Kremlin launches witchhunt against
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Stalin's purges both at the end of the 1930s and at the beginning of the 1950s, and that there was no question now of any repression like that. "As a Marxist historian, I assure you that there are neither any political, economic or social bases for such suppositions. I am deeply convinced that the Communists of the republic will be able to deal in a Leninist way with what occurred in
Opera Square."
"Healthy class instincts prevailed"
While the "taboo" was broken about
THE GENERAL STRIKE in Stepankert was finally over,
Pravda reported April 7. The article began by noting, "the first workweek in the Stepankert electrotechnical plant began with unencouraging results - 1.8 million rubles, that is how much the plant owes the government. That is the price of the absenteeism related to the events around Nagorno Karabakh.
It would have been less if everyone had gone to work
Monday. But despite the decision of the plenum of the city party committee, at its start this week could be hardly be called a workweek.
"On Monday, only 30% of the workers showed up, on
Tuesday, 60%. Only on Wednesday was all the workforce there." Thus, by the Soviet Communist Party organ's own account the protest strike in the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh, a town of about 35,000 inhabitants, had lasted nearly two weeks.
It was an unprecedented act of defiance of the Kremlin rulers, and can only be compared with the mass resistance to
Soviet occupation in Hungary and Czechoslovakia.
GERRY FOLEY
HE PROTESTS in the Armenian republic itself are harder to measure because the leaders had called for passive protests, a stayat-home on Saturday, March 26. The Armenian capital of Yerevan was occupied by special police and military units, including a large number of troops from other republics. Nonetheless, the response in Pravda indicated that the Soviet authorities were
On April 2, Pravda published its first long article on the protests since the March 21 article that rejected the demands of the movement. It was an interview by A. Chernenko, a "special correspondent" in Yerevan, with an Armenian academician,
Gevorg Bagratovich Garibdzhanian. The article was obviously designed to offer a balanced response to the Armenian events, and to cover some holes that had been made in the promises of perestroika.
Chernenko asked: "In discussing the maintenance of order, I would like to touch on a question that in many people's minds
International Viewpoint #139 • April 18, 1988 is still taboo. I am talking about the MVD [Ministry of the Interior] detachments that arrived in Yerevan to assure order. Police forces were concentrated in the city. Some nights, there were even military patrols."
No problem! Garibdzhanian assured him. He could understand why they were necessary: "In the first place remember that I am a veteran of the front lines [in the second world war]. I know that a concentration of people in a limited area can lead to things that an unexperienced person would not think of. Let's call things by their right name. Were provocations possible in those days? Undoubtedly.... Frankly, I slept more soundly, knowing that our soldiers were in the city - I stress, our soldiers."
One might wonder why Garibdzhanian needed to stress "our soldiers." But he also said: "Let us ask each other some questions. Was anybody arrested? Where any general searches carried out? Was there any shooting?"
Garibdzhanian concluded his remarks by stressing that his family had suffered in speaking of the Soviet troops sent into the city, there was an odd omission in the discussion. Before raising this theme, Chernenko had asked about the material losses caused by the protests. Garibdzhanian answered that they were indeed terrible, but that the "worst thing that could have happened on the square was a discrediting of the ideas of perestroika and glasnost.... And the Yerevan workers understood that well. The date on the anonymous leaflets, March 26, was not observed. Healthy class instincts prevailed."
The obvious question of whether there might have been some connection between the "concentration of police forces" in Yerevan and the "healthy class instinct" that kept the Yerevan workers off the streets was not raised.
Nonetheless, the Armenian academic did make a certain justification of the reactions of the Armenians. Chernenko had begun the interview by dividing the protesters into sheep and goats: "The sincerity of some is unquestionable, as is the attempt of others to exploit the wave of emotion. Others simply became disoriented:
Garibdzhanian replied: "I support the idea that some were sincere and that others were distressed and politically disoriented." He went onto say offer an explanation that would be normal enough for a bourgeois sociologist but was rather peculiar for a self-proclaimed Marxist historian. "The events in Yerevan are a classical example of how people with completely different motivations can be brought together by one common idea." Any mass action is like that, as was the Russian revolution.
But in this case, people had been saved from this quicksand of unity by a wise word in time from Gorbachev: "It is not surprising that the statement of the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, M.S. Gorbachev quickly made an impact on the hearts and minds of people." On the other hand, "a series of one-sided reports in the papers, both in the central and the local press, aroused only irritation and whipped up emotions."
The problem was that "great masses of the people thought that what they were doing was in the spirit of perestroika. Although in unusual form, a debate was going on. And the answer was the old labels."
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Armenian protest leaders
Here there was a clash between the two. Chernenko argued that strikes had nothing to do with glasnost and perestroika. Garibdzhanian said that democracy included the right to "make mistakes." Later on, the Armenian stressed that the debate would continue, and that there had been Communist Party members in the crowds of
The academician's basic explanation of the protests was that they were touched off by a long accumulation of economic and social deficiencies: "On the square it wasn't just people that gathered. Hundreds of questions gathered there, which at one time or another a secretary of some district, or a director of a factory or a leader of a district social security service did not
Once again, it is hardly an original idea for a Marxist that all sorts of grievances come together in mass explosions. But Garibdzhanian's approach seemed to be following a common line set by the Gorbachev leadership of dissolving the specific political grievance of the Armenians into a whole body of social and economic
Concessions could lead to other problems
In that way, it can answer that perestroika will eventually solve such problems, and here and now it can offer specific limited measures such as new investment, restoration of Armenian historical monuments in Nagorno-Karabakh, providing more Armenian textbooks and so on. In this way, it can avoid having to respond to the big political questions raised by the protests — the nature of decision making in the USSR, the relations among the nations and nation-
This is not to say that even such concessions cannot lead to other problems, especially in a situation where Armenian claims are counterposed to those of the authorities of a Turkish republic. Whatever the difficulties with Armenian books, after all, there is Armenian literature available. In the case of the Turkish peoples of the USSR, book publishing is strictly a token affair. In practice, virtually nothing is
The next major article in Pravda, published on April 4, was more official, as indicated by its title, "Instigators: once again on the events in Nagorno-Karabakh and around it," which placed the piece directly in the continuity of the March 21 article. One of its two authors, G. Ovcharenko, also signed the previous article, as a "special correspondent" of Pravda. It made little effort to defend the democratic pretences of perestroika. The "old labels" were flung with a vengeance, although it seemed to be beating the drums only for selective repression.
The article denounced both Armenians and Azerbaidzhanis for failing to trust the
Soviet press. It accused them of falling victim to false reports from the Western radio stations designed to wipe up national antagonisms. Examples of fantastic rumors were cited with the obvious aim of portraying Armenians and
Azerbaidzhanis as gullible, addled by nationalistic
Blame was focused on Parouir Airikian, leader of the
Union for National Self-
Determination; and Sergei
Grigoriants, editor of the barely tolerated independent journal Glasnost. Airikian's group played a vanguard role in organizing the protests.
Grigoriants reported on the events to the Soviet dissident movement and to the West-
The attack on Airikian was in tune with traditions of the
Stalinist press and the sort of pilloring engaged in by the right-wing gutter press as well. "Parouir Airikian, a man of about forty, who has never worked anywhere, with a beard on his puffy face. He has usually preferred to stay in the shadows, hiding behind people he has
Nonetheless, since his youth he has been quarrels. He pushed others onto the criminal road, and finally ended up in the dock himself. [He spent 17 years
Leader jailed twice for
"anti-Soviet activity"
"This self-proclaimed leader was twice called before the bar of criminal justice for anti-Soviet activity and once for bribing an official. Released from prison in early
1987, Airikian kept quiet. He concealed himself. He took a wait-and-see position.
However, it has become clear that he has not renounced his old schemes. Changing only his tactics, he presented himself as a supporter of democratization and glasnost."
Airikian was said to have become a collaborator of Grigoriants, "whose biography is similar. More than once sentenced for speculating in antiques and anti-Soviet activity, he also hides behind the mask of a defender of democracy and glasnost, but in fact is continuing to engage in subversive
At the moment, Grigoriants was said to be trying to defend Airikian who "has been arrested, along with some of his co- thinkers from among the most active instigators of national discord...He is bandying
USSR about the idea of forming some sort of committee in the country to defend his cothinker Airikian. But problems have already developed in the selection of the committee members. Because Grigoriants has not changed his spots and is trying to form such a committee in the West....
"Grigoriants and his ilk know very well that their irresponsible statements helped to whip up passions and emotions. In fact, by spreading slanderous fabrications with the help of the Western press, they carried nationalist moods to extremism. In that way, they provoked people to collective absenteeism from work, boycotting studies, to actions that disorganized normal life."
The article also took a swipe at I. Muradian, the other main leader of the protests, who was accused of advising people not to pay any attention to the Soviet media. It was obviously launching a witchhunt against the leaders of the actions. Given the contradictions of Gorbachev's policy, revealed by Pravda itself, it is not clear how far this will go. It certainly seems, in these circumstances, that progressive and working-class public opinion in the West could have an effect in restraining victimization of the Armenian leaders. * April 18, 1988 • #139 International Viewpoint
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