Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War

1. February 1988: An Armenian Revolt

1 February 1988 An Armenian Revolt A SOVIET REBELS The crisis began in February 1988 in the depths of the Soviet Union. The central square of Stepanakert, a small but beautifully situated town in the mountains of the southern Caucasus, was a large open space, perfectly suited for public meetings. Alarge statue of Lenin (now removed) dominated the square with the neoclassical Regional Soviet building and a steep hill raking up behind it. A long flight of steps fell down to the plain of Azerbaijan below. On 20 February 1988, the local Soviet of the Nagorny Karabakh Autonomous Region of Azerbaijan—essentially a small regional parliament —sitting inside a concrete-and-glass building on the square, resolved as follows: Welcoming the wishes of the workers of the Nagorny Karabakh Autonomous Region to request the Supreme Soviets of the Azerbaijani SSR and the Armenian SSR to display a feeling of deep understanding of the aspirations of the Armenian population of Nagorny Karabakh and to resolve the question of transferring the Nagorny Karabakh Autonomous Region from the Azerbaijani SSR to the Armenian SSR, at the same time to intercede with the Supreme Soviet of the USSR to reach a positive resolution on the issue of transferring the region from the Azerbaijani SSR to the Armenian SSR.1 The dreary language of the resolution hid something truly revolutionary . Since 1921, Nagorny Karabakh had been an island of territory dominated by Armenians inside the Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan. Essentially , the local Armenian parliamentary deputies wanted the map of the Soviet Union redrawn and to see their region leave Soviet Azerbai10 jan and join Soviet Armenia. The USSR was already in the third year of rule by Mikhail Gorbachev, but it was still a frigid and orderly state. Gorbachev had proclaimed the doctrines of glasnost and perestroika, but they were still policies that the Communist Party regulated from above. The resolution by the Soviet in Nagorny Karabakh altered all this. By calling on Moscow to change the country’s internal borders, the Karabakh Armenians were, in effect, making politics from below for the first time in the Soviet Union since the 1920s. Aweek before the Regional Soviet’s resolution, on Saturday, 13 February , a group of Karabakh Armenians had staged another unprecedented event in Lenin Square: an unsanctioned political rally. Several hundred people gathered and made speeches calling for the unification of Karabakh with Armenia. Two or three rows of policemen surrounded the demonstrators, but they were local Armenians who had been tipped off in advance and allowed the protest to go ahead. The rally was timed to coincide with the return of a delegation of Karabakh Armenian artists and writers who had taken a petition to Moscow. The head of the returning delegation, the local Armenian actress Zhanna Galstian, made the first speech to the assembled crowd. She spoke very briefly, saying that she felt happy “because by coming out here, the Karabakhi has killed the slave in himself.”2 The crowd chanted back the Armenian word “Miatsum!” or “Unity!” the one-word slogan that came to symbolize their campaign. The organizers of the rally had every reason to be afraid. No one had organized political demonstrations in the Soviet Union in living memory. At least two of the activists later admitted that they had fully expected to be arrested.3 To ward off arrest, they had devised slogans that proclaimed that they were Soviet loyal citizens acting within the spirit of glasnost. Banners carried the slogan “Lenin, Party, Gorbachev!” In the course of these days in February 1988, many Soviet officials found that the ground under their feet was not as firm as they had believed . Members of the Communist Party hierarchy were openly disagreeing with one another, and the leadership in Moscow quickly concluded that it could not simply crush the dissenters by force. Practicing Gorbachev’s new spirit of tolerance, the Politburo told the Azerbaijani Party leaders that they should use only “Party methods”—persuasion, rather than force—to resolve the dispute. Gorbachev also decided that neither local Karabakh Armenian nor republican Azerbaijani security forces could be relied on to keep order and had a motorized battalion of FEBRUARY 1988: AN ARMENIAN REVOLT 11 160 Soviet Interior Ministry troops dispatched from the neighboring republic of Georgia to Karabakh. As it turned out, Interior Ministry soldiers were to stay there for almost four years.4 The demonstrators in Stepanakert became...