 Complete the following phrase:  During the Soviet era, the predomitly Armenian-populated region was governed as an autonomous oblast within the Azerbaijan SSR. As the Soviet Union began to disintegrate during the late 1980s the question of Nagorno-Karabakhs status re-emerged, and on 20 February 1988 the parliament of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast passed a resolution requesting transfer of the oblast from the Azerbaijan SSR to the Armenian SSR. Azerbaijan rejected the request several times, and ethnic violence began shortly thereafter with a series of pogroms between 1988 and 1990 against Armenians in 