Tie

Soviet Armenia
the flash point
for the issue
of nationalities

No one ever said it was going to be easy.

When the CPSU launched the restructur-
ing drive exactly three years ago, it was
understood that many pressures and con-
tradictions had built up within Soviet
society which were set to burst into the
open. This, indeed, was welcomed as a
necessary — if painful — stage in the pro-
cess of healing and renewal.

However, as a somewhat chastened
Mikhail Gorbachev noted recently, some
problems have proved far tougher than
anticipated, and more shocks almost cer-
tainly lie ahead.

One of the biggest sources of worry is the
potential for up-
heaval among the
USSR’s more than
100 nationalities and
ethnic groups. Liv-
ing within a delicate
constitutional — arr-
angement that knits
together 15 full
republics, 20 auto-

From nomous republics
Moscow and 18 national dis-

tricts, vast changes
have transformed
Fred Weir the circumstances in

which all of these
people live during
the period of Soviet rule, altered their per-
ceptions and aspirations, but not altogether
eradicated traditional hostilities and rival-
ries. Perestroika has brought into the open
complex and often unpredictable realities.

Riots in Kazakhstan in December, 1986
revealed the intimate link between changes
in political structure and national self-
awareness. Demonstrations by Crimean
Tatars last summer reminded everyone that
many Tatars have neither forgotten nor
forgiven their deportation and the dissolu-
tion of their republic by Stalin in 1944. Con-
tinuing disturbances in the three Soviet
Baltic republics show that there as well peo-
ple have historical grievances spurred by
current fears of assimilation.

But perhaps no one could have guessed
that the most severe challenge would
emerge from the small Caucasian republic
of Armenia. An ancient land, with a long
and proud tradition of independence, civili-
zation and a unique brand of Christianity,
Armenia has adjusted very well to member-
ship in the USSR. Indeed, what is today
Soviet Armenia voluntarily annexed itself

to the Russian empire in 1828, and joined

again with Soviet Russia in 1920 — a move
which virtually all Armenians agree saved
their nation from total extinction at the
hands of the Turks.

The Armenian holocaust — the first
mass genocide of this terrible century — is
seared into the consciousness of every living
Armenian, and must be understood before
anything about the current situation will
make sense.

In 1915, in a methodical extermination
program, the Turkish army rounded up and
massacred about half the population of
Western Armenia — estimated around
four million souls — and drove the rest
into exile. Following the Russian revolu-
tion, and the collapse of Czarist power,
Turkey invaded Eastern Armenia as well,
where a further 300,000 were slaughtered.
Soviet power and the Red Army arrived, in
the minds of Armenians, as salvation.

Hence Armenians, both those living in

Soviet Armenia and in the far-flung dias-
pora, share an intense historical sensitivity
—a flash reaction to any nuance of
persecution — similar to that of the Jews,
with whom they are frequently compared.

But if Soviet power has provided guaran-
tees of national rights and equality of
peoples, it has also accelerated the processes
of migration and integration which bring
people into contact and friction with each
other. Here is where we find the focus of
current events.

The small and hitherto unknown enclave
of Nagorno (“mountainous”) Karabakh is
a national district with 76 per cent Armenian
population, located within the Turkic-
speaking culturally-Moslem republic of
Azerbaijan. Under the Soviet constitution,
the rights of such national districts are only
vaguely spelled out and they have no gua-
rantees of self-government. Administration
— police, education, medical services — is
entirely the responsibility of the constituent
republic within which it lies.

Over the past couple of weeks, the Soviet
press has dropped its superficial and
unhelpful approach, consisting mainly -of
platitudes about the rupture of “brotherly
and internationalist relations,” and begun
to describe some of the problems that trig-
gered the upheaval in that tiny territory.
The Armenian majority, as Pravda notes,
was subjected to “serious infringement of
national, linguistic and cultural rights.”

For example, notes Izvestia, a local
school had only two Armenian language
texts per 40 students. Courses in Armenian
history were banned. Azerbaijani authori-
ties cancelled construction of a TV relay
tower which would have enabled inhabit-
ants to pick up Armenian television broad-
casts. The list of economic complaints, says
Izvestia, “‘is endless.”

Things came to a head in late
February — apparently following a pro-
tracted dispute over the maintenance of
Armenian cultural monuments in the
territory — when the regional assembly
voted in favour of detaching Nagorno
Karabakh from Azerbaijan and joining it to
Armenia,

Moscow, which is with good reason wary
of setting any precedents of this kind, said
no.

Demonstrations erupted, in Nagorno
Karabakh’s capital of Stepanakert first, but
spread rapidly to Yerevan, capital of Soviet
Armenia. At their height, the demonstra-
tions included as much as half the republic’s
population of 3.1 million, by some esti-
mates. These protests — by all accounts
peaceful and well-ordered — lasted almost
a week, until a personal appeal from Mik-
hail Gorbachev prompted them to disperse.

In Azerbaijan, false rumours of Armen-
ian atrocities against Azerbaijanis in
Nagorno Karabakh fanned ancient antag-
onisms and produced a bitter fallout. In the
new industrial city of Sumgait, near Baku,
young hoodlums rampaged in what can
only have been an anti-Armenian pogrom
and 32 people died. Thousands of Armen-
ians fled Azerbaijan.

Last week Pravda described Sumgait’s
mayor, V. Gadjiev, inspecting damaged
buildings in his riot-torn city, weeping and
wringing his hands. ‘Houses can be
repaired after a storm, “he said, “but how
can you ever repair human souls?”

Sumgait has sent shock-waves through
the entire country. Azerbaijanis, on the

DEMONSTRATION IN YEREVAN,
GORBACHEV (inset) ... upheaval has
demonstrated that many problems rela-
ting to USSR’s numerous nationalities
have still to be resolved.

whole, seem humiliated by what has hap-
pened. Armenians are terrified. In an emo-
tional over-reaction — remember their his-
tory — somecan be heard to say, “it’s 1915
all over again.”

Although the situation is now relatively
calm — curfews and heavy police presence
remain — no easy solutions will soon be
found, and the pain of these events will be a
long time healing.

Last week, the USSR Council of Minis-
ters announced a new deal for Nagorno
Karabakh, which involves stepped-up eco-
nomic development, linguistic and cultural
protection, but no new status.

Although the Soviet leadership has not
ruled out possible alterations in the map at
some point, they are clearly unwilling to
focus the issue on this. In the USSR minori-
ties live everywhere, and if the floodgates
are opened for settling old grudges and ter-
ritorial disputes, there might be no end to it.

“The most important thing,” argues
Armenian historian Sergei Artunov, “‘is to
provide full constitutional rights for every

& /f Soviet power has provided
guarantees of national rights and
equality of peoples, it has also
accelerated the processes of
migration and integration which
bring people into contact and
friction with each other.

Soviet citizen wherever he or she lives.
There are more Armenians living in
Baku — capital of Azerbaijan — than in
Nagorno Karabakh. Shall we attach them
to Armenia?”

The CPSU now admits that Soviet
nationalities policy requires a major over-
haul. Lenin’s flexible case-by-case approach
became, in past decades, lost in Stalinist
rigidity and his frequent warnings against
rushing or forcing solutions were forgotten.

“The worst thing is that we declared the
national problem solved in 1936,” says Yuri
Bromlei, director of Moscow’s Institute of
Ethnography. “Once we did that, we abol-
ished all agencies whose job was to deal with
national questions, and essentially made it a
taboo topic.”

A full plenary meeting of the CPSU Cen-

tral Committee will soon be convened to
start correcting this, he said.

It is important to recognize not only what
the current problems are, but also what they
are not. However emotion-charged the
demonstrations in Armenia might have
been, there was not the slightest shade of
anti-Sovietism visible in them. Not once was
an even muted demand for national separa-
tion heard. This cannot be dismissed as tac-
tics, it reflects the profound belief among
Armenians that their best future lies within
the Soviet context. The current situation
may represent a very tough challenge to
perestroika in one sense, but on the other
hand the behaviour of Armenians indicates
a mass vote of confidence in the process.

Another dimension needs to be noted.
Last June, the Central Committee of the
CPSU launched a blistering attack against
corruption, nepotism and stagnation in the
leadership of the Armenian Communist
Party. In January, just before these events
broke, Pravda renewed the attack with
greater urgency. It is fully possible that, as in
Kazakhstan 16 months ago, opportunistic
elements are manipulating national grie-
vances to secure their own positions.

The point is, all of this is occurring within
the broader context of the struggle for per-
estroika. Friends and opponents are not
always who they seem to be. There are no
simple interpretations. It is clear, however,
that the fate of perestroika hinges upon the
resolution in a new way of these problems.
Already in Moscow, beneath the surface,
voices can be heard muttering, “Brezhnev
never would have let this happen.”

However, as Sergei Artunov points out,
Brezhnev is to a large extent responsible:
“We must remember,” he says, “that any
kind of injustice — and during the Stalin
era and the Brezhnev years of stagnation
there was considerable injustice — no mat-
ter how widespread and general it may be, is
always viewed by small nations through the
prism of nationality, and seen as a particu-
lar offence against them. We are now faced
with an accumulation of these.

“In our country we are trying to restruc-
ture every aspect of life. What is our goal: to
re-make national boundaries or to ensure a
better life and full rights for all? No Armen-
ian can be indifferent to this”.

Pacific Tribune, April 6, 1988 « 9

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