area of Kajarants were exploited between 1850 and 1910. A copper processing plant was founded near the old village of Kajarants in 1850 by Greek engineers and workers. In 1868, the region became part of the Zangezursky Uyezd of Elisabethpol Governorate. Between 1918 and 1920, Kajarants was part of the independent Republic of Armenia. Later in 1921, it became part of the breakaway Republic of Mountainous Armenia under the commandment of Garegin Nzhdeh. In July 1921, the Soviet Red Army entered Syunik and the region became part of Soviet Armenia. After the discovery of huge copper deposits in 1930, the Soviet government proposed to build a large copper-molybdenum plant. By the end of the 1930s, a plan was proposed to build a settlement near the copper deposits area. The construction of the plant was launched in 1940, but soon after it was interrupted due to the World War II. In 1944, the construction process was resumed and the first product started in 1945. In 1951, the Zangezur state-owned mining company was formed to organize the production process, becoming one of the largest enterprises of the Soviet Union at that time. In order to facilitate the copper and molybdenum production of the plant, the urban-type settlement of Kajaran was founded by the Soviet Armenian government in 1947, within the Kapan raion. As a result of the merger of Kajaran with the nearby settlement of Voghji in 1958, Kajaran was granted with the status of a town, with a population of around 11,000. The majority of the population of Kajaran were Armenian workers resettled from the town of Kapan and the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast. In 1965, the major urban plan of Kajaran composed by architects A. Harutyunyan and H. Davtyan was approved. In 1970, the technical industrial development plan of Kapan and Kajaran was launched by the local Soviet government. With the independence of Armenia in 1991, a new administrative reform was applied in 1995, abolishing the raions of the Soviet period. Thus, Kajaran was included within the newly formed Syunik Province. The Zangezur Copper and Molybdenum Combine continued its operations after the independence until 1994, when it was ceased due to the post-independence economic crisis. In 2004, production was relaunched after the privatization of the plant. Nowadays, the Zangezur plant is one of the largest industrial firms of Armenia. In September 2013, President Serzh Sargsyan visited Kajaran to attend the opening