In 1988, Nagorno-Karabakh’s Armenian majority — then part of the Azerbaijan Soviet Republic — voted to become part of the Armenian Soviet Republic. (In the 1920s, Karabakh’s Armenians had insisted that self-determination was their prerogative under the Soviet constitution. Nevertheless, in 1923, Joseph Stalin gave Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan.) But the Soviet Union was incapable of managing the violence that erupted — including Azeri rage directed at Armenians in the Azerbaijani cities of Baku and Sumgait — forcing most Armenians to flee to Armenia or Nagorno-Karabakh. On Sept. 2, 1991, Nagorno-Karabakh proclaimed itself an independent country, and for the next three years its Armenians fought a war with the Azeris, which they would win in 1994, with the help of Armenia itself. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 30,000 people would die, and perhaps as many as one million were displaced.

Nagorno-Karabakh is largely unrecognized by the international community (though seven American states have passed resolutions urging the United States government to support its independence). The republic is a fledgling democracy of 140,000 people, facing off against an oil-rich dictatorship with a population of 9.5 million. Its only ally is Armenia, which is often the small republic’s lifeline. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe has assigned diplomats from France, Russia and the United States to try to broker a permanent agreement, but they’ve made little progress.

“Azerbaijan has shown consistently it is incapable of governing Nagorno-Karabakh,” said Ruben Melikyan to me when we had coffee recently in the Nagorno-Karabakh capital of Stepanakert. Mr. Melikyan is the country’s ombudsman, or human rights defender. “It’s not merely an issue of a people’s right to self-determination. It’s a people’s right to self-determination who are in peril of extermination.”

Image Capt. Gegham Grigoryan near a grave just beyond the trenches where a Nagorno-Karabakh soldier was buried this spring. Credit... Knar Babayan

This is no small distinction. President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan has threatened to shoot down passenger planes that fly into the new Stepanakert airport; the airport has yet to open. He promoted to major the Azeri soldier who murdered an Armenian soldier in his sleep during a peaceful, NATO-sponsored training seminar in Budapest. And most recently President Aliyev broke the cease-fire with a huge, unprovoked offensive into Nagorno-Karabakh in April, an onslaught that included the shelling of two schools. (It was nighttime so the schools were empty, but among the first casualties in the war was a 12-year-old boy killed in a missile attack.)

After spending time with people in Nagorno-Karabakh, it’s clear to me that the only way the nation will ever again be a part of Azerbaijan is if Azerbaijan conquers it. And despite Azerbaijan’s being vastly larger, I can’t imagine that ever will happen. Armenians had lived on this land for centuries before it was incorporated into Azerbaijan. My first day there I went to a baptism of 39 Armenian children in a church built in 1673. Dadivank, the Armenian monastery in the north, began construction in the ninth century. Its frescoes, which date from 1297, are as lovely as any I’ve seen in Tuscany.

Its people are fiercely protective of their home. Among the parents I met at that baptism were Anton and Areknaz Abkarian. Their three children, all under 5, were baptized that afternoon. They have a small farm. But when the Azeris attacked in April, Mr. Abkarian went straight to the front lines as a volunteer. His wife and his mother ran the farm.