Memorial Sites of Western Azerbaijan: The History of the Village of Oghruja, Where Azerbaijanis Lived Until the End of the 1980s

A unique project has been presented to the public - the research work "Places of Memory of Western Azerbaijan".

For the first time, during field research on the territory of modern Armenia, data on nearly 600 villages where the ancestors of modern Azerbaijanis historically lived has been collected and systematized. In some of them, fragments of the Turkic cultural and historical heritage have been preserved - cemeteries, shrines, mosques.

A separate video has been prepared about each village in three languages (English, Azerbaijani, Russian), containing photo and video footage of the specific village on the territory of modern Armenia, documented data on the number of Turks (ancestors of modern Azerbaijanis) in the 19th-20th centuries in the specific village, as well as the history of the village and a chronology of the gradual "disappearance" of the Turkic population as a result of expulsions and ethnic cleansings.

Western Azerbaijan is historically a geographical space where hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis lived. Despite attempts to erase the traces of our compatriots in these territories, remembering the ancient places of residence of Azerbaijanis in Western Azerbaijan and being aware of them is the duty of each one of us.

Oxu.Az presents to its readers the following part of the series, dedicated to the village of Ogruja (Kahakn) in Armenia.

In documents of the Russian Empire and other written sources of the 19th - first third of the 20th century, the ancestors of modern Azerbaijanis were designated by various terms: "Tatars," "Caucasian Tatars," "Turks," or "Muslims." In certain sources used in the preparation of the project, the designations "Turks," "Turko-Tatars," "Islams," or "Muhammedans" are also found. Hereinafter, for the period before 1920, the term "ancestors of Azerbaijanis" will be used conventionally, and for the subsequent period - "Azerbaijanis."

Names:

- in the tsarist period - Ogruja, Ogrja, Ogrunja, Karaiman;

- in the Soviet period - Ogruja, Karaiman, Sovetakend.

In the tsarist and Soviet periods, the village is mentioned under two names: Ogruja and Karaiman. In January 1978, the village was renamed to Sovetakend.

In April 1991