Another
example of the loss of territories as a result of disregarding the rights of
village residents and their normal life requirements during border disputes, is
that of the Shinikh-Ayrum region and Dilijan Uyezd.
In
particular, as a result of the inconsistency of the policies Soviet Armenia,
the entire disputed territory of Shinikh-Ayrum region (11.659 “desyatinas”) was
declared as a part of the Azerbaijani Kazakh Uyezd, and the disputed territory
of the forest (4.000 “desyatinas”) – as a part Dilijan in the Armenian SSR.
Meanwhile, under the decision of April 28, 1923 of the commission on land
dispute resolution of uyezds (an administrative subdivision) within the
Transcaucasian Central Executive Committee (CEC) from, a land with an area of
5000 “desyatinas” in the region of Shinikh-Ayrumi was handed over from Dilijan
Uyezd to the Kazakh Uyezd.
As a
result of this unfortunate decision for Armenia and especially for the rural
population, the village of Bashkend, a part of the Armenian SSR (later with an
Armenian title – Artsvashen), appeared in the Kazakh Uyezd: it was decided to detach
a section of a land (summer pasture) that would have territorially connected
the village with Dilijan. Nevertheless, this was important precisely in terms
of the rights of Armenian population of Bashkend.
Ultimately,
during the session of the presidency of the Transcaucasian Central Executive
Committee on February 18, 1929, it was decided to reaffirm the agreement of
January 11, 1927, and to link Bashkend with Armenian SSR with a narrow land
section.
To
execute that decision, 45 border signs were installed in forest areas of
Shinikh-Ayrum during 1929.
A draft
was prepared to connect the village of Bashkend with the adjacent territories
to the Armenian SSR. The land use situation of the village and Shinikh-Ayrum
was studied, and the disputed 4,844 hectares of land were included in the plan.
According
to the decision of the Central Executive Committee, it was planned to allocate
a part of the lands of Shinikh-Ayrum region for the use the residents of
Bashkend village. However, in 1929, the offer to provide at least 0.75 hectares
of land per capita was rejected by the decision of the July 20 sitting of the
presidency of the Executive Committee, citing scarcity of land.
Moreover,
The Azeri authorities incited their sections of the population to write
imaginary protests against the Armenian SSR, thus provoking more problems.
Usually wedged in the territory of Armenia, the Azeri villages began to try to
expand at the expense of the Armenian villages as usual.
In
the 1920s, Soviet Armenia lost territories and one of the reasons was that
human rights and the rights of the peasants were not at the basis of the
decisions, in that sense there was a lack of consistency of policies.
It was
not taken into consideration that the solution to any border dispute should be
based on the degree to which the normal life of the border population is
ensured. Of course, the Soviet leadership did not take that into consideration
either.
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