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Electronic version of “ARMENIA: The Survival of a Nation”, revised second edition © 1990 Christopher J. Walker
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[Page 391]
11 Perestroika and Karabagh
When, in April 1985, the era of glasnost and perestroika came to the USSR, people wondered how, and when, the developments would affect Armenia. Glasnost indeed took time to appear in any form there. Conditions remained static and 'Brezhnevite'. Armenia, like other non-Russian republics of the USSR, had benefited from the looser control that had been exercised by Moscow since the death of Stalin; but this had been accompanied by a tighter control imposed by the local party apparatus. An elaborate system of bribery and corruption had developed, leading to the establishment of a kind of mafia within the republic. With such a system in place, there was not much response to ideas of openness and reconstruction.
Changes, however, appeared inevitable in Armenia after the plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, held in June 1987, in which criticism was expressed my M. S. Gorbachev against the operation of the party in Armenia. It was, he said, 'stuck in a rut'. The following month an Armenian regional Communist Party official, Haik Kotanjian, echoed this criticism, adding that positions of power in Armenia could only be obtained after payment, and that there was even a scale of charges operating. He suggested that Karen Demirjian, First Secretary of the Central Committee, should voluntarily transfer to different work. His speech, which was reported in the local party newspaper, Sovetakan Hayastan, was not popular; at the meeting he was shouted down. The criticism was repeated in a speech in January 1988, and given wide publicity in Pravda, in the issue of 18 January. For the first time the top ranks, or nomenklatura, of an entire local party were being criticized.1
Political consciousness, however, operates on two tracks in Soviet Armenia. One relates to internal matters: the nature of policy and decision-making within Armenia for the livelihood of its citizens––citizens who, while wishing that corruption did not exist, are not especially surprised by allegations of it. The other element is the cluster of issues which relate to the Armenian question. These include Armenian nationhood, national borders, the Armenian language, national history, and the Armenian cause as an international struggle. National feeling has persisted strongly in Armenia; indeed, where it conflicts with attitudes handed down by Moscow, it appears to override awareness of the security that the country has gained through membership of the USSR. Armenians are conscious of their history, language, script and culture, and are determined to prevent these aspects of their life from vanishing into the kind of amorphous and indistinguishable medley which opponents of the value of
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national cultural identities (whether politically on the right or the left) propose. Almost all Armenians show a devotion to, or at least a respect for, their Apostolic Church, which besides being protector of their faith has also been the symbol, indeed the vehicle, of national continuity. Eastern Armenia has for the last 150 years been linked to Russia, but has remained quite distinct.
Armenia’s enormous losses at the hands of the Turks in the earlier part of this century have reinforced the popular determination to protect the nation’s culture, history and identity. They see assimilation occurring in the diaspora. Within the USSR, they have seen in this century the Armenians of Nakhichevan (a territory which is administered as part of Azerbaijan, but which is part of the historic land of Armenia, and geographically a continuation of the Ararat valley) dwindle to a small minority. In such circumstances the determination to preserve national identity and traditions becomes understandable. Armenian nationalism is a defensive movement, aimed principally at preserving the existence of the people in its land. It does not seek to oppress other nationalities.
At the same time, few Armenians wanted (or want) independence. In this matter they were different from the citizens of the Baltic states, and they were much less assertive than nationalists within Georgia. Many Armenians understand the risks attached to independence: that Turkey with its massive army would be virtually unstoppable, if it decided to invade and found a pretext to do so, and that, on the evidence of Cyprus, no outside power would ever stop Turkey. (General Evren had boasted in early 1986 that the Turkish army could fight ‘even beyond Aghri Dagh [Mount Ararat]’, conveying a message which was not lost on Armenians.) Also, on a lower but still important level, Armenia is well integrated economically in the USSR, and would not be able to feed its population if it gained independence within its present boundaries.2
One subject emerged as a focal issue for the social and political re-evaluation that was beginning. This was industrial pollution, and the destruction of Armenia’s environment. Green issues were aired, in the second half of 1987, in articles written by Zori Balayan, Yerevan correspondent for Literaturnaya Gazeta. These subjects, hitherto ignored, gained prominence in Armenia and the rest of the Soviet Union. They were symbolic of the manner in which the people’s attention was returning to the land itself.
The problem of pollution related to three main sites.3 The first was the nuclear reactor situated at Metsamor, 25 kilometres from Yerevan, built in, strange as it may seem, not only one of the few fertile districts of Armenia (the Ararat valley), but also a region liable to earthquakes. This reactor was reported to be, on occasion, discharging raw nuclear waste into the ground. In the period after the Chernobyl disaster, there was a much increased consciousness of the dangers attached to nuclear power plants. Secondly, environmentalists were concerned about the presence of Nayirit synthetic rubber factory, in the heart of Yerevan itself. This plant (which in mid-1989 was still
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operational) emitted large quantities of poisonous chloroprenes. Other factories in Yerevan which were environmentally dangerous were a polyvinylacetate plant, and an aluminum factory. None of these or other factories in Yerevan had any safety zone around them, and many were situated in the middle of areas of dense population with schools nearby.
The third indicator of a serious ecological situation was the condition of Lake Sevan. In 1965 the famous English tenor Peter Pears, on a working holiday, had written of this lake: ‘The Armenians call it their country’s heart and love it dearly. Forty miles long and 5–10 miles wide, its waters are sweet to taste and dazzlingly kingfisher-blue and wine-dark violet.’4 By the 1980s the situation was very different. Hydro-electric plants which used the lake’s water had depleted the water level, and industrial effluents, together with the leaching of agricultural fertilizers and pesticides into the lake, had led to the near-extinction of the famous species of trout found in the lake, known as ishkhan, or prince.5 Planning controls were, as with the factories and nuclear installation, ignored.
The first demonstration against the violation of the environment took place in September 1987; about 100 people took part. It was organised by Paruyr Hairikian, a well-known dissident of strong nationalist views, and the protestors marched to the Nayirit factory. In the following month, on 17 October, another demonstration took place on the same theme, not organised by Hairikian; this time 1,000–2,000 people took part. The police tried to prevent it occurring, but made no attempt to stop it once it had started.6
On the following day, the political discourse took a new turn. Armenian political consciousness, and awareness of relationship between the people and the land, developed from regional concerns, to the wider arena of the Armenian question itself. The disputed territories of Nakhichevan, and Mountainous Karabagh (or Nagorno Karabakh, to give it its Russian title) entered the vocabulary of political demands. These territories had long been a cause of grievance to Armenians; Armenia had a claim on both of them, and a strong one in the case of Karabagh. One thousand people were said to have taken part, some of whom carried placards bearing Mr Gorbachev’s pictures. Nevertheless the police stopped the march and dispersed the demonstrators.7
The intellectual backing for this movement was provided mainly by a group of Armenian intellectuals. The one with the highest public profile was Zori Balayan, who had been active on the Green issue and was himself a native of Karabagh. Later Sergei Mikoyan, son of the former foreign minister of the USSR, and editor of the Academy of Sciences’ magazine ‘Latin America’, became a spokesman. Abel Aghanbekyan, Mr Gorbachev’s chief economic adviser, also made speeches in favour of the movement. In November 1987, in interviews in both Paris and London, Aghanbekyan indicated that solutions favourable to Armenia on the question of the status of both Nakhichevan and Karabagh were probably on the point of being reached in the USSR at a high level.8 Whether Aghanbekyan intended to hint that Mr Gorbachev was
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favourably disposed to a re-drawing of boundaries within Transcaucasia is questionable; certainly, none of Gorbachev’s later pronouncements showed sympathy with the idea of changing boundaries.9 The Soviet President has shown himself committed to an internationalist view of the USSR; that is, that national grievances must be subjected to the general interests of the USSR, and conversely, that only by acting in a way which transcends local national sentiment will the different nationalities find a secure and full place in Soviet society.10
But for Armenians, inhabitants of the smallest union republic of the USSR, and members of a nation that had had a brutal experience in the earlier part of this century, the priorities were population, national rights and territory. Armenians are by nature internationalist, but within Transcaucasia they have felt the need to protect and preserve the people on its land. Internationalism in the Caucasus is possible so long as the essentials for the survival of the nation and for the democratic rights of its members are assured.
The basic facts of the history of Karabagh and Nakhichevan indicate why Armenians feel they have had a rough deal over those territories, and are not quite ready to express internationalist sentiments yet. Karabagh had been denied an Armenian administration by the British occupation of 1918, when general W. M. Thomson had halted the entry of Armenian forces into the territory, and installed a violent Tatar landlord, Dr Sultanov, as governor instead. Both regions had been, along with Zangezur, ‘disputed territories’ between Armenia and Azerbaijan throughout much of the time of the independent republics of 1918–20. The matter appeared to have been solved when, on the eve of Armenia’s sovietization in 1920, the leader of neighbouring Soviet Azerbaijan, Nariman Narimanov, declared publicly that ‘Mountainous Karabagh, Zangezur and Nakhichevan are considered part of the Soviet Republic of Armenia’, an apparent gesture of generosity. Stalin endorsed this decision in the edition of Pravda dated 4 December 1920.11 But the territories were never actually attached.
Nationalist Turkey was moreover very interested in the matter. It went on to cement a deal with the Soviet state so that Nakhichevan gained the protectorate of Azerbaijan, under the terms of the treaty of Moscow, which was signed in March 1921 between the Soviet state and Mustafa Kemal’s Nationalist Turkey. The Armenians were not even invited to state their case. The territory was disposed of in the manner of a straightforward regional carve-up, executed by two states allegedly creating a new democratic world order, but in fact acting rather more with the cynicism of the Habsburgs or the Hohenzollerns of half a century earlier. Early Bolshevism could show as much deference to regional power as any other government seeking to influence a neighbour. The treaty of Kars of October 1921 confirmed the status of Nakhichevan as a region under the control of Azerbaijan, and the territory was forbidden to change its status without the consent of Turkey: an interesting (and perhaps unique) example of the Soviet state permitting the inter-
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ference of a non-Soviet state in its own internal affairs. Neither treaty contained any reference to Mountainous Karabagh.12
Within the Soviet Caucasus itself, the status of Karabagh was discussed. In early June 1921, after the whole of Transcaucasia had become Soviet, the Kavburo (or Bureau of Caucasian Affairs) voted by five to two in favour of the union of Mountainous Karabagh to Armenia. But the link between the two territories was never made. Some days later a Plenary Session of the Kavburo, under the influence of Stalin, decided that it should be an autonomous region, but should remain part of Azerbaijan.13 Karabagh was kept outside Armenia. It was not allowed the adjective ‘Armenian’, even though other Soviet autonomous regions are designated by the name of the predominant national group that inhabits them. It seemed that the Azerbaijanis, like the Turks, were full of anti-minority Turkist feeling and did not like to be reminded of Karabagh’s ethno-linguistic designation ‘Armenian’.
Armenians consider that Narimanov’s original offer of the preceding December was thereby shown to be a deceit. There is however evidence of fairly intensive consideration of the problem by the Soviet leadership. The nature of the population of Mountainous Karabagh was the most obvious point at issue: in 1920 it was 92 per cent Armenian Christian. On the Azerbaijani side, there was an economic argument: that the region was used as a summer grazing ground by Azeri semi-nomadic shepherds, for whom the lowlands of the Mughan steppe (the extensive plain of Azerbaijan) proved hot, malarial and unendurable in summer. And in the wider political field, the Bolsheviks were still showing deference to Nationalist Turkey, believing that Kemal’s new Turkey, by virtue of its anti-imperialist rhetoric, was half way towards becoming a Bolshevik state, and that favour shown to the Turko-Tatar people of the Caucasus would be further encouragement for Kemal. Democratic arguments favoured the union of Karabagh with Armenia; but regional arguments favoured the region’s inclusion in Azerbaijan.
Maybe too the ‘argument from Late Antiquity’ surfaced then, which, since it has surfaced later, needs to be looked at. This is that Soviet Azerbaijan is the successor-state to the medieval Christian realm of Caucasian Albania––a state which existed in the eastern Caucasus, and which is unrelated to European Albania.14 (The origin of the Caucasian name ‘Albania’ is unknown.) Of the three nations of the region, two (Georgia and Armenia) have remained Christian to this day, while the lowlanders in the south-easternmost region largely became Shiite Muslims, connected by religion to Iran, but linguistically related to Turkey, and eventually being designated first independent, then Soviet, Azerbaijan.
Ancient geographers, notably Strabo, placed Karabagh in Armenia. Thereafter, in pre-Islamic times, the highland area of Mountainous Karabagh (or the provinces of Uti and Artsakh) constituted a region that has been described as ‘rather more Armenianized than truly Armenian’15. Caucasian Albanian statehood appears to have been a precarious entity, and the stronger cultural iden-
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tity of the Armenians was consequently a greater draw to the highlanders of Uti and Artsakh. After the Islamic conquests the mountaineer villagers of the region did not become Islamicized (whereas most of the steppe-dwellers appear to have converted); the Caucasian Albanian language disappeared––an alphabet survives, but no texts––and the people identified with Armenia, in the manner described by the ancient geographers. The Albanian Church had usually been anti-Chalcedonian, and it united with the Armenian Church as early as the eighth century; although the nations themselves did not merge at this stage, the move propelled forward the unity of the peoples.
From the fourteenth century, the region between the Kura and Araxes river became known as Karabagh (Kara is Turkish for black, and bagh Iranian for garden, or vineyard.) Its inhabitants, hitherto in a marchland, became fully Armenian in language, faith and culture. This is the manner in which the people have defined themselves ever since. (Here, as elsewhere, the term race is meaningless, not being susceptible to scientific definition, and not being a concept which the people themselves use.) The church leader of the chief monastery there retained the title ‘Catholicos of the Albanians’, but this was for reasons of historical jurisdiction, rather than actual reality. In the early eighteenth century, the region became the focus for the idea of the liberation of Armenia: the Armenian soldier-adventurers Israel Ori and Joseph Emin saw in its cohesive and armed populus a nucleus for the future liberation of Armenia. (At this date Karabagh was a more important Armenian centre than the Khanate of Yerevan, which had been largely depopulated by Shah Abbas in 1605.) Karabagh with its four Armenian principalities, achieved a wide degree of autonomy, and repelled Turkish armies on several occasions in the 1720s, notably at Ganja (or Gandsak) and Halitsor. In the twentieth century, the inhabitants have at almost every turn since 1918 sought to be part of Armenia, and are not interested in a connection with the predominantly Shiite Muslim, Turki-speaking state based in Baku. Besides the Christian Armenian nature of their past, it is surely their own democratic wish that, in any part of the world which pays homage to principles of the Enlightenment, they should be considered paramount.
Mountainous Karabagh was, in contradiction to the wishes of its people, in 1921 designated part of Soviet Azerbaijan, to which it was joined in 1923. During the 1920s and 1930s there were sporadic campaigns by its inhabitants for its unification to Armenia; the campaigners usually landed up in jail or suffered worse fates.16 Aghasi Khanjian, Armenian Party Secretary in the early 1930s, and a strong advocate of Karabagh’s unification with Armenia, was shot dead by Lavrenti Beria, chief of the secret police, for speaking in favour of this issue.
Stalinism meant that there could be no discussion or expression of grievances with relation to national boundaries. However, a decade after Stalin’s death, in 1964, the ‘kholkhozniks, workers and toilers of mountainous Karabagh’ addressed a petition to Mr Khrushchev. After stating that they had
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reached the ‘point of desperation’ because of the ‘crushing burden of our living conditions’, the petitioners stated that the Azerbaijanis had made economic life virtually impossible in Karabagh (usually by placing control of small-scale ventures in far-off towns in Azerbaijan), and were continuing the insidious process of changing the population of the region in favour of Muslim Azeris.17
Three years later another petition was addressed by the people of Karabagh, this time to their compatriots in Armenia, saying that living conditions were virtually impossible. The Azerbaijani government could not even guarantee them the elementary security of leaving their houses to go to work and returning home in the evening. The petition gave a list of acts of violence and oppression done towards the Armenians of Karabagh by the ordinary Azeris in the street, with the connivance of the authorities. The conclusion of this petition was that the rule of law barely existed for Armenians in Karabagh. It ended with the words, ‘The Armenians of Karabagh are awaiting salvation from you, people of the motherland.’18
In passing, it might be asked, How could this be? How, in the communist internationalist state of the USSR could repressive, chauvinist attitudes hinting of pan-Turkism, with apparent ambitions to change the population in favour of the Turkist element, continue? How could such an ideology, expressed in violence and hostile to the spirit of Lenin’s letter, get a firm hold?
Old hatreds linger for a long time, and the spirit of ethnic hatred which the tsar had whipped up in 1905, and which surfaced again in 1919–1920, has persisted in Transcaucasia. Under the surface many old attitudes exist: one must be realistic about this. Soviet Russia has given Transcaucasia the benefit of peace; but the animosities continue to smoulder. Ethno-religious jealousies are perhaps the hardest negative elements to root out of any polity. With the granting by Khrushchev of limited autonomy to the union republics, unreconstructed leaders could manipulate their minorities as they wanted.
Nothing changed after the 1967 petition. Ten years passed, until Sero Khanzatian spoke out against conditions in the region. Khanzatian is a brave Armenian writer, the author of Mkhitar Sparapet, a novel set in the eighteenth century, which is much admired by Armenians both in Armenia and in the diaspora; he is also a man with a list of credentials very acceptable to the Soviet regime, and more recently (April 1989) he was elected to the USSR Congress of People's Deputies. His letter, written to Mr Brezhnev, covered much of the same ground, albeit in a rather unfocused manner. Historical, national, regional and economic issues were not examined in detail; but it took as a starting place the wishes of the people of the territory, which was an unexceptional origin for political discourse, either in the western or Soviet model. Nothing resulted from the publication of his letter, except a flutter in the newspapers of the Armenian diaspora, and an article in the New York Times.19 Karabagh was far from the consciousness of most Armenians, let alone the rest of the world. Diaspora Armenians who were engaged in political issues tended to concentrate all their attention on Turkey, rather than look
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east or south to other Soviet territories. But in Yerevan the issue of Karabagh was always present. Each year the foreign minister of Armenia, Jon Kirakosian (who died in 1985), used to raise the subject at meetings of the Supreme Soviet, and each year he received the same negative reply.
So it remained until the new attitudes and outlook fostered by Mr Gorbachev filtered down to national consciousness both in Armenia and in the territory of Karabagh itself. The reasoning appears to have gone thus: This is the era of the ending of abuses and injustices in the USSR. The separation from Armenia of Karabagh, and to a lesser extent that of Nakhichevan, was one of the abuses of early Soviet history; it was in part a continuation of the inequitable policies of the British occupation, and part too of a failed Stalinist design to curry favour with Nationalist Turkey, and it has led to the denial of natural rights for the native villagers of Karabagh for the duration of the Soviet state. In Nakhichevan the effect has been a massive reduction of the Armenian population in favour of the Azeri. Karabagh's population has been engineered by the Baku authorities against the indigenous Armenians and their fate might become that of the Armenians of Nakhichevan––expelled from their native homeland, as a result of Baku's social, economic, educational and cultural policy. Therefore it seemed appropriate to air the grievance.
But this reasoning seems to have disconcerted the Soviet leadership, for although there was no doubting Mr Gorbachev's committment to openness and reconstruction, it appeared that, in his committment to a concept of 'Soviet internationalism', he had, as had his predecessors, played down the fierce ethnic tensions, deriving usually from local injustices, that still persist in some of the republics that edge the Soviet Union, especially in the Caucasus. He backed away from radical action on giving the nationalities more realistic and ethnically appropriate borders. Gorbachev's priority at this time was the need to change the party apparatus in Armenia––to make it less corrupt, and more responsive to what the economy and the people needed, in terms of employment and goods and services. His speech at the June 1987 plenum, together with the reporting of Kotanjian's speech in Sovetakan Hayastan in July, and the article in Pravda in January 1988, were evidence of the determination to clean up the party. But there was no hint that a new deal was needed for the nationalities as well. Disputes between the nationalities appeared to him a diversion from, not an expression of, perestroika.
It was this very matter of national borders which was the paramount concern of the intellectuals who were in the vanguard of the Armenian movement (Zori Balayan, Sergei Mikoyan, and to some extent Abel Aghanbekyan). To them, change had to come to the status of Karabagh and possibly Nakhichevan. They also sought an uncorrupt leadership; but the unresolved national question entailed a greater amount of oppression and injustice, and it required the more urgent attention. Armenia, the smallest Soviet republic, with a history of actual and potential threats from violent neighbours, could not afford to delay on national questions.
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After the demonstrations of October 1987, the situation remained quiet, until February 1988. Political activity resurfaced in Karabagh itself. Here, in sessions of its regional soviets of 11 and 12 February, motions were passed, calling for Karabagh's unity with Armenia. This was a direct and unprecedented challenge to Moscow. Leaflets and posters appeared on the streets of Stepanakert from 11 February, demanding the region's unification with Armenia. Demonstrations continued on a daily basis in Karabagh until 20 February.20
News of these demonstrations first reached Yerevan on 15 February, four days after they had occurred (a point which indicates the astonishing lack of contact at this time between Armenia and Karabagh). New marches, concerned with the environment, were planned in Armenia. The first of these took place on 18 February in Abovian, a new town to the north of Yerevan, part of whose population consisted of men and women from Karabagh, a number of whom were unemployed, owing to conditions at home. With the news from Karabagh, the focus of the demonstrations was shifting from the environment to the status of Karabagh. The demonstration in Abovian was the first of the large manifestations: the number of protestors was put at 20,000 on the first day, rising to 50,000 on the 19th.
In Karabagh itself, following the sessions of soviets calling for union with Armenia, something occurred to create a radical change. In another move of great bravery and defiance, the regional soviet of Mountainous Karabagh voted, on 20 February 1988, 'to transfer the Autonomous Region of Mountainous Karabagh from the Azerbaijani SSR to the Armenian SSR, [and] at the same time to intercede with the Supreme Soviet of the USSR to reach a positive resolution regarding the transfer of the region from the Azerbaijani SSR to the Armenian SSR'.21
Yerevan knew nothing yet of this decision. A demonstration was held on the subject of Karabagh, drawing fewer participants than the Green issue. A few days later Moscow gave its initial verdict: The Politbureau of the Supreme Soviet, reflecting only bureaucratic perplexity and alarm at the 'unrest' which had occurred in Transcaucasia, and unable to comprehend the sense of the possibility of liberty from Baku's oppression that had emerged in Karabagh, voted that there should be no change in the region's status. Those calling for change were dubbed extremists by Tass news agency.22
This official statement came as the news was received in Yerevan of the vote for union in Stepanakert. It was a setback to the demonstrators, but it was also a challenge. Throughout the night of 21–22 February, 50,000 people marched in a rally covering 40 kilometres through Yerevan, ending in Marshal Baghramian street, where the headquarters of the Armenian Supreme Soviet are located. The mood of the demonstrators was depressed, but determined. There was also a measure of anxiety, since an executive member of the Azerbaijani ideological committee, a certain Asadov, had just claimed that 100,000 armed Azeris were ready to enter Karabagh and carry out killings. The Kremlin
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showed its concern by dispatching on 23 February, two non-voting politbureau members, Dolgikh and Lukianov, to Yerevan; two other Russians left on the following day for Stepanakert, the capital of Karabagh. They were to assess the situation and to appeal for calm.25 But calm did not return to Yerevan.
On 23 February the subject of Karabagh became a channel for expression of the vast pent-up but denied national pride and hope of the Armenian people. From all corners of Armenia, the people came to demonstrate for their brothers and sisters in Karabagh. They travelled on foot, on horseback, or by car. Every day colossal demonstrations took place, with crowds numbering hundreds of thousands. The people converged on Opera Square, which though not in the very centre of Yerevan holds a space wide enough to contain all who came to express their hopes there. Two points were worth noting about these demonstrations. One was that they were peaceful. There was no violence, nor extreme demands or loutish behaviour, which can characterize demonstrations, especially where nationalist issues are at stake. The second was that demonstrators continued to carry placards of Gorbachev. This indicated that they supported the regime, and believed that the campaign for the restoration of Karabagh to Armenia was in line with the process of perestroika.24
For a week the demonstrations continued every day. Normal life in the Armenian SSR came virtually to a standstill, as sometimes as many as 800,000 to a million people converged peacefully on Opera Square in the last week of February 1988. Nothing like it had been seen in Soviet or Armenian history before. Armenians manifested a great and united national pride in expressing their desire for unification with Karabagh. It seemed to them reasonable and moderate. This was the first time that Armenians had showed such unanimity, and expressed it so forcefully, since the battle of Sardarabad of May 1918.
At the height of the demonstrations, on 26 February, two respected figures travelled to Moscow to put the case of the demonstrators to the Central Committee. They were Sylva Kaputikyan, a distinguished poet, and Zori Balayan. They made long and eloquent speeches, covering important points in detail; but it is possible that in these circumstances more powerful advocacy would have been shown by brevity, and a punchy and economical marshalling of the relevant arguments. It seems too that they did not address the viewpoint of 'national internationalism within the USSR' that Gorbachev holds. Gorbachev's response was to urge them to do what they could to keep the situation calm. He said he would study the issue, make an appropriate response to their concern. On the same day Gorbachev made a public appeal for the end of demonstrations. 'I call on you to display civic maturity and restraint … The hour for reason and sober decision has arrived.' The demonstrations in Yerevan did indeed begin to subside on 27 February. Moscow promised a decision in a month, and the Armenians agreed to bide their time.25
What of Azerbaijan, the republic whose tenure of Karabagh, which made up less than 5 per cent of its total land area, was being challenged? Its response came not in a cogent intellectual argument (for indeed there scarcely was one),
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not in the feared form of a direct attack on Karabagh, but in the manner of a violent pogrom against the minority Armenian community in an Azerbaijani city on the Caspian Sea, about 30 kilometers from Baku. Sumgait is a dull new town, built (by Armenians) in 1946–47, with a rough population. Part of the population is made up of ex-convicts. The standard of living is low, and tensions (which have built up around the issue of the allocation of housing) are strong between the different sections of the population. There is one main street, which it is possible to block off without difficulty. The population consisted of 150,000 Azeris, 16,000 Armenians, and some Russians.
The pogrom took the form of an organized assault lasting for three days (27–29 February). Armenians were killed with hatchets and knives, or thrown out of windows. Revolting atrocities were committed, reminiscent of the events of the turn of the century. The official death toll of 32 is very much an underestimate. Probably 200–300 died, as well as a few Azeris. (There were cases of successful Armenian self-defence.) Soviet troops intervened on the 29th and imposed martial law; even then they were under orders not to open fire.26 Therein lies a mystery.
All Armenians believe that Sumgait was an organized assault on the people; in a sense, it was a warning. The only question of any importance is, Who organized it, and how high up did those orders actually issue from? Several aspects of the pogrom point to its organization. In the first place, telephone lines to the emergency services were cut shortly before the killings started, and after the process had got under way. Secondly a number of paving stones were brought into Sumgait, which were of a type not known in the town, and which were heaped up on street corners and used by the mobs to smash into houses. Also, with the prevalence of surveillance and organization and order throughout the USSR, maintained by the pervasive presence of the KGB, it would have been impossible to arrange a mass-killing spread out over three days without the knowledge and acquiescence of some authorities. Some weeks later T. Muslimzade, First Secretary of the party organization of Sumgait, was expelled from the Central Committee of the CPSU, for 'administrative and political mistakes and shortcomings' that had led to the 'tragic events in Sumgait'.27 This seemed to be a coded assertion that he had got the boot for organizing the killings.
The Armenian response was not to launch into a counter-attack on the minority Azeri population within Armenia, but to trust the judicial process of the USSR. Trials of those suspected of involvement in the Sumgait pogrom opened in Sumgait in mid May 1988.28 Demonstrations continued sporadically in Yerevan, but for three months the situation was relatively quiet.
On 23 March the presidium of the Supreme Soviet discussed Karabagh and made its promised statement. It recognized that national rights had been infringed in Karabagh, but (reflecting an unwillingness to embrace change, which seems more a characteristic of Brezhnevism) declared that a change of status was impossible. A programme of economic development was approved
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instead.29 In Armenia the people were disappointed, but appeared to take the matter philosophically. They knew that despite the rhetoric of change, real change where it mattered would not occur quickly. But in Karabagh there was anger, and the people declared a general strike.30 This was a gesture of confrontation.
The situation in Armenia erupted again following what was seen as an excessively lenient sentence given to one of the killers of Sumgait, and with a nationalist upsurge coinciding with the approach of the anniversary of 28 May, the date of the proclamation of the pre-Soviet independence of Armenia in 1918. Demonstrations broke out in Yerevan again, and the authorities in Moscow took the occasion to dismiss, on 21 May, both the First Secretary of the party in Armenia (K. S. Demirjian) and in Azerbaijan (K. Bagirov).31 Armenia's new chief was Suren Harutyunyan, and the new boss in Baku was Abdul-Rakhman Vezirov. At least Gorbachev had been able to use the unrest to get rid of obstacles to perestroika. But what was the meaning of perestroika, when the whole republic was from time to time at a standstill with the people making impassioned national demands?
The strike in Karabagh persisted; Soviet troops had been dispatched there on 28 March. In neighbouring Azerbaijan, anti-Armenian rioting broke out in early June, and there was at least one fatality. In Yerevan the frustration built up to a demand for a strike, and this took place on 13 June. Two days later, the Armenian Supreme Soviet, responding to the popular movement and in defiance to Moscow, voted to accept the proclamation made on 20 February by the regional soviet of Nagorno Karabakh for unity with Armenia. At once the Armenian people returned to work. The Azerbaijan Supreme Soviet voted equally decisively to reject the move.32
It would be wrong to see the events of the three months after the events of February as being only characterized by negative political and military phenomena, strikes, troop movements and angry demonstrations, and so forth. Genuine advances were made within Karabagh at that time. Cultural links, frozen for decades, were re-established between Armenia and Karabagh. Armenian books were taken and sold there––something that the Azerbaijanis had not permitted before. Forty thousand were reportedly sold in one day. Teaching of the Armenian language was allowed in the schools, and Yerevan television and radio was relayed to Mountainous Karabagh.
Also, in those June days, there was a move towards a deepening democratization within Armenia itself. Members of the Armenian Supreme Soviet were being called upon to take note of what the people who had elected them wanted. The first stirrings of true parliamentarianism emerged within the republic.33 Newspapers and television relays became more in tune with the popular mood, and less with the wishes of the rulers. Historical subjects long considered taboo were openly discussed in the media.
Nevertheless, on one level there was a risk attached to the proceedings. Gorbachev was looking to the Special Party Conference of 25 June. Here his
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reforms would be discussed. He needed calm in Transcaucasia, to show that perestroika was a benefit and not an incitement to disorder. Would the situation calm down in time, so that the conservatives could be routed? In the end it did so, with Armenia though defiant back at work on the 15th, and Karabagh voting to return to work actually on the 25th. In the unstable situation, Soviet troops were dispatched to Stepanakert, Karabagh's capital, but not to Baku or Kirovabad, where there was actual danger of ethnic clashes.34
But the mood in Yerevan soon turned angry again, with the feeling widespread among the demonstrators that the regime was stonewalling, and avoiding seeking a solution to the crisis in Karabagh. Gorbachev, seen as a hero in February, was now almost reviled. A new strike was called again for 3 July, and a round of mass-demonstrations broke out. In an effort to bring the republic to a complete halt, 3,000 demonstrators tried to blockade the airport. This was seen by the authorities as virtually treasonable, and troops from the interior ministry were dispatched to confront them. In the ensuing affray one demonstrator was shot dead. The strike continued in Armenia an Karabagh.35
The presidium of the Supreme Soviet was set to discuss Karabagh on 18 July. Perhaps to put pressure on that meeting, the soviet of Mountainous Karabagh decided on another action of defiance, imbued with the spirit of liberty. On 12 July the soviet of the people's deputies of Nagorno Karabakh put out a statement saying that it had seceded from the Azerbaijani SSR and would henceforth be known as the Artsakh autonomous region of the Armenian SSR.36 This declaration was later declared invalid by the Supreme Soviet.
The July session of the Presidium was characterized by impassioned and vigorous and often angry debate. But for all its discussion, one point got strangely lost: the injustice of allocating the territory of one people against their will to that of a neighbouring country with an unfriendly and often hostile record towards members of the national group in the territory. Gorbachev himself took a lively part in the debate, and did not hesitate to upbraid wordy or self-righteous speakers.37 His standpoint was the familiar one: that Soviet internationalism should take precedence over the rights of this or that national group. However, it could be argued that this approach only perpetuates old injustices. The final resolution pointed out that article 78 of the Soviet constitution lays down that change in the frontiers of a republic can only occur with the consent of all sides, and that since Azerbaijan was unwilling to give up Karabagh, nothing would be done. This appeared to be a convenient device for avoiding change and the risks that accompany it. No republic will, unpressured, voluntarily yield territory.
To the party hierarchy, nationalism is not only distasteful since it puts local issues above general ones which affect the entire USSR. It also has the potential for danger. Nationalism could bring about a violent situation such as that which racked Transcaucasia in 1918–20. There is also danger, they feel, attached to the idea of re-drawing internal USSR boundaries. (However, this
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fear probably has more to do with an unwillingness to face change, since the number of serious internal disputes is not great.) Another reason might be fear of a further unpredictable and violent Azerbaijani response; and possibly too the Moscow leadership was piqued that the party had virtually lost control in Yerevan since February 1988.38
The situation remained tense: although there were few demonstrations in August, they resumed in early September. Although the overwhelming issue was that of Karabagh, the environmental issue also emerged: the people demanded the closure of a chemical plant in the suburb of Abovian, and an enquiry into a gas leak at a textile plant in the Masis region on 24 June, when 45 women workers had to be taken to hospital, some sustaining permanent injuries. The mood of the 'meeting' (the English word was used) of 9 September, at which more than 200,000 took part, was described as one of pessimism and defiance.39
Protestors were hardening their demands at this time. The Karabagh Committee, a group of intellectuals recognized by many Armenians as their true leaders since the initial demonstrations in February, put forward a list of demands including the right to open Armenian consulates in countries with large Armenian populations, the creation of an Armenian-speaking army detachment to serve on the home soil, freedom to fly the yerakuyn, the pre-Soviet tricolour, and the power of veto over all-union projects built in the republic.40 Some of this was reasonable, but some (especially the detail about the disposition of the army) seemed adventurist. There was a clash between Armenians and Azeris in Khodjalu, north of Stepanakert, on 18 September.41 Twenty-five people were injured, a number which comprised both Armenians and Azeris. The day before, unreported by Tass, a group of armed Azeris had ambushed a bus containing Armenian students approaching Stepanakert, destroying the bus and injuring 18 of the students, four of them critically.
Nevertheless there was some easing of the situation in early October, with many people returning to work in Yerevan, although a strike continued in Karabagh, where a curfew was also in force.42 Armenians received some belated support from an editorial in Pravda of 10 October, which for the first time blamed Azerbaijan for the critical situation in Karabagh. Maybe the forced resignation of Yegor K. Ligachev, Gorbachev's deputy, on 30 September, was an element in this reversal.43 Attention was focused on the convening of the USSR Supreme Soviet planned for 27 October.44
In mid November 1988, a new crisis emerged in Transcaucasia. This was inter-ethnic flight. Baku had a total population of 2 million, 10 per cent of whom were Armenians. The mood of inter-republic and inter-ethnic conflict had put these people in a very dangerous situation. By early November about half of them had fled to Armenia.45 The situation deteriorated after the first sentence to be handed down to the killers of Sumgait, whose trial had been moved from Azerbaijan to Moscow, and had been progressing there since 18 October.46 On 18 November Ahmed Ahmedov, who had used a megaphone to
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shout 'Kill the Armenians' as the mob stormed various apartments in Sumgait, was sentenced to death.47 He was in no way an organiser of the events, just a low functionary in the process of killing. But the sentence enraged the Azerbaijanis, some of whom had formerly boasted that the events in Sumgait had 'taught the Armenians a good lesson'.48 In several locations in Azerbaijan they went on the rampage, injuring about 200, and burning 60 Armenian homes to the ground. Many thousands of Armenians were forced to flee to Armenia from this reign of terror. The towns worst affected were Kirovabad, where three Armenians and three Soviet soldiers were reported killed, and in the Nakhichevan enclave, where the inhabitants of Dsnaberd, the last Armenian village left in the 'autonomous republic', were evacuated to safety in Armenia by helicopter. A curfew, and martial law, were imposed on Baku, Yerevan and Kirovabad.49
The refugee situation grew to one of great magnitude. Of the 400,000 Armenians in Soviet Azerbaijan, 180,000 fled to Armenia in the following few weeks; and correspondingly, of the 161,000 Azeris in Armenia before the Sumgait killings, 150,000 left for Azerbaijan. Many Armenians left Azerbaijan for other parts of the Soviet Union too, especially Ashkhabad, Tashkent and Dushanbe. (Unofficially there are said to be 60,000 Armenians from Azerbaijan living in Moscow.) Housing was a major problem, but within Armenia they found immediate shelter in public buildings and halls. The Armenian government sent many of them to the northern cities of Leninakan and Kirovakan.50
It was here, at 11.41 in the morning of 7 December 1988, that an earthquake struck with terrifying force. Whole districts were devastated, and system-built blocks of flats came crashing down on their inhabitants. Older, pre-Brezhnev buildings showed greater resilience. But the devastation was of terrifying proportions, and the loss of life catastrophic. 50,000 people were conservatively estimated to have perished, but the figure was probably closer to 100,000. A further 500,000 people were rendered homeless. Armenians and many others throughout the world mourned the appalling losses.51
The effects of this gigantic disaster were various. In the first and most obvious place, there was a massive sense of loss by the Armenian people, which was given extra emphasis by the enormous man-made losses that Armenia has suffered in the past. It was particularly poignant that the disaster should have occurred in a region which was giving shelter to so many refugees from Azerbaijan. At the same time there was a vast and spontaneous expression of sympathy for the Armenians from governments and even more so from individuals throughout the world. Human generosity can seldom have been greater. Aid came rushing in from other parts of the USSR too. Nevertheless, despite this extensive Soviet assistance, which was given by the military and civilian authorities, viewers often saw on television pictures of Soviet tanks in the main streets of Yerevan, and in the actual earthquake zone, Soviet soldiers 'guarding the ruins' and making no apparent attempts to offer help to the survivors. It was often hard to resist the impression that the relief effort was not occur-
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ring in a reconstructing socialist state, but rather in an impassive military dictatorship.
This impression was somewhat reinforced when on 10 December the authorities suddenly and inexplicably arrested half of the Karabagh Committee, the unofficial group who had been steering policy on the future of Karabagh, and jailed the remaining members in early January. Armenians and others laboured on regardless, in efforts to mitigate the tragedy of the earthquake, and to bring help and support to the survivors. Supplies and funds poured into Armenia in a truly astonishing outburst of generosity.
A small move was made apparently in Armenia's favour on the Karabagh issue when, on 13 January 1989, Mountainous Karabagh was given a 'special form of administration' under which it would be ruled directly from Moscow. It remained technically part of Azerbaijan, but Baku had no say in the administration of the territory. In charge was Arkady Volsky, a Russian who had been in the Caucasus working on the Karabagh problem since July 1988.52 It has since reverted to Azerbaijan.
The earthquake muted, to some extent, the Armenian campaign on the Karabagh issue. But only until life returned to a semblance of normality with the republic. For several months the Armenians felt deeply alienated from the regime of Moscow. They had been stunned by the earthquake; and the manner in which their reasonable, democratic wishes for Karabagh were ignored made them feel that perestroika had passed them by. A new round of demonstrations began on 11 May, with the main theme the freeing of the Karabagh Committee. The twelve members of this committee were in fact released in late May. At last it seemed that Armenia was ceasing to be ruled by a bureaucracy. At the same time concessions were made on other national matters. The yerakuyn, the red-blue-orange tricolour of pre-Soviet Armenia, was recognised as the national flag, but not the flag of the republic; and 28 May, the anniversary of the beginning of Armenian independence of 1918, was acknowledged as a national day. Neither of these decisions pleased the non-Dashnak parties of the diaspora very much, the Hunchaks and the Ramgavars; but on this occasion national identity and aspirations seemed to be embodied more in what the Dashnaks had adopted and had continued to use as their emblems––even though the yerakuyn was originally a non-partisan flag of Armenia, and the government which followed the declaration of Armenian independence was a coalition.53
The people of Armenia were, in May 1989, feeling a sense of political exhaustion. The struggle over the last 15 months had been vast, and the gains small. One side issue that has yet fully to be explored is that Karabagh, and indeed the earthquake, have also created a rational basis for the discussion of historical and ethnic questions in the region. International attention can focus on Armenia as a geographical and indeed political reality, without the irrelevancies of Turkish anti-historical fantasy. Turkey might try to claim the intellectual high ground of the discussion of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire;
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but the events of 1988 and 1989 have shown that areas of Armenia's history lie outside the tentacles of Turkish 'scholarship'. Russian Armenia, of the past and the present, has never been part of either Ottoman empire or Turkish republic.
There is however no doubt that the struggle over Karabagh will continue. Armenia will press ahead, basing its demands on the democratic rights of the majority of the inhabitants, and Azerbaijan will claim the precedent of having held it since 1923. Russia will look on in anxiety, perhaps more concerned at the prospect of offending the Muslim republic than the Christian one. Muslim opinion is something that the Russians have now to pay close attention to (as did the British imperialists of 100 years ago)––a point that the politically unsophisticated Armenians often forget. A sensible and patient campaign for Karabagh carried on by the Armenians might yet win the territory for them. But wild demands, and hot-headed appeals to natural rights (which in the world are seldom natural), will gain little. It is however reasonable to see the struggle in terms of seeking the freedom of a group of mountain-dwelling villagers, the Armenians of Karabagh, from an oppressive and manipulative bureaucracy, which through 70 years of misrule has lost the right to govern Karabagh. Whether this message can get through to the Politbureau in Moscow, and whether there they will have the courage to embrace change (always the hardest concept to face in political life), is doubtful; and the recent reports of the deterioration in Karabagh to serious ethnic violence cannot make anyone optimistic about a reasonable solution to a difficult problem.
Notes
1. The Guardian, 19 January 1988.
2. Erebouni (London), March 1986.
3. Asbarez (Glendale, Calif.), 23 January 1988.
4. [Peter Pears], Armenian holiday (Aldburgh, 1965), p. 27.
5. Armenian Mirror-Spectator (Watertown, Mass.), 13 February 1988, p. 8.
6. Gerard Libaridian (ed.), The Karabagh File (Cambridge, Mass., 1988), p. 88.
7. Ibid., pp. 88–9.
8. Armenian Mirror-Spectator, 5 December 1987.
9. Armenian Life (Glendale, Calif.), 4 March, 1 April 1988.
10. Armenian Mirror-Spectator, 24 October 1987, 6 February 1988.
11. Libaridian, Karabagh File, pp. 34–5.
12. See above, pp. 325–6, 330.
13. Libaridian, Karabagh File, p. 36.
14. See Encyclopedia of Islam, 1st and 2nd editions, articles 'Arran'.
15. Cyril Toumanoff, Studies in Christian Caucasian History (Washington, DC, 1965). pp. 128–9.
16 Libaridian, Karabagh File, p. 41.
17. Ibid., pp. 42–6.
18. Ibid., pp. 47–8.
19. Ibid., pp. 49–52.
20. Armenian Mirror-Spectator, 5 March 1989; personal interview in Yerevan, May 1989.
21. Libaridian, Karabagh File, p. 90.
22. Ibid., pp. 98–9.
23. Armenian Mirror-Spectator, 5 March 1988, p. 2; Asbarez, 7 May 1988.
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24. The Times, letter to the editor, 14 March 1988; Libaridian, Karabagh File, p. 93.
25. Ibid., p. 94; Armenian Mirror-Spectator, 5 March, 19 March 1988.
26. Asbarez, 12 March 1988; California Courier, 21 July 1988; Armenian Mirror-Spectator, 6 August 1988 (article by Z. Balayan), 5 November 1988.
27. Armenian Mirror-Spectator, 11 June 1988.
28. Ibid., 21 May 1988.
29. The Independent (London), 24 March 1988; California Courier, 31 March 1988; text in Armenian Mirror-Spectator, 2 April 1988.
30. The Independent, 31 March 1988; Sunday Times (London), 3 April 1988.
31. The Independent, 23 May 1988; California Courier, 26 May 1988; Asbarez, 28 May 1988; Armenian Mirror-Spectator, 18 June 1988.
32. Armenian Mirror-Spectator, 2 July 1988; Asbarez, 18 June 1988.
33. Ibid., 13 August 1988.
34. Ibid., 18 June, 2 July 1988; The Times, 24 June 1988.
35. Asbarez, 9 July 1988.
36. Ibid., 16 July 1988.
37. BBC, Summary of World Broadcasts, 22 July 1988, SU/0210, pp. B/1-B/17; California Courier, 10 November 1988.
38. See article by Jonathan Steele in The Guardian, 27 July 1988.
39. Armenian Mirror-Spectator, 10, 17 September 1988; Asbarez, 3 September 1988.
40. California Courier, 15 September 1988.
41. Ibid., 22 September 1988; Asbarez, 24 September 1988; Armenian Mirror-Spectator, 24 September 1988.
42. California Courier, 6 October 1988.
43. Armenian Mirror-Spectator, 8, 15 October 1988.
44. California Courier, 27 October 1988.
45. Ibid., 17 November 1988.
46. Armenian Mirror-Spectator, 29 October 1988.
47. Ibid., 26 November 1988.
48. California Courier, 17 November 1988.
49. Armenian Mirror-Spectator, 3 December 1988.
50. Asbarez, 3, 10 December 1988.
51. Armenian Mirror-Spectator, 17 December 1988, 21 January 1989; California Courier, 15 December 1988; Asbarez, 17 December 1988.
52. Asbarez, 21 January 1989.
53. Asbarez, 3 June 1989.
