Forty-one years ago, a series of terrorist attacks were carried out in Moscow that shocked the entire Soviet Union, resulting in the death of 7 people and injury to 37. The number of volumes in the case increased to 60 during a year of the investigation. The criminals were found. They were three members of Armenia's National United Party - Stepan Zatikyan, Zaven Bagdasaryan and Hakop Stepanyan, who were convinced that the killing of innocent people is a necessary measure in the struggle for Armenia's independence from Russia.
On January 8, 1977 three explosive devices detonated in Moscow - the first bomb went off on a train between the Izmailovskaya and Pervomaiskaya stations of the Moscow Metro and two other bombs on the 25th of October Street. It was the largest terrorist attack in the last 50 years. The organizers were detained only 10 months later after an unsuccessful attempt to detonate an explosive device at the Kursky Rail Terminal. They were Armenians - Zatikyan, Stepanyan and Bagdasaryan - members of the Armenian nationalist group. They staged these explosions in Moscow to revenge the Russians for oppressing, as they thought, the Armenian people. The terrorists planned to carry out the next explosion during the Olympics. These and other extremists were taken under control. In total there were 415 such people on the territory of the Union.
The terrorists appeared before the court. "One bomb exploded in the metro, another bomb exploded in a store on the 25th of October Street, and a third one near the store on the same street in a trash bin," the perpetrator Hakop Stepanyan said. Answering the question, whether he understood that innocent people, including, perhaps, his compatriots Armenians, could die, the terrorist said: "I knew that a bomb is to explode and there must be victimizes."
"I could not refuse it, I put it in the trash bin and knew that it will explode," Zaven Bagdasaryan, another perpetrator, said.
"I refuse your trial and do not need any defenders. I am the prosecutor, not the defendant. You don't get to judge me, since the Jewish-Russian empire is not a legal state. You must know it. Armenia has absolutely no benefit from Russia now. But you have. So if there is trouble, it will be yours. We will not have any, we have nothing to lose," an organizer of the attacks Stepan Zatikyan said.
He ended his last speech with a call in Armenian: "Tell others that we have revenge, revenge and just revenge."
Zatikyan and his accomplices were sentenced to an exceptional penalty - the death penalty. The death sentence was commuted.
Many years later, some journalists tried to present these terrorists as national heroes. "A terrorist cannot be a national hero. Any crimes comitted against innocent children, women, the elderly must be condemned all over the world," the USSR Committee on State Security(KGB) Colonel Alexander Remegailo said.
The then First Secretary of the Armenian Communist Party Karen Demirchyan and the head of the KGB of Armenia Marius Yuzbashyan interfered with the investigation. Yuzbashyan also hid information from the KGB leaders of the actions of representatives of the international Armenian terrorist organization - the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia (ASALA), created instead of Dashnaktsutyun. Subsequently, Dashnaktsutyun was legalized in independent Armenia and now plays a significant role in the political life of the country, having significant financial, media and human resources for political struggle.
