Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War

2. February 1988: Azerbaijan: Puzzlement and Pogroms

2 February 1988: Azerbaijan Puzzlement and Pogroms THE EXTRAORDINARY EVENTS in Nagorny Karabakh in February 1988 caught Azerbaijan by surprise and revealed its hidden insecurities . Azerbaijan had a far more diverse population than Armenia. With double the number of inhabitants—more than seven million in 1988— it had a far greater ethnic mix, with substantial minorities of Russians and Armenians, as well as smaller Caucasian nationalities, such as Talysh and Lezgins. Its population centers ranged from the cosmopolitan capital Baku to some of the most deprived towns and villages of the Caucasus. Superficially, as soon as the Politburo upheld Azerbaijan’s claim to Nagorny Karabakh, the local Party leadership was in a secure position; indeed, in contrast to the Armenian Communist Party, the Azerbaijani Communist Party was able to hold on to power until 1992. Yet local Party boss Kamran Bagirov, a protégé of the former Azerbaijani Party leader Heidar Aliev, was out of favor and sick.1 Gorbachev showed his distrust of the local Azerbaijani leadership by taking direct handling of the Karabakh crisis out of its hands. Azerbaijan’s first political protest took place on 19 February 1988, the seventh day of the Armenian rallies. A group of students, workers, and intellectuals marched from the Academy of Sciences on the top of the hill in Baku down to the building of the republican parliament, the Supreme Soviet, carrying placards that proclaimed that Nagorny Karabakh belonged to Azerbaijan. They had almost no organizational backup , however. Many intellectuals in Baku say that they had never taken an interest in the Karabakh issue before 1988; unaware that it was a potent theme for Armenians, they had simply taken for granted that Karabakh would always be theirs. So the eruption of protests in Karabakh represented something both vaguer and more universal. Azerbaijanis 29 felt that Armenians were trying to break up their republic and threaten Azerbaijan’s national identity. The first to react was a group of Azerbaijani historians who had been engaged in an aggressive politicized debate with their Armenian counterparts since the 1960s. The poet Bakhtiar Vahabzade and the historian Suleiman Aliarov published an “Open Letter” in the newspaper Azerbaijan in which they declared that Karabakh was historical Azerbaijani territory, that the Karabakh Armenian campaign came out of a dangerous irredentist tradition, and that “the Azerbaijani people, in the new era of international competition, have been among the first victims .”2 The “Open Letter” also mentioned the hitherto taboo subject of “southern Azerbaijan” across the border in Iran. But this rare counterblast to the Armenians was published only in Baku, not Moscow, where the Armenian argument was receiving a much more favorable hearing. BAKU IN FERMENT Baku had always stood apart from the rest of Azerbaijan. It was the largest city in the Caucasus and home to dozens of nationalities. Russian was the preferred lingua franca and intermarriage was common. At the same time, the city’s rich ethnic mix also made it vulnerable; intercommunal tensions simmered below the surface. The vote by the Nagorny Karabakh Soviet on 20 February to leave Azerbaijan immediately raised the temperature in the city. The situation worsened with the influx of Azerbaijanis fleeing the Kafan district of southern Armenia, many of whom descended on relatives in Baku. Although there were no reports of deaths, many of the refugees were bandaged from beatings and fights. In the fevered atmosphere, many Azerbaijanis perceived that they had a fifth column in their midst in the Armenian quarter known as Armenikend. A Soviet official sent to Baku at that time was given one example of the growing hatred: a leaf of checked paper from a school exercise book that had been pushed into an Armenian’s mailbox. Written on it in red capital letters were the Russian words “pogosianshchiki von iz baku poka zhivy” (meaning: “Pogosian supporters [i.e., supporters of the new Armenian leader of Nagorny Karabakh Genrikh Pogosian] get out of Baku while you are still alive!”)3 30 FEBRUARY 1988: AZERBAIJAN: PUZZLEMENT AND POGROMS Baku’s local Party boss was a bluff and energetic former soccer player and construction engineer named Fuad Musayev. His abrasive approach to problem solving was controversial but possibly what was needed in this situation. On 20 Feburary, Musayev was called back to Baku from a vacation in the Russian spa town of Kislovodsk and found the city tense: “Someone was provoking them, propaganda work was going on...