By Peter Lyukimson, Kuryer, Israel, N28-32, June 1992
Peter Lyukimson lived in Baku until 1991. He worked as a journalist there in the late 80s-early 90s and witnessed the events preceding the conflict around Nagorno-Karabakh, Sumgayit, Khojaly…
The feature story “Nagorno-Karabakh: chronicles of the conflict. Notes of a Jew from Baku” was written in 1992, soon after the move of the author to Israel. It was published in a Russian-language paper of Israel named 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 on the issue was formed based only on publications in the central Soviet and partly on Western press, which were not always impartial.
After July 10, the Armenian population of the NKAO started open confrontation with the forces and residents of Azerbaijani villages. Shooting, arson, cattle thefts, attacks on cars, murders of Azerbaijani shepherds started…
This could not go without concerns in Baku. In July 1989, a clerisy group created the People’s Front of Azerbaijan. It is noteworthy that the leaders of the PFA were saying from the very start that the PFA was a people’s front, not a nationalistic one, it had no goal to create the kind of mono-ethnic state that Armenia had become after driving out Azerbaijanis.
The August of 1989 brought more tensions. Armenia started shelling Azerbaijani border villages, murders in Karabakh continued… Soon, “the assembly of authorized representatives of the NKAO” confirmed that the region was not part of Azerbaijan. In response, the PFA held many-thousand-strong protests. The city was in anti-Armenian hysteria, exacerbated by the right wing of the PFA and the sacking of Armenians. The expulsion process gained momentum after December 1, when the Supreme Council of Armenia passed the decree on restoration of the Armenian SSR and Nagorno-Karabakh. In general, it was a simple declaration of war on Azerbaijan. Airborne forces of the Armenian National Army started deploying in the NKAO, declaring full transfer of Azerbaijanis from Karabakh…
In such conditions, the PFA called for the formation of Azerbaijan's own national army and immediate deportation of Armenians from Baku according to the international eviction laws of citizens whose country is at war with another state. The communist regime in Azerbaijan was in danger, and Moscow had had to understand it… In early January, the Armenian Armed Forces added the economic development plan of the NKAO to the state plan of the Armenian SSR. Moscow was silent.
Many protests demanded the resignation of the communist government… Rumours that Baku would start Armenian pogroms on January 13 appeared. The Central Committee, the KGB and the Interior Ministry could not have been unaware of it…
On January 13, pogroms did start. Some mobile groups of 10-12 people were breaking into Armenian houses and throwing their owners out onto the street, looting and committing violence. The police and the military responded to calls of neighbours roughly as follows:
“What can we do? We have not been given any orders…” Tens of thousands of people at the Central Committee were demanding its resignation.
On the night of January 19, it became clear that Yazov was on his way to Baku to restore order in the city personally…
At the ambulance sub-station, at 11.00, calls were received, asking for Kala pilots to the village struck by shootings, there were killings and injuries… Doctors tried to make it through tanks. Doctor Sasha Markhevka, sitting next to the driver, screamed and hit the windshield. A bullet in his hand span around blood vessels, went through a lung and out through the back. Bullets with an offset balance were used, they are banned under international law. Another ambulance made it through and helped the injured. On the way back, it was stopped by patrols and the injured were thrown out of the car. 7-8 hours were left before the curfew…
At midnight, the order to unblock was given. Breaking the walls of the Salyan barracks, tanks and armored vehicles moved through the streets of the city, shooting at houses, crushing trucks and cars and leaving dozens of twisted corpses behind. Protesters scattered, a real hunt for them began… Houses were under fire, bullets were finding newer victims. That is how 15-year-old Vera Bessantina, a girl with amazing eyes who was writing poems, died that night.
She was not the only child whose time came to an end. Coming out on the streets in the morning, Baku residents saw corpses on roads and sidewalks, heads and arms lying under their feet, blood over asphalt, on walls of houses. Helicopters were circling around the city, throwing leaflets. They said that a curfew had been imposed on Baku last night and the military were calling for peace. “It was done by the Russian army!” was the reaction. There was nothing surprising that threats towards Russians were heard in ships and on streets on January 20. The commandant’s office was in a hurry to organize an evacuation… soon, thousands of refugees appeared in Russian cities, speaking about the cruelty of Azerbaijanis and assuring that the military had entered the city to protect the Russians. It was just what the propaganda machine of Moscow needed, it hurried to announce that the forces in Baku had needed to interfere to prevent the Russian-speaking population of the city from being butchered. Yes, there were victims, several terrorists died, condolences to their families…
The terrorists were Sasha Markhevka, Vera Bessantina (by the way, they were both Jews), 9-year-old Larisa, a Mrs Mamedova, and a boy whose corpse has never been identified.
“Voices against Russians sounded here,” shouted an orator through the microphone, “But what have Russians got to do with that, not to mention Baku residents. The communists, they were the ones saving themselves last night, they were the ones the soldiers protected, they were responsible for what happened! Can honest people stay in the party of fascists after all that happened?” And people started throwing away their party membership cards then.
To be continued
The Karabakh conflict: the testimony of a witnessBy Peter Lyukimson, Kuryer, Israel, N28-32, June 1992Peter Lyukimson lived in Baku until 1991. He worked as a journalist there in the late 80s-early 90s and witnessed the events preceding the conflict around Nagorno-Karabakh, Sumgayit, Khojaly…The feature story “Nagorno-Karabakh: chronicles of the conflict. Notes of a Jew from Baku” was written in 1992, soon after the move of the author to Israel. It was published in a Russian-language paper of Israel named 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 on the issue was formed based only on publications in the central Soviet and partly on Western press, which were not always impartial.After July 10, the Armenian population of the NKAO started open confrontation with the forces and residents of Azerbaijani villages. Shooting, arson, cattle thefts, attacks on cars, murders of Azerbaijani shepherds started…This could not go without concerns in Baku. In July 1989, a clerisy group created the People’s Front of Azerbaijan. It is noteworthy that the leaders of the PFA were saying from the very start that the PFA was a people’s front, not a nationalistic one, it had no goal to create the kind of mono-ethnic state that Armenia had become after driving out Azerbaijanis.The August of 1989 brought more tensions. Armenia started shelling Azerbaijani border villages, murders in Karabakh continued… Soon, “the assembly of authorized representatives of the NKAO” confirmed that the region was not part of Azerbaijan. In response, the PFA held many-thousand-strong protests. The city was in anti-Armenian hysteria, exacerbated by the right wing of the PFA and the sacking of Armenians. The expulsion process gained momentum after December 1, when the Supreme Council of Armenia passed the decree on restoration of the Armenian SSR and Nagorno-Karabakh. In general, it was a simple declaration of war on Azerbaijan. Airborne forces of the Armenian National Army started deploying in the NKAO, declaring full transfer of Azerbaijanis from Karabakh…In such conditions, the PFA called for the formation of Azerbaijan's own national army and immediate deportation of Armenians from Baku according to the international eviction laws of citizens whose country is at war with another state. The communist regime in Azerbaijan was in danger, and Moscow had had to understand it… In early January, the Armenian Armed Forces added the economic development plan of the NKAO to the state plan of the Armenian SSR. Moscow was silent.Many protests demanded the resignation of the communist government… Rumours that Baku would start Armenian pogroms on January 13 appeared. The Central Committee, the KGB and the Interior Ministry could not have been unaware of it…On January 13, pogroms did start. Some mobile groups of 10-12 people were breaking into Armenian houses and throwing their owners out onto the street, looting and committing violence. The police and the military responded to calls of neighbours roughly as follows:“What can we do? We have not been given any orders…” Tens of thousands of people at the Central Committee were demanding its resignation.On the night of January 19, it became clear that Yazov was on his way to Baku to restore order in the city personally…At the ambulance sub-station, at 11.00, calls were received, asking for Kala pilots to the village struck by shootings, there were killings and injuries… Doctors tried to make it through tanks. Doctor Sasha Markhevka, sitting next to the driver, screamed and hit the windshield. A bullet in his hand span around blood vessels, went through a lung and out through the back. Bullets with an offset balance were used, they are banned under international law. Another ambulance made it through and helped the injured. On the way back, it was stopped by patrols and the injured were thrown out of the car. 7-8 hours were left before the curfew…At midnight, the order to unblock was given. Breaking the walls of the Salyan barracks, tanks and armored vehicles moved through the streets of the city, shooting at houses, crushing trucks and cars and leaving dozens of twisted corpses behind. Protesters scattered, a real hunt for them began… Houses were under fire, bullets were finding newer victims. That is how 15-year-old Vera Bessantina, a girl with amazing eyes who was writing poems, died that night.She was not the only child whose time came to an end. Coming out on the streets in the morning, Baku residents saw corpses on roads and sidewalks, heads and arms lying under their feet, blood over asphalt, on walls of houses. Helicopters were circling around the city, throwing leaflets. They said that a curfew had been imposed on Baku last night and the military were calling for peace. “It was done by the Russian army!” was the reaction. There was nothing surprising that threats towards Russians were heard in ships and on streets on January 20. The commandant’s office was in a hurry to organize an evacuation… soon, thousands of refugees appeared in Russian cities, speaking about the cruelty of Azerbaijanis and assuring that the military had entered the city to protect the Russians. It was just what the propaganda machine of Moscow needed, it hurried to announce that the forces in Baku had needed to interfere to prevent the Russian-speaking population of the city from being butchered. Yes, there were victims, several terrorists died, condolences to their families…The terrorists were Sasha Markhevka, Vera Bessantina (by the way, they were both Jews), 9-year-old Larisa, a Mrs Mamedova, and a boy whose corpse has never been identified.“Voices against Russians sounded here,” shouted an orator through the microphone, “But what have Russians got to do with that, not to mention Baku residents. The communists, they were the ones saving themselves last night, they were the ones the soldiers protected, they were responsible for what happened! Can honest people stay in the party of fascists after all that happened?” And people started throwing away their party membership cards then.To be conti
