AZERTAC condemns Russia’s TASS for referring to Khankendi as “Stepanakert”

Azerbaijan’s state news agency AZERTAC has issued a strong statement condemning Russia’s TASS for referring to the city of Khankendi by its Soviet-era name “Stepanakert” in a recent report. 

Calling the move a revival of a long-discarded toponym alien to the Azerbaijani people, AZERTAC warned that such actions threaten bilateral media ties and could prompt reciprocal measures involving the use of historical names for Russian cities.

Caliber.Az presents the official AZERTAC statement in full:

“On July 31, the Russian Federation’s news agency TASS published a story titled: ‘A Monument to Aivazovsky Demolished in Stepanakert.’

As the headline itself makes clear, the agency’s leadership—despite the fact that AZERTAC has maintained longstanding, valued, and even friendly relations with it for many decades—has unexpectedly changed course and retrieved from the dustbin of history the toponym ‘Stepanakert,’ long discarded. And yet, not long ago, the agency had been using the official and historical name of the city – Khankendi – in its reports (for example, on July 19, July 24, etc.).

This attempt within the walls of TASS to revive an outdated name, alien to the Azerbaijani people, has caused bewilderment and raised a fair question: what has suddenly changed in the past week that made Russia’s state news agency decide to “resurrect” a toponym from a bygone Soviet era?

Khankendi is the historical name of the settlement that emerged in the late 18th century. In Azerbaijani, the name means ‘the Khan’s village.’ Khankendi was home to the estate of Ibrahim Khalil Khan, where a herd of Karabakh horses belonging to the ruler was kept.

After the Bolshevik leadership of the country established the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region (NKAR) on July 7, 1923—a move that, in itself, became a ticking time bomb and laid the groundwork for injustice and imbalance in the Armenian-Azerbaijani administrative-territorial division—the administrative centre of the autonomy, the city of Khankendi, was renamed ‘Stepanakert’ on August 10 of the same year.

According to Soviet historiography, the new name honoured the ‘leader of the Baku Commune.’ In reality, however, it commemorated Stepan Shaumyan, a bloody executioner of the Azerbaijani people.

On November 26, 1991, the Supreme Council of the Republic of Azerbaijan restored the city’s original historical name. On October 15, 2023, President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev raised the national flag of the Republic of Azerbaijan in the city’s main square, and on the day of the most recent presidential election—February 7, 2024—he cast his ballot in this city, calling the vote he dropped into the box ‘the final nail in the coffin of Armenian separatists.’

The headline and content of today’s TASS report have caused bewilderment—and even indignation—within Azerbaijani society. The Russian state media leadership’s departure from its previous approach undermines the traditionally friendly ties between our two agencies and editorial teams, and sends a troubling signal across the broader Russian media landscape.

Motivated solely by goodwill and a desire to preserve the longstanding relationship between our agencies, AZERTAC calls on its colleagues at TASS to refrain from repeating such actions in the future and to focus their efforts on strengthening relations, rather than deepening potential divisions.

For its part, AZERTAC is authorised to state that the agency remains committed to maintaining good relations with TASS, while at the same time expecting our Russian colleagues to correct the mistake that has been made.

However, if the Azerbaijani side sees no reciprocity or understanding, we will, with deep regret, be compelled to recall—and begin using—the historical names of a number of Russian cities: Kaliningrad (Königsberg), Orenburg (Orynbor), Volgograd (Sarysu), Grozny (Solzha-Gala), Novorossiysk (Sujuk-Kale), Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk (Toyohara), Yuzhno-Kurilsk (Furukamappu), Petrozavodsk (Petroskoi), Izhevsk (Izhkar), the Volga River (Itil), and many others.

Note: The original TASS headline used “Stepanakert” but has since been altered to “Nagorno-Karabakh.”