Search for causes of USSR disintegration in Karabakh -1

By Peter Lyukimson, Israel, Kuryer N28-32, June 1992

 

The feature story “Nagorno-Karabakh: chronicles of a conflict. Notes of a Jew from Baku” was written in 1992, soon after the author moved to Israel. It was published in a Russian-language newspaper in Israel called Kuryer. Those were the times when the tone in the cultural and the public life of the Russian-speaking community of Israel was set by the Moscow and Saint Petersburg clerisy. It had a big impact on the attitude of Israeli society towards the events on the territory of the former USSR. They sympathized with Armenia in its conflict with Azerbaijan. As it turned out, most Israelis knew nothing about the origin of the conflict or the truth about its development. The position of the Jewish clerisy in the issue was formed based only on publications in the central Soviet and partly in the Western press, which were not always impartial. To be precise, most of them were made from explicit lies and misinformation, some on semi-truths that are sometimes even worse than obvious lies, because they gain trust.

It all inspired me to write “Notes of a Jew from Baku.” Of course, I was not an ordinary “Jew from Baku.” It just so happened that my career as a journalist coincided with the conflict around Nagorno-Karabakh, I was involuntarily in the center of events, spent a lot of time moving, meeting refugees, inhabitants of Nagorno-Karabakh and so on. All the impressions of the four years (1988-1991) were reflected in the story. Certainly, I did not know that much then, I could not know. In over two decades, there were certainly many documents declassified, many new testimonies appeared, many events happened, so it cannot be considered a full and absolutely impartial chronical of the conflict, I do not insist that myself.

As I discovered, the feature story was published by an Azerbaijani paper the same year, then a brochure was published, it can be found in the catalogue of the Central Library of Azerbaijan. I hope to get hold of it someday…

For every Azerbaijani, Karabakh today is the same as Jerusalem for Jews, the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius and Yasnaya Polyana for Russians, Versailles and the Bois de Boulogne for the French…

Hundreds of thousands of Armenians had a happy life on the territory of all Azerbaijan; newspapers and books in the Armenian language were published, Armenian schools were open in Karabakh, Baku, Khanlar and other districts of the republic with at least a small Armenian population; an Armenian section existed in any large library of Azerbaijan… Regarding the economy of the NKAO, the rate of its development was ahead of the average in the republic, consequently, the NKAO turned into a rich region. All the authorities were solely Armenians, Armenians were chairing village councils even in Azerbaijani villages of the NKAO. There could be no discrimination against the Armenian population in Azerbaijan.

The Azerbaijani population faced overt pressure from authorities of the autonomous region… Every year, thousands of families of Azerbaijanis were moving from the NKAO to other districts of the republic. By 1985, 123,000 Armenians and 37,000 Azerbaijanis were living in the region; when the Karabakh Khanate joined Russia, the region had only 90,000 inhabitants, 4,331 of them Armenians. The same year (1985), Armenians removed the inscription 150 from the memorial built in Mardakert for the 150th anniversary of the settlement of Armenians in Karabakh.

It is Karabakh where the origins of the separatism that eroded the “unbreakable union” hide. The strikes in Karabakh became the beginning of the economic crisis the former Union is in, they were declared right in that period when the first, careful economic reforms produced the first results – in 1987, the fall in the rate of growth of national income was halted for the first time in 1.5 years.

The events started with the decision made at another Armenian National Congress in Paris held in 1987 to use the democratic reforms in the USSR to fulfil “the fair demands of the Armenian people” for “reunion” of the NKAO with Armenia. The same year, in Paris, Gorbachev’s economic advisor Abel Aganbegyan met officials of the Armenian diaspora in France, after which he was in a hurry for an interview with French newspapers, in which he said that Karabakh, located in the north-east of the republic, had become Armenian. Abel Aganbegyan said: “As an economist, I believe that it is connected closer with Armenia than Azerbaijan. I made a proposal for it. I hope that the problem will find a solution in the context of Perestroika and democracy.” At the same time, the Armenian and the All-Union press started publishing articles by Armenian publicists with a message that the Azerbaijanis were alien people of the Trans-Caucasus without historical origins or their own culture and all the territory had been Armenian from the very beginning. Some of the authors were even trying to declare Azerbaijan's greatest poet Nizami Ganjavi to be an Armenian.

The peak of anti-Azerbaijani “hysteria” was achieved in 1987 after publication of Armenian poet Silva Kaputikyan’s poem “Friendship of Peoples,” urging readers to repeat the path of “glorious Andranik” and move through Azerbaijani villages with a “Berdan rifle and winding sheet.”

Soon after, many copies of Zori Balayan’s “Hearth” were published, depicting Karabakh as the “hearth” of the Armenian nation. The book criticizes the Azerbaijanis for… breeding too fast, so it was recommended to sterilize Azerbaijani women as a preventive measure.

Azerbaijan figured that it should respond. Dozens of historians and literature critics – from skilled to amateurs – wrote reviews of the book but the Azerbaijani authorities prohibited publishing anything on the topic, under the pretext that such publications can cause “a divide between the brotherly Armenian and Azerbaijani peoples…”

And there, in Stepanakert, started protests with demands to adjoin the NKAO to Armenia, backed in Yerevan. The protests consisted of only a few hundred people but, in just a few days, they grew to tens of thousands. The demands and slogans in Yerevan and Stepanakert were surprisingly familiar: it is time to rectify “Stalin’s mistake” and reunite the people of the NKAO and their “Mother Armenia.” After the Armenian demonstrations of 1987 going through Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, Moscow was confused…

To be continued

The Karabakh conflict: the testimony of a witnessBy Peter Lyukimson, Israel, Kuryer N28-32, June 1992The feature story “Nagorno-Karabakh: chronicles of a conflict. Notes of a Jew from Baku” was written in 1992, soon after the author moved to Israel. It was published in a Russian-language newspaper in Israel called Kuryer. Those were the times when the tone in the cultural and the public life of the Russian-speaking community of Israel was set by the Moscow and Saint Petersburg clerisy. It had a big impact on the attitude of Israeli society towards the events on the territory of the former USSR. They sympathized with Armenia in its conflict with Azerbaijan. As it turned out, most Israelis knew nothing about the origin of the conflict or the truth about its development. The position of the Jewish clerisy in the issue was formed based only on publications in the central Soviet and partly in the Western press, which were not always impartial. To be precise, most of them were made from explicit lies and misinformation, some on semi-truths that are sometimes even worse than obvious lies, because they gain trust.It all inspired me to write “Notes of a Jew from Baku.” Of course, I was not an ordinary “Jew from Baku.” It just so happened that my career as a journalist coincided with the conflict around Nagorno-Karabakh, I was involuntarily in the center of events, spent a lot of time moving, meeting refugees, inhabitants of Nagorno-Karabakh and so on. All the impressions of the four years (1988-1991) were reflected in the story. Certainly, I did not know that much then, I could not know. In over two decades, there were certainly many documents declassified, many new testimonies appeared, many events happened, so it cannot be considered a full and absolutely impartial chronical of the conflict, I do not insist that myself.As I discovered, the feature story was published by an Azerbaijani paper the same year, then a brochure was published, it can be found in the catalogue of the Central Library of Azerbaijan. I hope to get hold of it someday…For every Azerbaijani, Karabakh today is the same as Jerusalem for Jews, the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius and Yasnaya Polyana for Russians, Versailles and the Bois de Boulogne for the French…Hundreds of thousands of Armenians had a happy life on the territory of all Azerbaijan; newspapers and books in the Armenian language were published, Armenian schools were open in Karabakh, Baku, Khanlar and other districts of the republic with at least a small Armenian population; an Armenian section existed in any large library of Azerbaijan… Regarding the economy of the NKAO, the rate of its development was ahead of the average in the republic, consequently, the NKAO turned into a rich region. All the authorities were solely Armenians, Armenians were chairing village councils even in Azerbaijani villages of the NKAO. There could be no discrimination against the Armenian population in Azerbaijan.The Azerbaijani population faced overt pressure from authorities of the autonomous region… Every year, thousands of families of Azerbaijanis were moving from the NKAO to other districts of the republic. By 1985, 123,000 Armenians and 37,000 Azerbaijanis were living in the region; when the Karabakh Khanate joined Russia, the region had only 90,000 inhabitants, 4,331 of them Armenians. The same year (1985), Armenians removed the inscription 150 from the memorial built in Mardakert for the 150th anniversary of the settlement of Armenians in Karabakh.It is Karabakh where the origins of the separatism that eroded the “unbreakable union” hide. The strikes in Karabakh became the beginning of the economic crisis the former Union is in, they were declared right in that period when the first, careful economic reforms produced the first results – in 1987, the fall in the rate of growth of national income was halted for the first time in 1.5 years.The events started with the decision made at another Armenian National Congress in Paris held in 1987 to use the democratic reforms in the USSR to fulfil “the fair demands of the Armenian people” for “reunion” of the NKAO with Armenia. The same year, in Paris, Gorbachev’s economic advisor Abel Aganbegyan met officials of the Armenian diaspora in France, after which he was in a hurry for an interview with French newspapers, in which he said that Karabakh, located in the north-east of the republic, had become Armenian. Abel Aganbegyan said: “As an economist, I believe that it is connected closer with Armenia than Azerbaijan. I made a proposal for it. I hope that the problem will find a solution in the context of Perestroika and democracy.” At the same time, the Armenian and the All-Union press started publishing articles by Armenian publicists with a message that the Azerbaijanis were alien people of the Trans-Caucasus without historical origins or their own culture and all the territory had been Armenian from the very beginning. Some of the authors were even trying to declare Azerbaijan's greatest poet Nizami Ganjavi to be an Armenian.The peak of anti-Azerbaijani “hysteria” was achieved in 1987 after publication of Armenian poet Silva Kaputikyan’s poem “Friendship of Peoples,” urging readers to repeat the path of “glorious Andranik” and move through Azerbaijani villages with a “Berdan rifle and winding sheet.”Soon after, many copies of Zori Balayan’s “Hearth” were published, depicting Karabakh as the “hearth” of the Armenian nation. The book criticizes the Azerbaijanis for… breeding too fast, so it was recommended to sterilize Azerbaijani women as a preventive measure.Azerbaijan figured that it should respond. Dozens of historians and literature critics – from skilled to amateurs – wrote reviews of the book but the Azerbaijani authorities prohibited publishing anything on the topic, under the pretext that such publications can cause “a divide between the brotherly Armenian and Azerbaijani peoples…”And there, in Stepanakert, started protests with demands to adjoin the NKAO to Armenia, backed in Yerevan. The protests consisted of only a few hundred people but, in just a few days, they grew to tens of thousands. The demands and slogans in Yerevan and Stepanakert were surprisingly familiar: it is time to rectify “Stalin’s mistake” and reunite the people of the NKAO and their “Mother Armenia.” After the Armenian demonstrations of 1987 going through Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, Moscow was confused…To be conti