Artur Aslani Mkrtchyan ( hy, Արթուր Ասլանի Մկրտչյան; 16 February 1959 – 14 April 1992) was the first Chairman of the Supreme Council of the
Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, elected on 7 January 1992.
He made an important contribution to reinforcing the defensive capabilities of the
Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, but was fatally shot under unclear circumstances in April 1992.
Biography
Artur Mkrtchyan was born in 1959 in the village of
Ukhtadzor in the
Hadrut District of the
Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast.
After graduating from the village secondary school in 1976, he entered the faculty of history at
Yerevan State University.
After graduating from university, he conducted his post-graduate studies at the
Institute of Anthropology and Ethnography
The Institute of Anthropology and Ethnography or N.N. Miklukho-Maklai Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology (russian: Институт этнологии и антропологии им. Н.Н. Миклухо-Маклая; abbreviated as ИЭА ...
in
Moscow
Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...
.
From 1981 to 1983 he worked at the
Armenia Ethnography Museum.
In 1986 he returned to his hometown to work as the director of the Hadrut Historical-Geological Museum.
In 1988 he defended his PhD thesis and received the degree of Candidate of Historical Sciences.
Mkrtchyan was an active participant in the
Karabakh movement from its early days.
He joined the
Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) and after that party's victory in the
1991 Nagorno-Karabakh parliamentary election
File:1991 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Boris Yeltsin, 1991 Russian presidential election, elected as Russia's first President of Russia, president, waves the new flag of Russia after the 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt, orchestrated ...
, he was elected the first Chairman of the Supreme Council of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic on 7 January 1992.
Mkrtchyan was killed in his apartment in Stepanakert under mysterious circumstances on 14 April 1992. While an initial report by the NKR's interior minister, Armen Isagulov, stated that Mkrtchyan had been killed by unknown "gunmen," a later official report described his death as accidental.
In 2019, former commander of the NKR's army,
Samvel Babayan
Samvel Andraniki Babayan ( hy, Սամվել Անդրանիկի Բաբայան; born 5 March 1965) is an Armenian military commander and politician from Nagorno-Karabakh. He was one of the founders and main commanders of the Artsakh Defence Army ...
, claimed that Mkrtchyan's death was a suicide․
No one has ever been prosecuted in connection with his death.
He was succeeded by
Georgy Petrosyan
Georgi Mikayeli Petrosian () (born 10 Junuary 1953) is an Armenian politician in the Republic of Artsakh.
He is a member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF).
From 1988 to 1990 Petrosian was a participant in the Karabakh movement to ...
as acting chairman of the Supreme Council.
Mkrtchyan had two children. In 2020, Mkrtchyan was posthumously awarded the title of
Hero of Artsakh.
References
1959 births
1992 deaths
People from Hadrut Province
Politicians from the Republic of Artsakh
Members of the National Assembly (Artsakh)
Deaths by firearm in Armenia
{{Armenia-politician-stub