History of Gyumri

rmenian republic with an ultimatum that Armenia was forced to accept—otherwise Turkey would have invaded Yerevan, Armenia's capital, from their headquarters in Gyumri. Armenia was forced to sign the Treaty of Alexandropol to stop the Turkish advance towards Yerevan, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Armenia, thus ending the Turkish-Armenian War. Turkish forces withdrew from Alexandropol afterwards Treaty of Kars.

In 1924 the name was changed to Leninakan after the deceased Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin. Leninakan was a major industrial center for the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic and its second largest city, after Yerevan, the capital. The city suffered major damage during the 1988 Spitak earthquake, which devastated many parts of the country. The earthquake occurred along a known thrust fault with a length of 60 kilometers (37 mi). Its strike was parallel to the Caucasus range and dipped to the north-northeast. Bruce Bolt, a seismologist and a professor of earth and planetary science at the University of California, Berkeley, walked the length of the fault scarp in 1992 and found that the vertical displacement there measured 1 m (3 ft 3 in) along most of the length with the southwest end reaching 1.6 m (5 ft 3 in).

The earthquake had a disastrous impact on the city, as many