 The Nagorno-Karabakh movement that had originally begun in Armenia during the late 1980s called for the Karabakh enclave to be united with that country, despite it being behind the borders of Azerbaijan.With a population that was 75 percent Armenian, official petitions were sent by Armenian leaders to the Soviet government in Moscow in order to address the issue but were rejected by General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev.The demands to annex the region came in the middle of Gorbachev's reform policies, Glasnost and Perestroika.