 Following its government's decision to secede from Azerbaijan and unify with Armenia, the conflict erupted into a larger scale ethnic feud between Armenians and Azeris living in the Soviet Union.After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the Armenians and Azeris vied to take control of Karabakh with full-scale battles in the winter of 1992.By then, the enclave had declared its independence and set up an unrecognized, though self-functioning, government.