Deepening of movement against national oppression
International Viewpoint #148 • October 3, 1988
USSR
T HE NEW UPSURGE of demon-
strations and strikes by Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh and in the Armenian SSR seems to have been provoked by attempts by the Azerbaijani authorities to resettle Azerbaijanis in the disputed territory. About 2,000 Azerbaijanis leaving the Armenian SSR were reportedly encouraged to settle in Nagor-
Since the autonomous oblast' has a total population of only about 170,000, resettlement of even this first group would significantly change the ethnic composition of the territory. Armenians still make up about 75% of the population, but under Azerbaijani rule, the proportion has been steadily declining. According to Sergei Grigoriantz, editor of the unofficial magazine Glasnost in Moscow, the Azerbaijani authorities allotted three million rubles for resettling their compatriots in Nagorno-Karabakh.
Strikes resumed in Stepanakert, the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh, at the end of the second week in September. But this time they were apparently more or less limited to that city and in support of immediate demands. The most important was that the resettlement policy be ended. Others were an end to proceedings against Armenians involved in the previous protests. The protestors also demanded an end to what they considered discriminatory investigations of economic corruption by Azerbaijani police aimed against Armenians. Protests "encouraged by corrupt officials"
Since the start of the Armenian protests, the Soviet central authorities have consistently tried to suggest that corrupt officials afraid of perestroika are encouraging them. When Pravda began finally to report the new wave of unrest on September 20, it took the same tack:
"At the same time, it must not be forgotten that the process of recovery that has been going in Armenia and Azerbaijan is obviously not to the liking of those involved in corruption, bribe-taking and robbery. Fearing exposure, they are trying to draw attention away from today's problems of perestroika and the real struggle with negative phenomena, and to concentrate it entirely on questions of national relations, using any pretext to whip up nationalistic passions."
The article ended with the argument: "Further deepening of socialist democracy 28 of the lev, as will as sivic anse social is inconceivable without strict observance
WITH MORE THAN
800,000 demonstrators flooding Erevan, the Armenian national movement has incredibly become even more massive. The great rally of
September 22, moreover, was preceded by a new round of smaller but still massive demonstrations that showed a radicalization of the movement, expressed by a more and more widespread raising of the slogan of "independence."
Nearly a third of the entire population of the Armenian
Soviet Socialist Republic united in effect to demand national survival and a national future for the Armenian people.
### GERRY FOLEY discipline."
This argument implies two types of threat. First, the people behind these protests are fundamentally corrupt, and will be dealt with as such. Secondly, if you want reforms, you must not have anything to do with these protests.
After the July 18 Supreme Soviet decision rejecting the Armenian demands, it was clear that the Moscow was going on the offensive to reconsolidate the Armenian and Nagorno-Karabakh Communist parties as instruments of its policy and to build a wall between the leadership of the protests and "responsible elements." The new upsurge of protests has, at least for the time being, shattered this attempt.
In fact, Gorbachev himself has apparently been forced to try to appeal to, and presumably negotiate with, the leaders of the formally banned Karabakh Committee, and even the exiled hard-line nationalist leader Parouir Airikyan. Visiting the US the Soviet foreign minister met for a halfhour with the anathematized nationalist leader.
"It was learned yesterday," Libération's Moscow correspondent, Pierre Briançon, wrote in the September 24 issue of the Paris daily "that Mikhail Gorbachev personally appealed to members of the Karabakh Committee, asking them to use their influence to calm the population in Erevan. This appeal reportedly came on Monday when a delegation from the committee was received by the first secretary of the Armenian Communist Party, Suren Aroutiounian. Since Gorbachev was on the phone to the Armenian leader at the time, he asked him to transmit his request to the committee present in the office."
Soviet authorities fear resort to direct repression
The Karabakh Committee, on the other hand, reportedly responded by saying that it could not calm the people without "guarantees" from the central government.
Moscow sent troops into both Nagorno-Karabakh and the Armenian SSR and decreed a curfew in Stepanakert and the Agdam region. But in the face of such a massive mobilization, it cannot resort to direct repression without an extremely dangerous confrontation. A TASS dispatch in the September 22 Pravda quoted a statement by A.I. Volski, a representative of the Central Committee of the CPSU and of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet sent to the territory:
"Unauthorized rallies and marches have been held. An attack was provoked on the local prosecutor's office. Insults against the organs of power have been permitted. There have been instances of denigration of the honor of MVD [Ministry of the Interior] public order Police workers maintaining soldiers and
In Erevan, Western correspondents have reported that the security forces have not tried to intervene in the protests, and that non-Armenian soldiers and police have not been in evidence.
Not only have the Armenian protests become even more massive, they are less and less isolated. Proportionally the September 11 rally of 300,000 people in Tallin, the Estonian capital, where many speakers called for independence, was as large as the September 22 one in Erevan. And representatives of the Karabakh Committee have been appearing in the Baltic demonstrations. There are also important signs of stirrings in Ukraine. Clearly, a major movement is developing against national oppression. *