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25 YEARS AGO: NATIONALIST CONFLICTS EMERGE IN SOVIET ARMENIA
World Socialist Web Site
March 25 2013
This week in history: March 25-31
25 Years Ago | 50 Years Ago | 75 Years Ago | 100 Years Ago
This week in 1988, Soviet troops and helicopters were sent into
the Armenian capital of Yerevan to enforce Moscow's March 24 ban
on demonstrations. Beginning in February, more than a million
Armenians had engaged in strikes and demonstrations to demand that
the Nagorno-Karabakh region become a part of Soviet Armenia. The
region was administered by Azerbaijan even though 85 percent of its
population was ethnic Armenian.
Massacres of Armenians by Muslim Azerbaijanis followed the protests,
indicating the re-emergence of longstanding national-ethnic divisions,
which six decades under Stalinist rule had been incapable of solving.
Within Nagorno-Karabakh the Armenian majority faced oppression. The
administration of the region, dominated by Azerbaijani Stalinists,
meant schools and access to broadcast networks weren't in their
native language.
The general economic crisis within the Soviet Union exacerbated
the conflicts, as promises of improvements made by Moscow failed to
materialize. The ruling bureaucracy in Azerbaijan admitted that in
1987 there were 250,000 unemployed.
The entry of Soviet troops into Armenia was a manifestation of the
deepening crisis in the Soviet Union and its inability to provide
economic solutions for the working masses of all ethnic and linguistic
groups. It heralded the beginning of the breakup of the USSR and the
emergence of bloody nationalist conflicts in the region.
See the other years at
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/03/25/twih-m25.html
From: Baghdasarian
World Socialist Web Site
March 25 2013
This week in history: March 25-31
25 Years Ago | 50 Years Ago | 75 Years Ago | 100 Years Ago
This week in 1988, Soviet troops and helicopters were sent into
the Armenian capital of Yerevan to enforce Moscow's March 24 ban
on demonstrations. Beginning in February, more than a million
Armenians had engaged in strikes and demonstrations to demand that
the Nagorno-Karabakh region become a part of Soviet Armenia. The
region was administered by Azerbaijan even though 85 percent of its
population was ethnic Armenian.
Massacres of Armenians by Muslim Azerbaijanis followed the protests,
indicating the re-emergence of longstanding national-ethnic divisions,
which six decades under Stalinist rule had been incapable of solving.
Within Nagorno-Karabakh the Armenian majority faced oppression. The
administration of the region, dominated by Azerbaijani Stalinists,
meant schools and access to broadcast networks weren't in their
native language.
The general economic crisis within the Soviet Union exacerbated
the conflicts, as promises of improvements made by Moscow failed to
materialize. The ruling bureaucracy in Azerbaijan admitted that in
1987 there were 250,000 unemployed.
The entry of Soviet troops into Armenia was a manifestation of the
deepening crisis in the Soviet Union and its inability to provide
economic solutions for the working masses of all ethnic and linguistic
groups. It heralded the beginning of the breakup of the USSR and the
emergence of bloody nationalist conflicts in the region.
See the other years at
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/03/25/twih-m25.html
From: Baghdasarian