Twenty-five years ago on 19th-20th January 1990 Soviet troops invaded the Azerbaijani capital Baku and opened fire on the civilians of the capital of Azerbaijan.
Troops invaded under the pretext of restraining the Popular Front, which had allegedly arranged pogroms on Armenians, but that night they fired on ordinary Bakuvians, including children. As a result, 132 people were killed, 612 were injured and 841 were illegally arrested.
Those responsible for this tragedy have not been punished: the investigation conducted by the Prosecutor General of the USSR found no corpus delicti in the actions of the military, no one especially liable for the deaths of Soviet citizens was found among those who gave the orders to shoot.
On December 20th 1990 the criminal case was dismissed. Later, Azerbaijan reopened the case under article "premeditated, aggravated murder", "deliberate destruction or damage to property" and "abuse of power", but the figures in these cases have fled Azerbaijan. So what was the cause of so many deaths in the peaceful Soviet city by the hands of their own army?
In an interview with Vestnik Kavkaza, former member of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan, ex-Deputy Interior Minister of Azerbaijan SSR Vladislav Shvetsov, and writer-historian Alexander Goryanin expressed the view that there were several reasons: the provocation of the "Popular Front" and the crime of the leadership of the USSR against their own people.
Shvetsov believes that Gorbachev's environment in those days was separatist (the secretary-general's advisor Abel Aganbegyan in late 1987 proposed withdrawing the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region from the Azerbaijani SSR and to convey it to the Armenian SSR ).
"It could be Gorbachev's provocation on wrong actions, he was a rather limited person in politics, and easily falls under the influence of the environment. Depending on who was around him and what thoughts they inspired, he could take a decision. In this case, the decision was unwise and was not in the line with the policy of the USSR," he said.
The Popular Front's behavior was provocative too. "They are blamed for these deaths too. The Popular Front said that it was protecting the interests of citizens, but brought people on to the streets just as the troops entered Baku. So two factors have formed: government policy was not built on a common, politically-correct decision, but on some underlying, personal one - and the Popular Front took advantage of the situation by doing everything to use such state errors to solve their individual problems. Neither side, apparently, was interested in the victims," Shvetsov concluded with regret.
