EYEWITNESS TESTIMONY OF THE MASSACRE AND DEPORTATION

History

OF THE ARMENIAN POPULATION FROM BAKU, JANUARY 1990

January 1990

Much has seemingly been written about the events in Baku. Yet they could not be silenced, unlike the bloody drama in Sumgait, or the mass Armenian pogroms of 1988 in Kirovabad, Nakhichevan, Shamkhor, Khanlar, Kazakh, Sheki, and Mingechaur. In terms of the number of victims, the duration, and the scale of the violence—especially in their consequences for Soviet reality—these events were unparalleled.

They proved fatal for the fate of nearly a million Azerbaijanis and Armenians, as well as thousands of Russians, who suddenly became refugees and deportees in their own country, for many years to come. And yet, official information about the weeks-long pogroms, violence, countless murders, the rampant rise of Muslim nationalism, and the assault on the constitutional order was presented in a muted, filtered manner. The essence of what was in fact a state coup was carefully concealed behind lamentations about “persistent interethnic strife.”

The truth about Baku’s events, once known, plunges one into moral and spiritual shock. Even eyewitness accounts of those January days pointed not only to their deliberate place in the chain of nationalist, anti-Armenian confrontations, but also to the opposition’s preparation for an armed anti-Soviet constitutional coup in Azerbaijan—its true ideologues and organizers—and the belated measures taken by the Soviet leadership to prevent it.

Throughout 1989, the so-called democratic opposition hardened itself by deliberately creating instability in Baku and across the republic. It moved from sporadic acts of terror against the Armenian population to organizational consolidation and centralized control of its nationalist movement. In July, the Azerbaijani Popular Front was formed, with branches soon opening in many cities and districts of the republic.

With the support of Turkish pan-Turkist organizations—the Musavat Nationalist Party, the People’s Democratic Party of Turan, the Azerbaijani Cultural Society, the Kars Cultural Society, the terrorist far-right extremist and neo-fascist group “Grey Wolves,” the National Movement Party, and others—a network of nationalist agents and pan-Turkist organizations spread across Azerbaijan. Their activities in fueling extremism echoed the slogans of Azerbaijani nationalists from 1918–1920: “Death to Armenians,” “Azerbaijan for Azerbaijanis,” “Union with brotherly Turkey,” “For Greater Turan.”

The major cities—Baku, Sumgait, Mingechaur—were divided into districts for organizing provocations, riots, pogroms, and resistance against law enforcement and the army. The scenarios of Sumgait and subsequent events were used to train new ranks of pogromists.

The unrest in Baku was carefully prepared by the Popular Front. On New Year’s Eve 1990, crowds destroyed the state border with Iran (stretching nearly 800 kilometers). On January 11, mass pogroms of Armenians began in Baku. Around 40 groups, each numbering between 50 and 300 people, took part. Complete anarchy reigned. The police were powerless. Fifty-nine people were killed (42 of them Armenians), and about 300 were wounded.

By early January, power in Baku belonged entirely to the Popular Front. For more than a month, Armenian apartments were attacked, accompanied by murders, violence, and looting. Cases of violence against Russian residents, military families, and their forced eviction from apartments increased.

One of thousands of anti-Russian outrages committed by Azerbaijanis intoxicated by the nationalist Islamist propaganda of the Popular Front at the end of 1989 was described by Elena Gennadyevna Semeryakova—then the wife of a Soviet officer, now a member of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation and chair of the national organization Women’s Dialogue:

“We, Russians, Soviet citizens, found ourselves at the end of 1989 surrounded by Muslim populations in Soviet Azerbaijan, in what felt like a true occupation. No food, no water, no electricity. For me, a pregnant woman with two children, it was a terrifying reality: complete defenselessness and helplessness, when at any moment armed Azerbaijanis could come, kill, rob, do whatever they wanted.”

She recalled hiding two Armenian children—a boy and a girl, the same age as her own sons—whose father had been killed by Azerbaijanis, while their mother’s fate was unknown.

On January 13, a rally of 150,000 people was held. Afterward, crowds of pogromists, led by Popular Front activists, chanting anti-Armenian slogans, went through addresses taken from duplicated lists and began expelling Armenians from their homes. Bandits broke into apartments and houses, threw Armenians from balconies, burned them alive on pyres, subjected them to barbaric torture, dismembered some, raped girls, women, and elderly women. For seven days, the orgy of rapists, looters, and murderers continued unchecked. Those who escaped death were forcibly deported.

Thousands of Armenians were shipped by ferry across the Caspian Sea to Krasnovodsk in the Turkmen SSR, and from there flown to Armenia. According to Interior Ministry reports—likely understated—by January 19, 60 Armenians had been killed in Baku, about 200 wounded, and 13,000 expelled from the city.

The deportations were organized and supervised by Popular Front activists. The pattern was the same: first, a crowd of 10–20 people burst into an apartment and beat the Armenians. Then a representative of the Popular Front appeared, usually with documents already prepared for an “exchange” or supposed “sale” of the apartment. The family was ordered to leave immediately and head to the port. They were allowed to take belongings, but money, jewelry, and savings books were confiscated. At the port, Popular Front pickets searched the refugees, sometimes beating them again.

Azerbaijani law enforcement not only stood idle but often participated in the pogroms and looting. Feeling impunity, the pogromists began attacking Russians and Russian-speakers as well, forcing them to leave the republic en masse. Yet, as in Sumgait and Kirovabad, there were Azerbaijanis who, at great personal risk, saved their Armenian friends, neighbors, and even strangers.

On the night of January 20, Soviet troops were finally sent into Baku by order of Moscow. This saved thousands of lives, though the operation was extremely difficult.

At a closed session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on February 29, 1990, Defense Minister Yazov, Interior Minister Bakatin, and KGB Chairman Kryuchkov presented facts about the massacre and carnage in Baku, carried out by nationalist extremists. The report on the slaughter and deportation of Armenians from Azerbaijan was merely “taken into account,” while attempts by nationalist forces to stage a coup and armed resistance to the army received no proper assessment.

Thus, under the label of “Events in Baku, January 20,” the Soviet leadership effectively concealed from its people that these Muslim demonstrations were accompanied by unprecedented killings and pogroms, mass forced deportations of Armenians and Russians, and brutal armed resistance to Soviet troops. Moscow’s guilt was evident. In no other country would authorities have allowed such pogroms to go unpunished. The Soviet leadership did not intervene until the very existence of Soviet power in Azerbaijan was at stake, and the republic was on the verge of secession. Only the entry of troops into Baku on the night of January 20 halted the bloody orgy and restored constitutional order in the republic.

V. Krivopuskov, “Rebellious Karabakh. From the Diary of a USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs Officer.” 2nd edition. Moscow, 2007, pp. 213–231.

RESOLUTION OF THE SUPREME SOVIET OF THE ARMENIAN SSR

“On Declaring Illegal the Decision of the Caucasian Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP(b) of July 5, 1921”

Yerevan, February 13, 1990

Proceeding from the fact that Nagorno-Karabakh–Artsakh is an inseparable part of Armenia and has never belonged to Azerbaijan, and that in 1918–1921 Nagorno-Karabakh existed independently and possessed its own statehood through the People’s Government of the region and the Armenian National Council;

Proceeding from the circumstance that the fate of Nagorno-Karabakh was determined by the arbitrary decision of an unconstitutional and unauthorized party body—the Caucasian Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP(b) on July 5, 1921—which was adopted by an entity lacking the right to participate in the national-state construction of another republic, and which therefore constituted a gross act of interference in the internal affairs of another sovereign Soviet republic, thereby trampling upon the principles of the right of nations to self-determination, disregarding the will of the Armenian population of the region (comprising 95 percent), as well as that of the population of Soviet Armenia;

Basing itself on the right of nations to free self-determination, on the decision of the meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the RCP(b) of July 7, 1920, held under the chairmanship of V.I. Lenin, according to which the fate of Nagorno-Karabakh was to be decided by the ethnic composition of its population and its will; on the Decree of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic of June 12, 1921, which, on the basis of the Declaration of the Azerbaijani Revolutionary Committee and the agreement concluded between the governments of the socialist republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan, proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh an inseparable part of the Soviet Republic of Armenia;

Noting that the right of the Armenian population of Nagorno-Karabakh to free self-determination was also recognized by the decision of November 30, 1920, and the Declaration of December 1, 1920, of the Revolutionary Committee of the Azerbaijani SSR;

Unwaveringly defending the principles of the right of nations to self-determination, enshrined in the Treaty on the Formation of the USSR and the Constitution of the USSR as the foundation of interethnic relations in the multinational Soviet state,

The Supreme Soviet of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic hereby resolves:

The decision of the Caucasian Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP(b) of July 5, 1921, concerning Nagorno-Karabakh—by which the right of the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh to self-determination was violated, part of the territory of the Armenian SSR was annexed, and the Armenian people were divided into two parts—is to be considered devoid of legal force, lacking authority, contrary to international law, and unlawful.

Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Armenian SSR G. Voskanian

Secretary of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Armenian SSR N. Stepanyan

Newspaper “Kommunist” (Yerevan), No. 40, February 17, 1990 (emphasis added by Yu.B.). 734

Yuri Barsegov “Nagorno-Karabakh in International Law and Global Politics”

Artatsolum

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