Yesterday, September 2, 2015, a new city park after National Hero Tatul Krpeyan was opened in Yerevan.
ANI presents a chapter from KARABAKH DIARY; GREEN and BLACK
Last gasp of a dying empire: The Infamous “Ring Operation”
Towards the end of 1991, Russian writer Inessa Burkova filed the following from Shahumian in the Sovetakan Karabakh newspaper – In the early hours of April 30, a broad attack started against Getashen and Martunashen. The Azerbaijan OMON has entered Getashen and 35 Armenians have been killed and over a hundred injured as a result of the bloody attack.
The inhabitants of Getashen and Martunashen circulated telegrams in the first days of March: “We beg of you to save us. The Soviet army is wiping out Soviet citizens. They’re firing from the sky and from the land. They are crushing us with their tanks. The Azerbaijan OMON is capturing our children, women and elderly. They are pillaging and burning our homes.”
1991 was the last year of the Soviet Union’s already nominal existence. In the spring, the Red Army conducted the final operation in its 70-year history – the infamous “Ring Operation”. What took place in Shahumyan and Getashen was essentially an unequal war against pitting local Armenians and those volunteers who had gone to help them against the Soviet Army and the armed detachments of the Azerbaijan police supporting them.
The Soviet Union was in the midst of a severe political and economic crisis. Two large wings of power had developed in the Kremlin – the old nomenclature, which in August would launch an unsuccessful coup d’état in an attempt to maintain authority and prevent the inevitable death of the empire, and the democratic forces which enjoyed the support of the West and a considerable segment of the Soviet peoples. Basic necessities had virtually disappeared from the shops and inflation had reached astronomical figures. National issues had taken priority in the republics.
The most unsettling were to be found in the Transcaucasia. A new conflict arose in addition to the undeclared Karabakh war. On January 6, 1991, the Georgian Police and National Guard entered Tskhinval, the administrative capital of South Ossetia, under the pretense of establishing law and order. The Georgian-Ossetia conflict began and a war was developing in Abkhazia.
Different political realities had been created in Armenia and Azerbaijan. The ANM had come to power in Armenia. It was following a policy of separation from the Soviet Union while the communists continued to rule in Azerbaijan. Even though its political and economic influence had decreased, the Kremlin was visibly supporting Mutalibov given the circumstances.
At the end of January, 1990, Polyanichko arrived in Stepanakert from Baku and together with the Organizational Committee began his duties. After the departure of Volsky, the local authorities in NK had been re-established. Semyon Babayan had become PM.
“Upon Polyanichkov’s arrival, I transferred to the regional executive committee building on which the flag of Armenia flew. The Azerbaijani flag flew on the regional committee building. Polyanichkov wanted people from our side to be included in the Organizational Committee. As far as we knew two people participated in the activities of the Organizational Committee with the aim of gathering information. When Ararat Dallakyan’s helicopter was destroyed in the air over Lachin, Polyanichkov called me from the airport. That was our only contact,” says Babayan.
From a legal point of view, power in NK belonged to the Organizational Committee. The police, security service, and the more than five thousand soviet troops stationed there were subordinate to it. A curfew had been imposed. Rallies, marches, demonstrations and strikes had been prohibited, the activities of non-official organizations had been halted, and the movement of citizens in and out of NK had been restricted. The military commandant had the right to “arrest individuals for up to 30 days and hold them administratively or criminally responsible for provoking national hatred, violations of public order and/or dissemination of defamatory information.”
The curfew first and foremost concerned the Armenians. With the consent of the Kremlin, Azerbaijan was trying to destroy the Karabakh Movement. This process was accompanied by population transfers. In March, residents of the Armenian villages of Azat and Kamo in the sub- region of Getashen abandoned their homes.
Gorbachev made a final attempt to save the Soviet Union. On March 17 a referendum to preserve the USSR took place. Almost 75% of the population vote for the preservation of the Soviet Union. Azerbaijan also participated and voted yes. Armenia, together with five other republics – Georgia, Moldova, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia – boycotted the referendum. On March 1, Armenia’s Supreme Council had rejected the holding of the referendum in the country and instead had approved a decision to hold a referendum on independence.
NK participated in the referendum but not in the form of a nationwide election. Semyon Babayan explains, “We had to participate using Azerbaijan voting slips but we decided to participate in another way; in the extended session of the regional executive committee on the 17th. According to the July 12, 1988 decision of the regional executive committee, NK was considered outside of the structure of Azerbaijan. We participated in the referendum based on that decision. In other words, NK entered the Soviet Union independently and we supported its existence.”
Alizade writes: “In Azerbaijan, the referendum passed in an atmosphere of total public indifference, but official results announced that 95% of the people were for a ‘renewed Union’. Armenia refused to hold the referendum, so Moscow decided to punish it, but how? As always, using military force, but placing the blame on Azerbaijan. That was when Gorbachev approved the “Ring” operation. Polyanichko assumed the main responsibility of implementing Gorbachev’s will and became a target for severe criticism. All the criticism was directed towards Azerbaijan, Mutalibov and the Azerbaijani OMON. However, it was especially the criticism aimed at Mutalibov that raised his prestige in rank and file citizens who began to view him as ‘the nation’s savior.’”
On April 16, it was decided to give the expulsion of Armenians a legal context, i.e., to implement a “passport regime check” in Getashen and Martunashen.
“During a consultation, Mutalibov called on law enforcement to remove the population from NK, the Shahumyan region and the sub-region of Getashen, if they did not subject themselves to the Azerbaijan constitution. He repeated almost the same on April 27 over Azerbaijani television. The deportations began on April 19, with the direct participation of the Soviet forces,” says Ter-Petrosyan.
Mutalibov’s interpretation was different: “We have not imposed and will not impose any deportation. Any such assertions only attempt to muddy the waters although, to be honest, we have the moral right to raise the issue on that level. Don’t forget that almost 200,000 Azerbaijanis were expelled from Armenia in a short period of time. Those Armenians living in Azerbaijan must be subject to the Azerbaijan and USSR Constitutions.”
With the intention of finding a way out of the situation, Ter-Petrosyan left for Moscow and met Mutalibov and Gorbachev on May 3. The next day Gorbachev announced, “The issue of deportation of the residents of Getashen and Martunashen has been dealt with; no one has the right to force the residents of those villages to abandon their homes.”
However, the Armenian residents of Martunashen and Getashen, almost 2,000 households, are expelled and scattered throughout Armenia and the territory of the Soviet Union.
“Just like when a wolf enters a flock of sheep and they flee, five one way, ten another way and twenty another, that’s how Getashen was scattered,” says 67 year-old Yeghishe Markosyan, who saved 200 fellow villagers by taking them out of the village through the forests, mountains and valleys despite being twice injured. This man with the gruff voice had been displaced three times. Now he plants a new orchard in Karvatchar (Kelbajar), together with his sons and some forty Getashen families.
War and puppets
Aspram Krpeyan was one-year old when his father, Armenian national hero Tatul Krpeyan, was traitorously killed in Getashen. “My father was in Getashen and could no longer come to Yerevan. He had sent me a doll from Getashen with his friend, Artur Karapetyan. It was an ordinary doll; no different from my other ones. When I used to pick up that doll, my mother would take it from me and say, ‘Leave it alone. You can’t play with this one.’ As a child, that was baffling to me, but when I grew up I realized that it was the most priceless gift that I had ever received; a keepsake from my father.”
On April 30, heavy vehicles of the 23rd Division of the Soviet Fourth Army, stationed in Gyanja, and armed detachments of the Azerbaijan OMON entered Getashen and Martunashen. On that day Krpeyan and several of his friends were killed.
Vardan Hohannisyan recorded the events in northern Artsakh on camera. He considers the deaths of Krpeyan and Karapetyan to be the greatest losses in his life. “They were the first victims. With their deaths we understood that a grim war was starting and that Getashen was just the beginning,” he says.
The locals and volunteers from Armenia defending Getashen were not expecting the OMON to enter with the Soviet forces.
“It was not just a check on passports, but an attacking firing squad. The villagers started to flee towards the village centre as the OMON were attacking from all sides. Almost all the population gathered in the village square. Two armored vehicles stood in the same square. When the ring tightened Tatul stood atop one of the vehicles, pulled the ring pin from the grenade, and warned the Russian officer, ‘That’s it. Either you order the troops to withdraw or I throw the grenad.’ I was photographing the action up close – Tatul with a beard, the pin pulled out, the Russian officer one or two meters away with a horrified expression on his face and three or four Russian soldiers standing by the armored vehicle at the flank, with their Kalashnikovs pointed at Tatul. This scene continued for five or ten minutes, perhaps less, but it seemed long to me,” says Hovhannisyan.
Krpeyan succeeded in coming to an arrangement with Colonel Mashkov so that the Soviet troops and the Azerbaijan’s OMON withdraw. They were about to start negotiations when shots were heard from the rear. Krpeyan is shot dead and Mashkov is injured. Either the Russians or the OMON had treacherously killed Krpeyan.
Russian journalist Vladimir Emelyanenko was in Getashen during the days of the punitive operation by Soviet troops and Azerbaijani police. “The convoy stopped in front of the hospital and the OMON surrounded it with lightning speed. There were blood-soaked bodies in front of the building. Some of them had had their ears cut and their faces disfigured. The odor of death rose from the bullet-ridden building. In the corridors, on the floor and on the beds, people were seated or lying looking to some point in the distance with their lifeless, unblinking eyes.”
The deportations from Getashen and Martunashen were carried out at the state level with the knowledge of the Kremlin. Under the pretext of a passport regime check, the population of 24 villages – several thousand people – were displaced and a hundred killed.
Ter-Petrosyan’s visit and negotiations with Gorbachev and Mutalilbov did not prevent the expulsion of Armenians from their homes. Soviet troops also conducted punitive operations in the south of Armenia. In the early hours of May 6, in Voskepar (northeastern Armenia), a rural community already been surrounded for a week, 18 people, mostly police force employees were killed. Several were captured and three of the injured died in the prison in Ganja.
In May of 1991, at Moscow’s Manezhnaya Square, Russian Deputy Anatoly Shabad, who had been in Voskepar a few days earlier and witnessed the atrocities, stated that what had happened was a pre-planned operation by, “the Central and Azerbaijan authorities”, and that the Soviet forces had “disarmed, terrorized, and killed the legitimate police force.”
Under the pretext of disarming the armed volunteer groups of Voskepar, Soviet paratroopers surrounded the village. Georgy Kocharyan, a former employee of the police force, was captured and held in Gyanja prison for 101 days. 18 men, the staff of the Noyemberyan police force, and 6 civilians, went off to change shifts. It was only possible to enter Voskepar, now surrounded, by a roundabout mountainous route. The Soviet forces had set up an ambush – the arriving personnel were surrounded. Greatly outnumbering the Armenian police, the Soviet paratroopers attacked. Those 15-20 minutes, says Kocharyan, remain a nightmare in the memories of those who were injured and captured. After killing the majority of the police force, the Soviet forces handed over those still alive and those injured to the Azerbaijani OMON, certainly aware of the fate awaiting them.
“One of the lads, Armen was also injured and died of his wounds in my hands on the way to Gazakh (northwestern Azerbaijan). We had been students together. I was holding him in the vehicle so that he would not fall to the floor. They transported us, those left alive and the injured, first to Gazakh and then to Gyanja. For three months it was non-stop daily beatings and torture. This treatment only changed in the last days, when the prisoner exchange issue had been resolved,” recalls Kocharyan.
