As history goes, Armenia was inhabited by people who had settled in Mount Arafat, the present day Turkey, around 3000 BC. Later in the early 19th century, Russian advanced into Caucasia. By the late 1820s the Russian Empire had gained control of Iran's territories in Transcaucasia, including the Armenia of today, some
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of whose portion remained as part of the Ottoman Empire. This led to a large number of Armenians subsequently migrating from the Ottoman Empire to Russian-held territory. Towards the end of 19th century, many Armenian political groups mushroomed and agitations for greater levels of autonomy for Armenians began to catch on.
Later, during World War I, in the year 1916, Russia managed to conquer greater parts of the Ottoman-held Armenian lands. However, after the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia during the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Ottomans reoccupied their lost territories. In December 1920, Armenian nationalists entered a political agreement with the Bolsheviks, forming a new coalition government that then proclaimed Armenia a socialist republic. In early 1921 the Bolsheviksv took complete control of the government, expelling the Armenian nationalists, then Armenia was incorporated
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into the Transcaucasian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (SFSR) in March 1922. In December, the SFSR became one of the four original republics of the Bolsheviks' new state, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
In a move to quell nationalist sentiment, the new Soviet Communist regime outlawed ARF in 1923. Leaders of the Armenian Church were persecuted, churches were closed, and church property was confiscated.
In the mid-1980s Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev introduced glasnost (Russian for "openness"), a reformist policy that allowed controversial issues to be discussed publicly for the first time in Soviet history. Armenians took advantage of glasnost to demonstrate against environmental problems in their republic.
Later in December 1988, northern Armenia was devastated by an earthquake that killed 25,000 people and left more than 400,000 homeless. The government relief efforts did nothing much to ease their hardships. In late 1989, the Armenian Supreme Soviet (legislature) declared Nagorno-Karabakh to be part of Armenia. However, the Soviet authorities did not support the declaration, saying it was unconstitutional. The USSR officially ceased to exist in December 1989.
Economic conditions in Armenia deteriorated rapidly in 1992. To add to woes, the Azerbaijan's economic blockade of Armenia, which closed both a railway link and a fuel pipeline, caused severe food and energy shortages throughout Armenia. In 1993 Armenian forces defeated the Azerbaijani army in several confrontations in Nagorno-Karabakh, which led to Armenian control of the region and of adjacent areas by August of that year. In July 1995, Armenia held its first parliamentary elections as an independent country. The Republican bloc, a coalition led by the PNM, won a decisive victory to claim the majority of seats.
In March 1997, Ter-Petrossian appointed the elected president of Nagorno-Karabakh, Robert Kocharian, as the prime minister of Armenia. Later Kocharian was elected by popular vote to succeed Ter-Petrossian after campaigning on a promise to reach a peaceful resolution in the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute, but it remained unsolved despite high- level talks.
