First Nagorno-Karabakh War
Although those Armenian activists were not going to obtain support from Gorbachev and the Politburo, they mobilized a huge number of people to the streets. On 20 February 1988, slightly before the Regional Soviet held the emergency session in Stepankert, 30,000 people took to the streets in Theater Square in Yerevan. Two days later, the number of protestors reached more than 100,000; it is estimated that 300,000 gathered on 23 February, which led to a transport strike declaration in Yerevan. On 25 February, perhaps almost a million people demonstrated on the streets in Yerevan.