The soviet of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast votes to request transfer from Soviet Azerbaijan to Soviet Armenia; mass demonstrations rise in Stepanakert (Khankendi) and Yerevan. Moscow refuses, and the dispute escalates beyond the system's ability to contain it.
Why it mattersThe first open territorial challenge of the glasnost era — the moment a stored Soviet border question became live politics, and the starting point of the conflict that would outlast the USSR by three decades.