bloodshed in Azerbaijan, 1990
Kremlin sent its troops to Baku to kill people
Publicerad: 2011-01-14 18:01, Uppdaterad: 2011-11-02 16:11
Gorbachov sent Soviet troops to Baku to kill his citizens, not save them. More than two decades after the fact, the events of January 1990 in Azerbaijani capital, Baku, remain a source of controversy especially since some groups are seeking to distort the record in order to promote their own narrow political agendas.
Om författaren
Vugar Seidov is a political analyst to the Azerbaijan State Telegraph Agency (AzerTag). He holds PhD in History, MA in European Studies (Central European University) and MPhil in International Relations (University of Cambridge). Vugar Seidov eye-witnessed the described events.
More than two decades after the fact, the events of January 1990 in Azerbaijani capital, Baku, remain a source of controversy especially since some groups are seeking to distort the record in order to promote their own narrow political agendas. For example, the Armenian media have insisted with one voice that the killing of more than 130 Azerbaijani civilians in Baku by the Soviet Army was justified because only by taking that step could Moscow hope "to finally stop the massacres of Christian Armenians in [that] mostly Muslim capital." Then a good question is, why the very same Moscow took no action when scores of ethnic Azeris were massacred in the Armenian regions of Gukark, Gafan, Meghri?
But if the Soviet forces truly had such a noble-sounding mission, how did it happen that this "humanitarian" effort ended with the deaths of so many and the saving of not even one life? And that question in turn leads to other and more significant ones: What was the real aim of those who introduced the Soviet military into Baku ? Was it to save something or to kill? Or was the aim of Moscow "noble" but the actions of the generals "unprofessional" in that they killed more than a hundred peaceful people and did not engage in any search for those who supposedly needed help?
The answers to all these questions are provided by even the briefest review of what was taking place in Azerbaijan and in the Soviet capital in 1989. By the end of that year, political power in Baku had passed into the hands of the Popular Front because the Communist Party had completely lost the trust of the people. Party leaders controlled their own administrative offices and very little else. Moscow recognized that party secretary Abdulrahman Vazirov and his associates were losing control of the situation and that in elections scheduled for February 1990, the Popular Front would likely win almost all of the seats. In that event, the first act of the new parliament would be the declaration of Azerbaijan 's independence from the Soviet Union .
If some in Moscow were prepared to tolerate the possible loss of the three small Baltic countries - and far from all of the senior officials in the Soviet capital were - no one in the Kremlin was prepared to accept the loss of strategically important and energy rich Azerbaijan. Indeed, people in Moscow concluded, that if Azerbaijan were to declare its independence, that step, far more than anything the Baltic nationalists might do, would trigger the destruction of the Soviet Union. Consequently, Moscow decided to teach Azerbaijan a lesson by the use of force and thus send a message to all the other Soviet republics.
We now know that hardliners in the KGB had begun planning a series of steps to prevent the Azerbaijani Popular Front from coming to power. They wanted the February elections indefinitely postponed if not cancelled altogether. But to do that, Moscow needed a pretext, and the KGB organized one: pogroms against the remaining Armenian residents in the Azerbaijani capital. Most ethnic Armenians had already left, but the KGB organized attacks on the remaining ones, sending undercover agents to provoke Azerbaijanis who had been forced from their homes by the Armenian advance and occupation.
Beginning on January 13 and continuing until January 15, KGB-led crowds attacked ethnic Armenians in Baku . By January 16, those who survived were evacuated to safer places not by Soviet officials but by Popular Front activists who could see that the Moscow-inspired pogroms were a provocation intended to justify a move against the independence movement. Significantly, the 13,000 Soviet troops then stationed in the city did nothing to block the attacks against ethnic Armenians. One soldier at the time told me that he and his comrades "had been given orders not to intervene but rather let the violence continue."
So much for the notion that Moscow intervened to protect the "Christian Armenians" or anyone else! In any case, by January 16, the KGB-inspired violence had stopped. If Moscow was interested in protecting the Armenians, why did it wait until January 20 to send in troops? The reason is that Moscow dispatched these forces not to save Armenians but to save the totalitarian empire.
And that reality, one that some Armenians and others now prefer to forget, is confirmed by something else. When the Soviet forces came into Baku , they did not head to the neighborhoods where Armenian residents had lived. Instead, they focused their attention on taking over government buildings and the headquarters of the Popular Front, blowing up the television station and closing newspapers, and killing anyone who evinced any curiosity in what they were doing. None of this had anything to do with the Armenians. Instead, the Soviet army was sent to kill Soviet citizens, not to save them.
That is something that Armenians and others must remember, however much they would like to exploit a different paradigm to explain what happened. And it is something Azerbaijanis must remember as well, recognizing that the tragic events in Baku were something different from the tragic events in Sumgayit earlier. The latter were spontaneous; the former were Moscow ordered and KGB-organized, a classic example of a failing empire trying to save itself by killing its own people and as a result hastening its own demise.
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9 kommentarer I kommentarsfältet har kommentatorn juridiskt ansvar för sina inlägg.
KGB methods did not change. Provocation and violence were their tools for 20 years ago: “Kryuchkov and others in the KGB looked to those “dangerous elements” to weaken the Kremlin's authority and powerbase. They organised acts of provocation, using genuine local dissatisfaction as a base, in cities across the Soviet Union, including Sumgait and Baku (Azerbaijan), Tbilisi (Georgia), Vilnius (Lithuania) and Riga (Latvia). As predicted, Gorbachev sent in the troops, which significantly tarnished his image”. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article2970324.
They use the same tools today to have control over post-Soviet states, it was demonstrated recently in White Russia.
I disagree with author about so-called "Sumgaits pogroms". I do not thnk that we can call it a spontaneous non-controlled hooliganism. Just as pogroms in Baku they have been very well organized.
To Anar Samedov:
Different powers “cooperated” in both Baku and Sumgait tragic events: one can easily identify three of them
1. Refugees from Armenia and Karabakh.
- Since 1985, and especially from late 1987, some 11,000 ethnic Azerbaijanis were ethnically cleansed from their homes in Armenia, and became the very first refugees of the NK conflict, settling primarily in and around Sumgait. “Tensions continued to mount when thousands of ethnic Azerbaijanis and Kurds living in Armenia began packing their possessions and leaving, either because they were ‘encouraged’ to do so by Armenian nationalists or simply because they saw the omens and decided to leave of their own accord. …. Azerbaijanis and Kurds, among them many mixed, Azeri-Armenian couples, also began leaving their homes in the Karabakh capital, Khankandi (Stepanakert). The refugees settled in the nearby Azerbaijani towns Khodjali or Shusha, or went (or were sent) to places like the Caspian Sea industrial wasteland city of Sumgait, north of Baku.” (Thomas Goltz, “Azerbaijan Diary: A Rogue Reporter’s Adventures in an Oil-Rich, War-Torn, Post-Soviet Republic”, M.E. Sharpe, 1998, p. 83).
Please note: massacres of Azerbaijani and Kurds in Qafan and Megri were carefully planned by authorities, which was also the case during the massive and very well coordinated deportation in the end of 1988. Refugees from Armenia and Karabakh contributed to spontaneous non-controlled hooliganism.
2. There are facts that show that Armenian diaspora and Armenian nationalists are also responsible for these tragic events.
It appeared the article in Armenian media before the tragedy which stated “we will make Azeri to shoot us!”
If Sumgait was an unexpected and shocking for Azeri, it was not for those ethnic Armenians, who were involveld in Armenian nationalistic movement Krunk . They have done a withdrawal of their savings from banks and left Sumgait a few days before events. After tragedy they returned to Sumgait to sail properties or collect belongings.
A few days before the tragedy ethnic Armenians from abroad checked in in Baku´s hotels. Many of them had cameras. Next day after Sumgait tragedy when Baku still could not understand how this happened and was at shock , the film was shown about events all around the world and the monument was raised in Armenia to victims of Sumgait. The monument was obviously prepared long before the tragedy.
According to court documents (USSR criminal case 18/55461-88, vol. 29, p. 260), among key ringleaders, arrested for killings of 7 of the 26 Armenians, were ethnically Armenians, Eduard Grigoryan and Zhirayr Azizbekian, as well as other Armenians. Grigoryan was convicted to 12 years. Depositions by witnesses and victims show that he had a list of flats inhabited by the Armenians and, together with three other Armenians, called for reprisals against the Armenians, in which he took part personally. His victims (all Armenians) identified Grigorian as one of the organizers and active figures in the violence.
In fact, events in Sumgait, being necessary to the Armenian leadership as a mean of launching an extensive anti-Azerbaijani campaign and justifying the ensuing aggression against Azerbaijan and massacre of Azerbaijani and Kurds, had been planned and prepared in advance.
As a result of Sumgait tragedy 32 persons were dead (26 Armenians and 6 Azeris) for the three days.
3. Agonizing SSSR was hoping that inter-ethnic conflicts will prevent perestroyka and centers control will be ensured.
“Russia wanted to destabilize the area by creating an inter-communal war which would weaken both governments (in Azerbaijan and Armenia) and enable Moscow to reestablish control over the area”. That explains “The fact that the Soviet army and Interior ministry troops were in the area did not change anything; in fact the army stood by and watched the pogrom take place, and may even have initiated it, as is persistently argued by Igor Nolyain in his thought-provoking article.6 According to Nolyain, the Soviet forces did not stay at neglecting to prevent the bloodshed, but deliberately seeked to create a conflict between the two communities, both in Armenia and in Azerbaijan. This was done through the control of the media, by spreading exaggeratedly provocative statements on both sides, and by deploying criminals from Soviet prisons in Sumgait to initiate the pogrom”.
“Undeclared war” by Svante Cornell on http://www.zerbaijan.com/azeri/svante_cornell.html
To VM #2-4
About your point 2
“It is accepted wisdom among Sumgait's Azerbaijani majority that the riots Feb. 27, 28 and 29 were deliberately contrived by Armenian extremists in order to discredit Azerbaijan in the battle for the world's sympathy”.
Keller Bill. "Riot's Legacy of Distrust Quietly Stalks a Soviet City." The New York Times. August 31, 1988.
Aftermath of Baku and Sumgait pogroms :
Sumgait pogrom, 1988.
Azerbaijan had at this point of time
11 000 Azerbaijani and Kurdish refugees from Armenia , some of them came to Sumgait in period 1985-1987. A few Azerbaijani are killed. ''Every Azerbaijani region of Armenia is a little Sumgait.''
Keller Bill, http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0713FC355F0C728FDDA108...
In Sumgait pogroms died 26 ethnic Armenians and 6 Azeri. S.Cornell, http://www.zerbaijan.com/azeri/svante_cornell.html.
In 1988-1989 more than 200,000 Azerbaijanis were forced to leave Armenia. During the ethnic cleansing at least 216 Azerbaijanis were killed.
Baku pogroms, 1990 : people of different nationalities were killed , including 90 Armenians. Tomas de Waal, Black Garden
Aftermath of Black January in Azerbaijan:
Soviet troops invade Baku in January 1990.
"By February 1, 1990, 706 people had applied for medical assistance to medical facilities of Baku. The court medical bureau [sudebno-meditsinskoye byuro] had accepted 84 persons. 73 of them with gunshot wounds (16 in their backs), smashed by APCs 8, bayoneted wounds 2. By February 9, 1990, 170 people, including 6 Russians, 7 Jews, Tatars and Lezgins, had died. Among the dead are six women and 9 children and teenagers. 370 people were wounded. 321 people disappeared." Source: "Black January: Baku 1990, Documents and Materials", AzerNeshr, Baku, 1990, p. 287, with a reference to the Ministry of Health of Azerbaijan SSR.
Human Rights Watch report titled "Black January in Azerbaijan”:
"the violence used by the Soviet Army on the night of January 19-20 was so out of proportion to the resistance offered by Azerbaijanis as to constitute an exercise in collective punishment. The punishment inflicted on Baku by Soviet soldiers may have been intended as a warning to nationalists, not only in Azerbaijan, but in the other Republics of the Soviet Union.''
The Soviet attack against innocent civilians in Azerbaijan followed massacres in other Soviet republics, including Kazakhstan in 1986, Georgia in 1989 and in Lithuania, 1991.
The question is, did we learn something? Can we prevent this type of provocations in the future? Last events in White Russia showed that it is almost impossible.
to #6
Yes, ''Every Azerbaijani region of Armenia " was a little Sumgait.''
As those survivers testify.
"Armenians have burned the houses of Azerbaijani villagers, refused to sell them food, and prevented them from selling their vegetables at local bazaars in an attempt to drive them back to Azerbaijan. 'A Lot of Sumgaits'
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FB0713FC355F0C728FDDA108...
But the international community was silent and Soviet did not send the troops there to stop the ethnical cleaning of Azerbaijani and Kurds.
To add to Nicklas aftermath of Baku and Sumgait pogroms:
Azerbaijani authorities did not organized Sumgait, while ethnical cleaning of Azeri and Kurds in 1985-1988 was carefully planned by Armenian authorities,.
during the pogroms in Azerbaijan there many well-recorded and officially documented cases when Azeris saved the lives of their Armenian neighbors, whereas not a single similar case was recorded in Armenia.
Azerbaijani citizens, its intellectual elite and government, condemned all the violence publicly. It was not done in Armenia. Armenian authorities spread propaganda about incompatibility of Armenians and Turks/Azeri to justify massacres of Azerbaijani civilians.
Also, after the pogroms MANY Armenians did return to Sumgait and Baku (especially between Fall 1988 and Fall 1989) to sell their propertis, while Azeris after having been deported were not allowed to return to Armenia at least to grab their belongings.
Today, up to 800 Armenians continue to live in Sumgait, and a total of up to 30,000 Armenians live in major cities of Azerbaijan. Meanwhile, no Azerbaijanis are left in Armenia – all 194,000 were ethnically cleansed
Violence creates more violence. The extreme enmity and continuous hostility brings to bigger disasters for both sides.
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