Insurrection in
USSR als and fanaticized unemployed."
The Front in fact has a contradictory history, and has acted in a contradictory way in the latest crisis. The Azerbaijani republic government was one of the most reluctant to recognize "informal" organizations. The Front was only recognized after the general strike of September 4, 1989. It has been in conflict with the
THE "peace operation" launched by Gorbachev touched off uprisings in Azerbaijan. The occupation of Baku by the Soviet army on the night of January 19-20 is estimated to have resulted in the deaths of 500 people, far more than all those reported killed in the communalist outrages of the past year.
In Le Monde of January 21, Bernard Guetta reported: "In only one of the city's [Baku] hospitals, a hundred deaths and many casualties were reported. 'They keep coming. What is happening here is horrible,' a clerk said in tears. For the first time, blood has flowed as a result of an order by Gorbachev."
GERRY FOLEY
HE POGROMS against Armeni-
T an residents of the republic and the blindly chauvinist blockade of
Armenia, still suffering from the effects of last December's earthquake, are what made it politically possible for Moscow to launch a general crackdown against all mobilizations and independent organizations in Azerbaijan. This was a predictable outcome of the chauvinist campaign against Armenia and Armenians by the
Azeri Popular Front.
American government backs crackdown
The American big capitalist press months ago noted that the Caucasus was the only place that Gorbachev could use military force without destroying the credibility of his reform program. The same thing has enabled the American government to openly back Gorbachev's crackdown. US State Department spokesperson
Margaret Tutwiler announced: "We obviously recognize the right of self-defense for those who try to contain acts of violence." (Libération, January 20).
The Soviet operation was not confined to defending the lives of threatened Arme-
"emergency"
nians.
The measures announced in Pravda of January 16 included: "Banning meetings, rallies, marches, demonstrations and also theatrical performances, sporting events and other public gatherings, supervision of the mass media...Banning strikes; imposing a curfew, limiting entry and exit of citizens [to and from the territories concerned]; provisional expulsion of citizens from dangerous territories, offering them other accommodation ....Restricting or banning the use of... radio and TV equipment;
introducing special rules for communication." These measures involved putting an entire people in a straitjacket. They were met with massive resistance.
Two days after proclamation of the emergency measures, January 18, Guetta described the situation as follows: "Nothing moved in Baku... We learned not only that the siege of the Central Committee building [in Baku] was continuing but that the strike was spreading, which kept the newspapers from coming out and interrupted Azerbaijani radio and TV broadcasts."
Baku population resists
Soviet army
Azeri Popular Front leaders claimed that Moscow's intervention has been met with a general insurrection in Baku. A spokesperson for the Popular Front was quoted by Agence France-Presse as saying: "There is firing everywhere. The population is trying to block the way by setting up cars across the roadway. All our people are in the street." Fuad Agayev, a spokesperson of the Azeri nationalist Council of National Defense, claimed that the Communist Party had lost control of the republic: "We control the situation all over the republic. Our checkpoints are on duty on all roads. The absolute majority of the people follow the orders of the Popular Front." (International Herald Tribune, January 20).
Guetta described revolutionary takeovers by the Front: "The capital of Azerbaijan was no longer in a situation of dual power. As in Lenkoran, another city of the republic whose authorities were thrown out pure and simple by the local section of the Front on January 11, Baku was led by the nationalists, by the various tendencies of the Front including liberals, fundamentalists, Westernized intellectuauthorities since its inception, and clearly had mass support. Its program includes many of the same national-democratic demands as those of the other Popular Fronts. It was not the Front, but the Azeri authorities, with the backing of the neo-Stalinist wing of the Soviet CP leadership, that started the chauvinist campaign against the Armenians. (See /V 172)
The mass demonstrations encouraged by the authorities got out of hand, and the Front rode the wave of national feeling. There are, in fact, far more important motives for such sentiments than the question of the small territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. The Azeris, like the other peoples of Muslim tradition, suffer from severe national oppression.
Pogroms create pretext for
Moscow's intervention
The Armenians, seen as historic allies of the Russians, were simply an easier target. The Front leadership did not try to resist this drift. That would, in any case, have been very difficult. In failing to do that, it got itself caught in a trap. The antiArmenian outrages created the political conditions for Moscow to intervene and smash the challenge to its authority. There are reports of attempts by the Front to restrain the attacks on Armenians. But the atmosphere it fostered by focusing its fire against Armenia, against the aspirations of an entire people, made communalist attacks and outrages unavoidable.
This error was not inevitable. Other national-democratic leaderships have avoided such a trap. The Ukrainian Helsinki Committee, for example, solidarized with the demand of the Crimean Tatars to return to Crimea, hardly a less important territory than Nagorno-Karabakh. Birlik, the Uzbek popular front, denounced the pogroms against the Meskhetian Turks.
In their blindness, the Azeri Front leaders put their people and their movement and all the mass democratic movements in the USSR in jeopardy by allowing a situation in which it appeared that only the arbitrary use of state power could prevent outrages.
In fact, as Guetta reported, the Soviet commanders negotiated with the Front to get agreement for some patrols to move. But there is no indication that Soviet authorities tried to negotiate with it to assure protection of Armenians. Ultimately, there is no solution for the conflict between these peoples except dialogue and negotiation between their chosen representatives. *
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Azerbaijan
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