MASS MOBILIZATIONS resumed at the end of May in the
Armenian capital of Yerevan and in the Armenian-majority territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. The new upsurge was sparked by statements by the top Kremlin conservative, Egor
Ligachev, which touched off a general strike in
Nagorno-Karabakh and led to a demonstration of hundreds of thousands of people in Yerevan.
GERRY FOLEY
T
HE TEMPERATURE started to rise rapidly again in Armenia in connection with the trial of 80 people accused of participating in the February 28 anti-Armenian pogrom in the Azerbaidzhani city of Sumgait. On
May 18, a demonstration took place in the
Azerbaidzhani capital of Baku calling for leniency for the Sumgait defendants.
According to an eye-witness who talked to Agence France Presse, "Hands off Karabakh!" and "Azerbaidzhan for the Azeris!" were among the main slogans. The witness also claimed that police opened the way for the demonstrators to march to the offices of the Azerbaidzhan republic.
Following the demonstration, film of it was shown on Azerbaidzhani TV, although Armenian TV has never shown pictures of the Armenian demonstrations.
The Azerbaidzhan Minister of Foreign
Affairs reported on the demonstration, which it said included 100,000 people and claimed to be in response to the burning of an Azerbaidzhani home in the Armenian
On May 19, there was a demonstration in Yerevan demanding severe penalties in the Sumgait trial. On May 20, a delegation of Armenian notables went to Moscow to demand an "objective" trial for the Sumgait defendants.
Les Nouvelles de Moscou, the international showcase of glasnost, ackowledged that the least that could be said about the
Azerbaidzhan authorities' performance during the Sumgait riots was the police had been "inactive."
On the weekend of May 21-22, the secretaries of both the Azerbaidzhani and
Armenian CPs, Kyamran Bagirov and
Karen Demirchian, were retired
Moscow sent two top-ranking envoys to the two republics. Its choice of representatives suggested that the conflict in the
Caucasus might have become involved in the struggle between the reform and con-
International Viewpoint #143 • June 13, 1988 servative wings in the all-Union CP. The representative sent to Azerbaidzhan was Yegor Ligachev, the leading figure of the conservatives. The Politburo delegate sent to Armenia was Aleksandr Yakovlev, a leading reform figure.
It was the brutal rejection of the Armenian national demands by Ligachev that set the powderkeg alight. Minutes of the Azerbaidzhan CC plenum held at the end of the third week in May reached the Armenian protestors. According to the transcript, Genrikh Borossian, secretary of the Nagorno-Karabakh CP, asked the Kremlin's number two:
"In these circumstances, how do you see the national future of Nagorno-Karabakh." settled. Forget all that." Borossian then asked; "Am I authorized to report your position to the people and press in Nagorno-
"Your task is to calm people down"
The conservative leader expressed outrage at that, supported by the other participants in the meeting. He answered. "Your only task is to calm them down as best you can." (Quoted by Basile Karlinsky in Libération May 30.) The leak of Ligachev's remarks touched off the general strike in Stepanakert on May 23.
Apparently, the mood of protest among the Armenians had been deepening since the rejection of the demands of the protest movement in February and March. The poet Silva Kapoutikyan, a moderate Armenian spokesperson, tried to submit a letter to Pravda on April 5 in response to an article in the March 25 issue rejecting the Armenian national claims. Pravda refused to publish it.
In the last week of May, copies of Kapoutikyan's open letter reached Paris. It was quoted by Basile Karlinsky in Libéraexpressed her disillusion in the most dramatic terms. She compared the Armenian protests to the demonstration organized by priests in 1905 to loyally petition the Czar:
"The people of Karabakh first, and then of Armenia, set out marching toward the Winter Palace, that is Lenin Square in Stepanakert and Opera Square in Yerevan, thinking that the central power would understand us and extend its hand. We marched with slogans of confidence in the land of socialism, in the Russian people, in perestroika, carrying pictures of the general secretary of the CPSU, MS Gorbachev. But they opened fire on us."
Illegal flag displayed by marchers
On May 28, the anniversary of the proclamation of the independent Armenian republic in 1918, the first mass demonstration since March took place in Yerevan. Reportedly, 50,000 people came out, led by representatives of the Union for National Self-Determination. onstration, according to Basile Karlinsky,
Also for the first time, the flag of the independent republic, illegal in the USSR, was displayed by the marchers "at first timidly and then massively." The demonstration also called for the release of the Union's leader, Parouir Airikian, who was
The police reportedly did not interfere with the demonstration, except to prevent the use of a central sound system. The first secretary of the city CP committee, Levon Saharian, tried to speak to the crowd, but was able to only after Union for National Self-Determination leader Movses Gorgissian called on the demonstrators to respect
The authorities seemed to be restraining themselves. Some arrests of demonstrators in Nagorno-Karabakh were reported, but two Union for National Self-Determination leaders, Gorgissian and Meralh Abraelian, were reportedly released after being fined
At the demonstration of hundreds of thousands in Yerevan on May 30, I. Muradian, leader of the dissolved Karabakh Committees, reportedly called for giving the Soviet authorities another 100 days to come up with a solution. At the same time, he is said to have threatened an Armenian general strike if a satisfactory solution is not found. *
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