Oleg Kusov, exclusively to VK
During the 1990s, the Caucasus remained the hottest region of the CIS. Sometimes it just looked like a detonator placed under the entire post-Soviet space by some major political forces. What for? Perhaps foolishly, or recklessly, or perhaps for destructive purposes.
The events of the summer of 1993 are indicative. In the South Caucasus two wars blazed - in Abkhazia and Nagorno-Karabakh. The end of the first one was quite close, but the Karabakh ceasefire only came after about ten months. In the North Caucasus, the main destructive processes - almost all related to Dudayev and Ichkeria – were just beginning. It turns out that the South Caucasus in the middle of 1993 gradually, with great difficulty, was appeased, while the North Caucasus, in contrast, just exploded. Eighteen months previously the collapse of the USSR had occurred; a test for Russia was just beginning. Now we already know that in the end Russia resisted, but then, in 1993, many Moscow newspapers often published a map of the North Caucasus painted green. They quite seriously predicted to the Caucasus its own Islamist future. Ichkeria was considered almost a breakaway from the country's territory.
Let us turn to the most important events of the summer of 1993 in the Caucasus.
The end of the collapse
The main events in the Caucasus took place in June of this year, according to most experts, in Azerbaijan. June 15, Heydar Aliyev was elected President of the Supreme Council of Azerbaijan. On June 24 a parliamentary decision entrusted him with the post of acting president of the country. Another change of the leadership of Azerbaijan, according to politicians and experts, had become nothing more than a stage for the start of saving sprawling country. It was hard to even imagine what disastrous consequences the collapse of the largest and richest region of the Caucasus could bring.
Heydar Aliyev's return to power was preceded by a rebellion led by Colonel Surat Huseynov, which, in turn, was a response to the attempt of the then-leadership of the country to seize and destroy the troops of Huseynov in Ganja with the armed forces of the National Guard. The army operation against Huseynov started on 4 June, but quickly got bogged down, and on June 10 Huseynov’s unit moved to Baku. The colonel had a warrant for the arrest of President Elchibey issued by attorney general Ihtiyar Shirinov. The country's leadership was close to panic. They persuaded Heydar Aliyev to come from Nakhichevan; he had already met on June 13 with Suret Huseynov in Ganja. On June 18 President Elchibay secretly fled from Baku to the village of Keleki in the Nakhichevan Republic.
The Ganja unit was stopped only on June 29, 1993, after another meeting between the Acting President Aliyev and Suret Huseynov. On June 30 Huseynov became the Prime Minister of Azerbaijan.
The Karabakh war and the Russian ruling
June 2, the echo of the Karabakh war reached almost to the center of Baku. On a siding at a railway station a passenger car was blown up. An investigation established that the terrorist act was committed by Khatkovski, a Russian citizen recruited by the opposite side in the armed conflict.
The greatest event of the war in June was the seizure by Armenian gangs of the Agdam district of Azerbaijan, not part of Nagorno-Karabakh. Attacks on the region continued on 23 and 24 June. As a result, the already huge number of Azerbaijani refugees who were expelled during the war increased by 120,000 people. The fighting destroyed what was once one of the richest agricultural regions of Azerbaijan. According to official statistics, in the area there were 97 settlements, 38 farms, 26 farms and cooperative associations, 24 construction companies, 12 industrial enterprises, 105 industrial sites, 271 cultural institutions and 99 clubs. Prior to 1993 there was the development of the cotton industry and viticulture there.
On June 27 the Armenian army occupied the city of Martakert, located 60 kilometers north of Stepanakert. On the eve of the battle for the settlement of Magauz in this area, an Armenian volunteer from the United States, the commander of the unit "Crusaders" Karo Kahkedzhyan, was killed.
Another death of another native of the United States - Monte Melkonian - took place on June 12 in the village of Marzili, located on the border of the Martuni and Agdam regions. Melkonian is called one of the organizers and leaders of the Armenian armed forces in Nagorno-Karabakh. Prior to that, he was fighting in Lebanon. The first time he took part in the fighting in Beirut, when he was 21 years old. Two years after this Melkonian joined the military organization of ASALA (the Armenian Secret Army for the Liberation of Armenia), organizing attacks and capturing objects in European countries. The U.S. State Department recognized it as a terrorist organization. After the assassination of the head of the organization Hagop Hagopian in 1988, on the threshold of his Athenian home, ASALA’s work entered a less active period. In 1985 Melkonian was arrested in Paris and sentenced to six years in prison for possession of weapons and forging documents. He was released after four years and arrived in Nagorno-Karabakh in 1990.
The attitude of the Armenians towards Melkonian is expressed by his awards - the "Hero of the NKR”, "The Golden Eagle", "National Hero of Armenia" (posthumously).
It is interesting to follow the temporary crossing of two diverse events in Armenia at the end of June 1993. In the days when the Armenian armed groups seized the Agdam district, not part of the Nagorno-Karabakh, the heads of government of Russia and Armenia signed five agreements in Moscow, according to one of which Yerevan was granted a loan of 20 billion Russian rubles (18 million 762 thousand dollars) . The agreement stipulated that with this amount Armenia will buy a variety of Russian goods. But were there any mechanisms of control of such large-scale procurement? Was it justified to allocate such a large amount of money to warring countries? During the fighting, the primary means are allocated to the military rather than the social and economic spheres.
West Caucasus weapons are not laid down
By the summer of 1993 Sukhumi was under the control of the Georgian authorities. Abkhaz armed units had already unsuccessfully tried to attack the city three times. According to experts, the Georgian forces were superior to the Abkhaz ones in the number of weapons, but they were inferior in quality. Despite a Georgian intelligence report about a possible assault on June 27, Eduard Shevardnadze arrived in Sukhumi. He volunteered to head the defense of the city.
The Abkhaz military, indeed, did not sit idly developing a plan for a summer offensive against the Georgian positions. The main task they set was the capture of the Zugdidi - Gal - Sukhumi road, through which the Georgian troops got help. The plan was limited to the simultaneous capture by armed groups from Tkvarcheli of a section of the route in Ochamchyry (a mountain road from Tkvarcheli led here) and an attack on Sukhumi from Gudauty (the temporary capital of Abkhazia). Georgian forces were also preparing to repel the attack, but according to the participants of the armed events the summer of 1993 marked the moral degradation of these units. Robbery, drugs, sales of weapons and ammunition became a commonplace for them. Attempts by Defense Minister Gia Karkarashvili to reverse the situation did not lead to success.
Another factor to weaken the Georgian troops in the summer of 1993 was the activation of the deposed president Zviad Gamsakhurdia in western Georgia. The ex-president at the time was still in Grozny, visiting Jokhar Dudayev. The rebel troops were led by Loti Kobalia. On June 3 they entered the district center of Gal, establishing control over the entire area. On June 14 in Zugdidi there was a televised appeal by Gamsakhurdia, which stressed that the current Georgian authorities (from his point of view, of course, illegal) had already made the decision to surrender in Abkhazia's Sukhumi and Ochamchyry. Gamsakhurdia offered the Georgian military to join his forces, renouncing "the impostor Shevardnadze" and continuing the struggle for the territorial integrity of Georgia. All summer long, gradually, his armed units strengthened their positions in Western Georgia, preparing a basis for the return of Gamsakhurdia. He would come here in September to head the government in exile.
Dudayev selects a dictatorial way
In the North Caucasus the main shocks were just beginning. Jokhar Dudayev gradually established himself as the sole ruler of Ichkeria. This was an interest of his entourage. The main motive of this interest remained control of local oil resources. Back in early 1993, President Dudayev instructed his team to prepare amendments to the Constitution of the Republic for focusing all power in his hands. Dudayev explained the strengthening of authoritarianism by the necessity of organized opposition to the foreign threat, referring to Moscow. The opposition centered in parliament could not calmly perceive such a dramatic action of the President. On April 15 in the Theatre Square in Grozny an opposition rally started to demand the resignation of the president and the government, new parliamentary elections and increasing the role of the representative government. The rally lasted until the morning on June 5. In response, Dudayev dissolved the parliament, the Constitutional Court and Grozny City Council, and made appointments to key positions of power (without parliamentary approval - in violation of the Constitution). This was a scenario like the one that was implemented a few months later by the Kremlin in Moscow against the Supreme Council of the Russian Federation. The conflict between the president and parliament in Ichkeria was resolved by force. On the night of June 5th Special Forces seized a government building of the City Council, in which in those days the work of the parliament, the Constitutional Court and city deputies took place. According to some estimates, about 30 people were killed. The storming of the building was commanded by Shamil Basayev.
Dudayev formed a new government. The Minister of Information and Press was Movladi Udugov, the Minister of Culture - Akhmed Zakayev. The Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of Ichkeria was Aslan Maskhadov.
At the end of June 1993 Dudayev announced the resumption of parliamentary work, but without the right to engage in legislative activities. Just about half of the deputies took office - 20 people. First of all, they voted for the deprivation of all parliamentary powers of their opposition colleagues.
Jokhar Dudayev came out of the political crisis a dictator and a winner. But the opposition did not leave Ichkeria, moving to the western regions of the republic and establishing a connection with Russian officials and the military.
Flag for the Balkar
June 10, 1993, the Russian government adopted a decree on socio-economic support of the Balkar people. The help needed to have a specific ethnic address that now cannot be imagined. Nine days later the first congress of the Balkar people was held, the main result of which, according to experts, was the adoption of the national Balkar flag - a light blue background with two white horizontal stripes and the silhouette of Mount Elbrus. No one in Moscow paid attention to this fact, despite its apparent separatist message.
The year before the Congress, in March 1992, a session of the local councils operating on the territory of Balkar settlement appealed to the Russian Congress of People's Deputies with a request to adopt the law "On establishing the Balkaria Republic." Not having received a positive response, Balkar activists spoke of a Kabardino-Balkarian Confederation. Looking ahead, we recall that the main separatist events unfolded here in autumn 1996, after the next congress of the Balkar people. It adopted an appeal to the president of Russia and the Federal Assembly with a request to establish direct presidential rule till the establishment of the republic and to suspend the laws of the CBD, in the part "contrary to the Constitution of Russia and the decisions of the congress of the Balkar people about establishing a Balkar Republic." This Congress created the State Board of Balkaria and decided to establish a national militia.
Official republican authorities used milder form of repression against separatists - riot police smashed up the Balkar Social and Political Center. With respect to members of the State Council, criminal cases were opened. The State Duma opposed the idea of the formation of the new republic in the North Caucasus. The leader of the Balkar District, General S. Beppaev, repented and two years later established the "Voice of Balkaria" loyal to the authorities for addressing the social and cultural problems of the people.
In the summer of 1993 in the Caucasus, the ground was laid for further processes - in the South Caucasus the beginning of stabilization became more noticeable, and in the North Caucasus, on the contrary, the boiler was more and more heated.
In a week, we’ll recall the main events of July 1993.
