts, publishing, and vibrant cultural links with the large cities of Russia and Europe. In other words, within a very short period of time the city became "a European appendix" to the Asian province.