Soviet education policy ensured the availability of schools with Azerbaijani as the language of instruction in Armenia. In 1979, among the 160,841 Azers living in Armenia, Armenian was spoken as a second language by 16,164 (10%) and Russian by 15,879 (9.9%) (compared to Armenians in Azerbaijan, of whom 8% knew Azerbaijani and 43% knew Russian). In 1934–1944, prior to rising to fame in Azerbaijan, prominent singer Rashid Behbudov was a soloist of the Yerevan Philharmonic and of the Armenian State Jazz Orchestra. Around the same time, he performed at the Armenian National Academic Theater of Opera and Ballet. Theatre and film critic Sabir Rzayev, an ethnic Azerbaijani native of Yerevan, was the founder of Armenian film studies and the author of the first and only film-related monograph in Soviet Armenia. Nagorno-Karabakh conflict When the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict broke out, as the order of the Soviet Union was falling apart, Armenia had a large population of Azerbaijani minorities. Civil unrest in Nagorno-Karabakh in 1987 led to harassment of Azerbaijanis, some of whom were forced to leave Armenia. What started off as peaceful demonstrations in support of the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians, in the absence of a favourable solution, soon turned into a nationalist movement, manifesting in violence in Azerbaijan, Armenian, and Karabakh against the minority population. On 25 January 1988 the first wave of Azerbaijani refugees from Armenia settled in the city of Sumgait. On 23 March, the presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union – that is the highest institution in the Union – rejected the demands of the Nagorno-Karabakh Council of People's Deputies to join Armenia without any possibility of appeal. Troops were deployed in Yerevan to prevent protests to the decision. In the following months, Azerbaijanis in Armenia were subject to further harassment and forced to flee. In the district of Ararat, four villages were burned on 25 March. On 11 May, intimidation by violence forced many Azerbaijanis to migrate in Azerbaijan from Ararat in large numbers. On 7 June, Azerbaijanis were evicted from the town of Masis near the Armenian–Turkish border, and on the 20 June of the same month five more Azerbaijani villages were cleansed in the Ararat region. Another major wave occurred in November 1988 as Azerbaijanis were either expelled by the nationalists and local or state authorities, or fled fearing for their lives. Many died in the process, either due to isolated Armenian attacks or