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SEARCH FOR CAUSES OF USSR DISINTEGRATION IN KARABAKH -5
Vestnik Kavkaza, Russia
Sept 12 2014
12 September 2014 - 12:59pm
By Peter Lyukimson, Kuryer, Israel, N28-32, June 1992
Peter Lyukimson lived in Baku until 1991. He worked as a journalist
there in the late 80s-early 90s and witnessed the events preceding
the conflict around Nagorno-Karabakh, Sumgayit, Khojaly...
The feature story "Nagorno-Karabakh: chronicles of the conflict. Notes
of a Jew from Baku" was written in 1992, soon after the move of
the author to Israel. It was published in a Russian-language paper
of Israel named Kuryer. Those were the times when the tone in the
cultural and the public life of the Russian-speaking community of
Israel was set by the Moscow and Saint Petersburg clerisy. It had a
big impact on the attitude of Israeli society towards the events on
the territory of the former USSR. They sympathized with Armenia in its
conflict with Azerbaijan. As it turned out, most Israelis knew nothing
about the origin of the conflict or the truth about its development.
The position of the Jewish clerisy on the issue was formed based only
on publications in the central Soviet and partly on Western press,
which were not always impartial.
After July 10, the Armenian population of the NKAO started open
confrontation with the forces and residents of Azerbaijani villages.
Shooting, arson, cattle thefts, attacks on cars, murders of Azerbaijani
shepherds started...
This could not go without concerns in Baku. In July 1989, a clerisy
group created the People's Front of Azerbaijan. It is noteworthy
that the leaders of the PFA were saying from the very start that the
PFA was a people's front, not a nationalistic one, it had no goal to
create the kind of mono-ethnic state that Armenia had become after
driving out Azerbaijanis.
The August of 1989 brought more tensions. Armenia started shelling
Azerbaijani border villages, murders in Karabakh continued... Soon,
"the assembly of authorized representatives of the NKAO" confirmed
that the region was not part of Azerbaijan. In response, the PFA held
many-thousand-strong protests. The city was in anti-Armenian hysteria,
exacerbated by the right wing of the PFA and the sacking of Armenians.
The expulsion process gained momentum after December 1, when the
Supreme Council of Armenia passed the decree on restoration of
the Armenian SSR and Nagorno-Karabakh. In general, it was a simple
declaration of war on Azerbaijan. Airborne forces of the Armenian
National Army started deploying in the NKAO, declaring full transfer
of Azerbaijanis from Karabakh...
In such conditions, the PFA called for the formation of Azerbaijan's
own national army and immediate deportation of Armenians from Baku
according to the international eviction laws of citizens whose country
is at war with another state. The communist regime in Azerbaijan was
in danger, and Moscow had had to understand it... In early January,
the Armenian Armed Forces added the economic development plan of the
NKAO to the state plan of the Armenian SSR. Moscow was silent.
Many protests demanded the resignation of the communist government...
Rumours that Baku would start Armenian pogroms on January 13 appeared.
The Central Committee, the KGB and the Interior Ministry could not
have been unaware of it...
On January 13, pogroms did start. Some mobile groups of 10-12 people
were breaking into Armenian houses and throwing their owners out
onto the street, looting and committing violence. The police and the
military responded to calls of neighbours roughly as follows:
"What can we do? We have not been given any orders..." Tens of
thousands of people at the Central Committee were demanding its
resignation.
On the night of January 19, it became clear that Yazov was on his
way to Baku to restore order in the city personally...
At the ambulance sub-station, at 11.00, calls were received, asking for
Kala pilots to the village struck by shootings, there were killings
and injuries... Doctors tried to make it through tanks. Doctor
Sasha Markhevka, sitting next to the driver, screamed and hit the
windshield. A bullet in his hand span around blood vessels, went
through a lung and out through the back. Bullets with an offset
balance were used, they are banned under international law. Another
ambulance made it through and helped the injured. On the way back,
it was stopped by patrols and the injured were thrown out of the
car. 7-8 hours were left before the curfew...
At midnight, the order to unblock was given. Breaking the walls of
the Salyan barracks, tanks and armored vehicles moved through the
streets of the city, shooting at houses, crushing trucks and cars
and leaving dozens of twisted corpses behind. Protesters scattered,
a real hunt for them began... Houses were under fire, bullets were
finding newer victims. That is how 15-year-old Vera Bessantina,
a girl with amazing eyes who was writing poems, died that night.
She was not the only child whose time came to an end. Coming out on
the streets in the morning, Baku residents saw corpses on roads and
sidewalks, heads and arms lying under their feet, blood over asphalt,
on walls of houses. Helicopters were circling around the city, throwing
leaflets. They said that a curfew had been imposed on Baku last night
and the military were calling for peace. "It was done by the Russian
army!" was the reaction. There was nothing surprising that threats
towards Russians were heard in ships and on streets on January 20. The
commandant's office was in a hurry to organize an evacuation...
soon, thousands of refugees appeared in Russian cities, speaking
about the cruelty of Azerbaijanis and assuring that the military
had entered the city to protect the Russians. It was just what the
propaganda machine of Moscow needed, it hurried to announce that the
forces in Baku had needed to interfere to prevent the Russian-speaking
population of the city from being butchered. Yes, there were victims,
several terrorists died, condolences to their families...
The terrorists were Sasha Markhevka, Vera Bessantina (by the way,
they were both Jews), 9-year-old Larisa, a Mrs Mamedova, and a boy
whose corpse has never been identified.
"Voices against Russians sounded here," shouted an orator through
the microphone, "But what have Russians got to do with that, not to
mention Baku residents. The communists, they were the ones saving
themselves last night, they were the ones the soldiers protected,
they were responsible for what happened! Can honest people stay in
the party of fascists after all that happened?" And people started
throwing away their party membership cards then.
To be continued
http://vestnikkavkaza.net/articles/society/59869.html
Vestnik Kavkaza, Russia
Sept 12 2014
12 September 2014 - 12:59pm
By Peter Lyukimson, Kuryer, Israel, N28-32, June 1992
Peter Lyukimson lived in Baku until 1991. He worked as a journalist
there in the late 80s-early 90s and witnessed the events preceding
the conflict around Nagorno-Karabakh, Sumgayit, Khojaly...
The feature story "Nagorno-Karabakh: chronicles of the conflict. Notes
of a Jew from Baku" was written in 1992, soon after the move of
the author to Israel. It was published in a Russian-language paper
of Israel named Kuryer. Those were the times when the tone in the
cultural and the public life of the Russian-speaking community of
Israel was set by the Moscow and Saint Petersburg clerisy. It had a
big impact on the attitude of Israeli society towards the events on
the territory of the former USSR. They sympathized with Armenia in its
conflict with Azerbaijan. As it turned out, most Israelis knew nothing
about the origin of the conflict or the truth about its development.
The position of the Jewish clerisy on the issue was formed based only
on publications in the central Soviet and partly on Western press,
which were not always impartial.
After July 10, the Armenian population of the NKAO started open
confrontation with the forces and residents of Azerbaijani villages.
Shooting, arson, cattle thefts, attacks on cars, murders of Azerbaijani
shepherds started...
This could not go without concerns in Baku. In July 1989, a clerisy
group created the People's Front of Azerbaijan. It is noteworthy
that the leaders of the PFA were saying from the very start that the
PFA was a people's front, not a nationalistic one, it had no goal to
create the kind of mono-ethnic state that Armenia had become after
driving out Azerbaijanis.
The August of 1989 brought more tensions. Armenia started shelling
Azerbaijani border villages, murders in Karabakh continued... Soon,
"the assembly of authorized representatives of the NKAO" confirmed
that the region was not part of Azerbaijan. In response, the PFA held
many-thousand-strong protests. The city was in anti-Armenian hysteria,
exacerbated by the right wing of the PFA and the sacking of Armenians.
The expulsion process gained momentum after December 1, when the
Supreme Council of Armenia passed the decree on restoration of
the Armenian SSR and Nagorno-Karabakh. In general, it was a simple
declaration of war on Azerbaijan. Airborne forces of the Armenian
National Army started deploying in the NKAO, declaring full transfer
of Azerbaijanis from Karabakh...
In such conditions, the PFA called for the formation of Azerbaijan's
own national army and immediate deportation of Armenians from Baku
according to the international eviction laws of citizens whose country
is at war with another state. The communist regime in Azerbaijan was
in danger, and Moscow had had to understand it... In early January,
the Armenian Armed Forces added the economic development plan of the
NKAO to the state plan of the Armenian SSR. Moscow was silent.
Many protests demanded the resignation of the communist government...
Rumours that Baku would start Armenian pogroms on January 13 appeared.
The Central Committee, the KGB and the Interior Ministry could not
have been unaware of it...
On January 13, pogroms did start. Some mobile groups of 10-12 people
were breaking into Armenian houses and throwing their owners out
onto the street, looting and committing violence. The police and the
military responded to calls of neighbours roughly as follows:
"What can we do? We have not been given any orders..." Tens of
thousands of people at the Central Committee were demanding its
resignation.
On the night of January 19, it became clear that Yazov was on his
way to Baku to restore order in the city personally...
At the ambulance sub-station, at 11.00, calls were received, asking for
Kala pilots to the village struck by shootings, there were killings
and injuries... Doctors tried to make it through tanks. Doctor
Sasha Markhevka, sitting next to the driver, screamed and hit the
windshield. A bullet in his hand span around blood vessels, went
through a lung and out through the back. Bullets with an offset
balance were used, they are banned under international law. Another
ambulance made it through and helped the injured. On the way back,
it was stopped by patrols and the injured were thrown out of the
car. 7-8 hours were left before the curfew...
At midnight, the order to unblock was given. Breaking the walls of
the Salyan barracks, tanks and armored vehicles moved through the
streets of the city, shooting at houses, crushing trucks and cars
and leaving dozens of twisted corpses behind. Protesters scattered,
a real hunt for them began... Houses were under fire, bullets were
finding newer victims. That is how 15-year-old Vera Bessantina,
a girl with amazing eyes who was writing poems, died that night.
She was not the only child whose time came to an end. Coming out on
the streets in the morning, Baku residents saw corpses on roads and
sidewalks, heads and arms lying under their feet, blood over asphalt,
on walls of houses. Helicopters were circling around the city, throwing
leaflets. They said that a curfew had been imposed on Baku last night
and the military were calling for peace. "It was done by the Russian
army!" was the reaction. There was nothing surprising that threats
towards Russians were heard in ships and on streets on January 20. The
commandant's office was in a hurry to organize an evacuation...
soon, thousands of refugees appeared in Russian cities, speaking
about the cruelty of Azerbaijanis and assuring that the military
had entered the city to protect the Russians. It was just what the
propaganda machine of Moscow needed, it hurried to announce that the
forces in Baku had needed to interfere to prevent the Russian-speaking
population of the city from being butchered. Yes, there were victims,
several terrorists died, condolences to their families...
The terrorists were Sasha Markhevka, Vera Bessantina (by the way,
they were both Jews), 9-year-old Larisa, a Mrs Mamedova, and a boy
whose corpse has never been identified.
"Voices against Russians sounded here," shouted an orator through
the microphone, "But what have Russians got to do with that, not to
mention Baku residents. The communists, they were the ones saving
themselves last night, they were the ones the soldiers protected,
they were responsible for what happened! Can honest people stay in
the party of fascists after all that happened?" And people started
throwing away their party membership cards then.
To be continued
http://vestnikkavkaza.net/articles/society/59869.html