Historic Secret Soviet Maps Decide The Faith of a Nation
Armenia's new borders are defined by old Soviet Maps
On Nov. 9, an armistice was signed to end the fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh between Armenia and Azerbaijan. The conflict was relatively short-lived, lasting from Sept. 27 to Nov. 9, but it proved to be an intense inter-state conflict fought by two unequal forces. Artsakh (population of 150,000, poorly armed) and backed by the Republic of Armenia was fighting against oil-rich Azerbaijan (population of 10 million) which in turn was backed by Turkey (second-largest military force in NATO), in addition to Pakistani and Syrian mercenaries. It was an uncontested victory to Azerbaijan, where its drones owned the battlefield and showed the future of warfare.
The content of the peace deal, which was signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Armenia's Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, was never published in detail. A common understanding of the deal is that Azerbaijan will hold on to areas of Nagorno-Karabakh that it has taken during the conflict, Armenia has also agreed to withdraw from several other adjacent areas (the seven regions) over the following few weeks and Russian peacekeepers would be deployed to patrol the front line.
The devil is in the detail
While Armenians were trying to cope with the catastrophic impact of the war (thousands of dead, missing or captured soldiers, lost war and morality, in addition to the absence of trust in the political and military powers), they realized that there is a new reality, and Armenia after the war is not same Armenia before the war. Several villages or part of them to be surrendered to Azerbaijan, sometimes section of an airport, a mine, or even some sections of a highway, in the Republic of Armenia, to be given up to the enemy.
Since there was never an official demarcation of the borders between Armenia and Azerbaijan, or a propper communication plan from the Armenian government, the regions which Armenia going to withdraw from are not clear to many locals, as per the common understanding, old Soviet cold war maps to be used to define the new boundaries between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
During the Cold War, the Soviet military undertook a secret mapping program that’s only recently come to light in the West. Military cartographers created hundreds of thousands of maps and filled them with detailed notes on the terrain and infrastructure of every place on Earth. It was one of the greatest mapping endeavors the world has ever seen.
We have compiled around 55 Soviet Military Topographic maps of Armenia, from the 1980 production on three different scales (1:500K, 1:200K, & 1:100K), georeferenced (using ArcGIS Pro ), and published them on ArcGIS Online cloud.
If you are using a desktop browser, you can interact with the map above, zoom in to your area of interest using the (+ / - buttons) on the bottom right corner, and compare the maps with the satellite imagery using the swipe tool.
It is interesting to see how accurate did the Soviet cartographers produce these topographic maps, not only for Armenia but for the whole world, during the Cold War era.
Using these cartographic maps, we have digitized the updated borders of Armenia and identified the cities and territories that Armenian forces are going to withdraw from. Moreover, we used the new borderlines to find out how many villages and cities are within 5KM from the enemy lines and how many additional distances should the Armenian border forces patrol and manage.
As a result of the war, Armenians lost approximately 75% of their territories in Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh). The dark area is the territory lost to Azerbaijan.
The current borders of Artsakh are defined based on the map published by the Ministry of Defence of the Federation of Russia on December 14, 2020.
Currently, Armenians control 3,260 SqKm out of 12,780 SqKm.
Armenians lost 696 cities and villages located in the occupied area. You can click on the cities (blue and red points) to check their names.
A new contact line, with a length of 394 km, has been added on the southeastern borders of Armenia (the purple line in the map)
116 cities and villages in Armenia are within 5 km from the borderlines with Azerbaijan, a new distressing reality for the population in the region, where they will be on the front line of any future confrontation.
As mentioned earlier, the demarcation will be based on the Soviet time maps, without considering the social and economic developments during the last 30 years. For example, the southern section of Kapan Airport is lying within Azerbaijan as per the Soviet maps
It's not clear how the airport will operate with the new reality
Similarly, some parts of the main roads in Shurrnukh area fall in the Azeri territories
Ազերիները Կապան Գորիս "բախտի" ճանապարհին և օդակայանի տարածքում
The Soviet maps might have some accuracy issues, but the Azeris don't care about it and claiming even these sections of the roads.
We have developed an interactive tool for you to identify towns and villages and filter them based on their location and distance from the borders.
In conclusion, Armenia is facing extraordinary challenges and is in great danger. Demarcation is a time-consuming process, in normal situations, two countries negotiate and agree on the common borderlines. In the case of Armenian borders with Azerbaijan, due to its capitulation, internal division, and absence of clear vision and strategy, Azerbaijan is defining its borders aggressively with no consideration to any ethical or international standards.
Armenian leadership is accountable not only to the 3 million Armenians living in Armenia and Artsakh but to the 10 million Armenians in the diaspora.