The Elizavetpol Governorate,[a] also known after 1918 as the Ganja Governorate,[b] was a province (guberniya) of the Caucasus Viceroyalty of the Russian Empire, with its capital in Yelisavetpol (present-day Ganja). The area of the governorate stretched 38,922.43 square versts (44,296.15 square kilometres; 17,102.84 square miles) and was composed of 1,275,131 inhabitants in 1916. The Elizavetpol Governorate bordered the Erivan Governorate to the west, the Tiflis Governorate and Zakatal Okrug to the north, the Dagestan Oblast to the northeast, the Baku Governorate to the east, and Iran to the south.
Geography
The area of the governorate includes the southern slope of the main Caucasus range in the northeast, where Mount Bazardüzü and other peaks rise above the snow-line; the arid steppes beside the Kura river, reaching 1000 ft. of altitude in the west and sinking to 100–200 ft. in the east, where irrigation is necessary; and the northern slopes of the Transcaucasian escarpment and portions of the Armenian Highlands, which is intersected towards its western boundary, near Lake Sevan, by chains of mountains consisting of trachytes and various crystalline rocks.[1]
Elsewhere the country has the character of a plateau, 7,000 to 8,000 ft. high, deeply trenched by tributaries of the Aras. All varieties of climate are found in the snowclad peaks, Alpine meadows, and stony deserts of the high levels, to that of the hill slopes and of the arid Caspian steppes.[1]
From 1905, there were attempts by Armenian intelligentsia of the Russian Empire to separate the highland areas (commonly known as Mountainous Karabakh) from the rest of Elizavetpol into a zemstvo (self-governing rural community) province.
On the establishment of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic in May 1918, the Elizavetpol Governorate was renamed Ganja Governorate to de-Russify the region. The neighboring Democratic Republic of Armenia claimed the entirety of the western highland sections of the governorate which as a whole formed a small Armenian majority, however, Armenian control did not exceed the western parts of Zangezur, Kazakh and Karabakh. In 1919, the entirety of Karabakh south of the Murov Range with British support was separated into the Karabakh General Governorship, following the subjugation of the Karabakh Armenian Council.
In the present-day, the territory of the former Elizavetpol Governorate forms the bulk of western Azerbaijan and adjacent areas of northeastern and southeasternArmenia.
Administrative divisions
The counties (uezds) of the Elizavetpol Governorate in 1917 were as follows:[5]
The 1886 population estimate was 728,943, living in 3 cities (Elizavetpol, Nukha, and Shusha) and 1521 villages.[6] According to 1886 statistics reported in Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary,[6] the Orthodox Christians constituted 0.21% of the Governorate's population, and various sektanty ("sectarians") around 1% (~7,300 people). This means that most of the ethnic Russians in the governorate at the time (1.11% of the Governorate's 728,943 population in 1886) were members of various sectarian communities such as Doukhobors and Molokans.
Russian Empire Census
According to the Russian Empire Census, the Elizavetpol Governorate had a population of 878,415 on 28 January [O.S. 15 January] 1897, including 34,776 men and 22,702 women. The majority of the population indicated Tatar[c] to be their mother tongue, with a significant Armenian speaking minority.[9]
Linguistic composition of the Elizavetpol Governorate in 1897[9]
According to the 1917 publication of Kavkazskiy kalendar, the Elizavetpol Governorate had a population of 1,275,131 on 14 January [O.S. 1 January] 1916, including 676,377 men and 598,754 women, 1,213,626 of whom were the permanent population, and 61,505 were temporary residents.[5]
^Полное собрание законов Российской империи. Собр. 2-е. Т. XLII. Ч. 2. Ст. 45259.
^Azərbaycan Xalq Cümhuriyyəti Ensiklopediyası: I cild. pp. 420–423.
^Мильман А. Ш. (1966). Политический строй Азербайджана в XIX — начале XX веков (административный аппарат и суд, формы и методы колониального управления). Баку: Азернешр. p. 157.
Кавказский календарь на 1917 год [Caucasian calendar for 1917] (in Russian) (72nd ed.). Tiflis: Tipografiya kantselyarii Ye.I.V. na Kavkaze, kazenny dom. 1917. Archived from the original on 4 November 2021.
¹ Italics indicates renamed or abolished governorates, oblasts, etc on 1 January 1914. ² An asterisk (*) indicates governorates formed or created with renaming after 1 January 1914. ³ Ostsee or Baltic general-governorship was abolished in 1876.
Azerbaijan portal
