Memorandum by Suren Ayvazian to General Secretary M. S. Gorbachev on Karabagh and Nakhichevan
Honorable Mikhail Sergeyevich,
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The exclusion of the Mountainous Karabagh and Nakhichevan from Armenia represents the highest expression of injustice, contradicting the articles in the laws of boundaries of the Soviet Union as laid down according to Leninist principles.
Nakhichevan in the consciousness of the Armenian people has the same place as Moscow or Novgorod have in the consciousness of the Russian people.
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At the regional bureau meeting of the Transcaucasian Communist Party on July 4, 1921 at which Kirov, Ordzhonokidze, Miasnikian, Fidadner, and others were present, it was decided that Mountainous Karabagh should stay within the borders of Armenia.
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According to the law of boundaries of the Soviet Union, any autonomous region located within a republic must be under the jurisdiction of that republic. This provision has been violated in the case of Nakhichevan, which has been placed under the jurisdiction of Azerbaijan instead of Armenia, of which it is a part.
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In 1920, the Republic of Soviet Azerbaijan was established on the eastern territory of historic Armenia. The Turks, who were previously called ”Mountainous Tatars,” started to be called ”Azerbaijani.” Despite the fact that at that time the Turks accounted for a minority of Baku as well as other areas within the republic, they gained the right to exercise their national sovereignty over the entire republic and a Kurdish Autonomous Region next to the autonomous regions of Mountainous Karabagh and Nakhichevan. Such an arrangement would have settled everything justly.
But it did not turn out that way. The Turks (Caucasian Tatars, Azerbaijanis) under their new title became not only an equal sovereign with the others, but also began to impose authority over the entire regions as the dominant people.
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Britain’s plans were dashed by the October revolution. First the Baku Commune and later, at the time of the establishment of the Azerbaijan Republic, the Leninist Bolsheviks under V. I. Lenin were most concerned with the creation of favorable condition to unify the people of the region and also the rapid development of Baku’s oil industry. Baku’s oil was indispensable to the Soviet Union. Stepan Shaumian and Sergei Kirov were well aware of the importance of this economic issue and the fact that Soviet Azerbaijan had to meet the demands of the Soviet Union in this regard. It was in this fashion that multinational Azerbaijan came to the fore (and not the Turkish national Soviet Republic), where all nationalities including the Russians, Armenians, Turks, Persians, Kurds, Georgians, and Daghestanis were equally “Azerbaijanis,” only in the sense that they the residents of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Azerbaijan.
Since then, however, the Turks of Azerbaijan have come to dominate the Republic, occupied the ranks of the leading cadres of “their” republic and to administer policies whose first aim has been the expulsion of local Armenians from their administrative positions and also from their places of residence, following the republic’s policy of “Azerbaijanization”. “This is our republic,” began to shout the Turkish “Azerbaijanis”, “we are the masters here and have been living here for more than ten thousand years; the rest are all new comers. Get lost and leave our land to us.” And it could be said that by following this attitude they reached their objective. If 80% of Nakhichevan’s population was Armenian in 1913, today the Armenians constitute only 1.5% of the population in that region. In mountainous Karabagh, the Armenian population has been reduced from 95% to 80% of the entire population. In regard to the other regions of Azerbaijan, the number of Armenians is also on the decrease.
But if people can abandon their homes, move away and create a new home, then what should become of historical monuments? These are being destroyed barbarously by the vandals of the 20th century for the mere reason that they are Armenian… There have already been such practices with the Armenian khatchkars [stone-carved crosses]. The “enthusiastic” Azerbaijani historians have started to vandalize cemeteries; they have declared the Armenian khatchkars to be the artwork of the Islamic Turks.
The Armenian khatchkars have been treated with sanctioned hatred in the republic of Azerbaijan. One of the Armenian masterpieces – the Gandzasar Vank – in Mountainous Karabagh is in total ruins; the walls are full of cracks, and its ceiling is in the verge of collapse. Even such an indisputable cultural monument which has been recorded by us and mentioned in several memories printed overseas as another hallmark of Armenian architecture has not been included in Azerbaijan’s tourism book (Moscow, 1970). All this in light of the fact that 14 monuments are mentioned in the book of which all but one are “Azerbaijani”, i.e., Turkish. There are no references to hundreds of Armenian monuments in Karabagh in almost any book. They remain silent about those monuments, just as the distant relatives of a deceased wealthy man would be silent about the man’s living children – his true heirs.
Recently, with the excuse of building roads in the central part of Nakhichevan, they demolished a fifth century Armenian monument which had been miraculously saved. At present, in the city of Agulis is Nakhichevan Armenian monuments built between 5th-13th centuries are being barbarously vandalized. The marvelous khatchkars are being turned to gravel to be used in building roads. Along with the khatchkars the savages of the day are also destroying other kinds of monuments, all of that which comprise the pride of the Armenian people, and the thousands of years of her cultural wealth. How could such a thing happen in a civilized country like ours?
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Writers, scientists and cultural workers who have arrived in Azerbaijan from Armenia are being labeled as dispute promoters and pursued overtly or covertly. Their small efforts to assist the victims of lawlessness and discrimination are seen as “open intervention in the affairs of another republic.” This shrewd offensive against the Armenians has the objective of stifling them, so that the ones who consider themselves as the “owners” of Karabagh can work freely and go unpunished.
The economic and cultural achievements of Mountainous Karabagh are being grossly exaggerated. They try, as rapidly as possible, to Azerbaijanize this “foreign” region, to eliminate its Armenian spirit, and the atmosphere is characterized by pressure and harassment.
The report of the top officials of Azerbaijan and Karabagh depicts the “evil of Armenian chauvinism”, and of course they do not notice a single example of “Azerbaijani chauvinism”. People are being attacked, and then their flight is attributed to their own faults. The villages of Nakhichevan are depopulated? “The fault lies with the Armenians.” The Armenians are feeling from the Mountainous Karabagh, Baku and other parts of Azerbaijan? The guilt still falls on the Armenians because of their “chauvinism”… As if “Azerbaijani chauvinism” does not exist. The Armenian population of Azerbaijan is decreasing while the list of Armenians killed by Azerbaijanis is getting longer. However, the names of the killers are not mentioned. They are either not caught or if they are caught they somehow escape punishment. Or, as in the case of the murder of an Armenian woman from the village of Karmir, the story was changed by alleging that the murderers were Armenians rather than Azerbaijanis. This was done according to the former Secretary of the region in order “not to exacerbate national feelings.” During the period of 1966-1967 in the Martuni region of Karabagh Armenians were being murdered methodically. Important to note is the murder of the head of the Kuropotki Sovkhoz. A year later, his successor was also murdered. And finally, a month later they murdered his ten year old son . . . All this was being done to stifle the “minor renaissance” of the Karabagh residents in 1965, when they appealed to Moscow for permission to rejoin this autonomous Armenian region to Soviet Armenia. The Central Committee assigned the review of the issue to the top leadership in Armenia and Azerbaijan.
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Where are the limits of insolence?
There are none!
[Aliev’s policies of characterizing Armenians as “rebels” in their own land by virtue of their ethnic identity is, ultimately, part of a long term policy to homogenize the population.]
It is characteristic that during the Great patriotic War Armenians gave more war heroes…[including many from Karabagh]… than those from all other Transcaucasian groups combined.
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To struggle and to serve… the fatherland; the Armenian people is capable of this. Armenians also have the ability to comprehend foreign policy issues. But why is it that it has been impossible in our land to solve the commonest and most essential problems? So many sacrifices for a socialist commonwealth, yet to have to leave its millennial fatherland in Eastern Armenia?
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Finally, it is time to reunite Mountainous Karabagh and Plains Karabagh and Nakhichevan, portions of the historic homeland, with Soviet Armenia.
3 March 1987
Souren Ayvazian
Member of the Party
Senior researcher of Geology and Mines
Telephone:
(h) 63-78-52
(o) 53-56-53
[Haratch, Paris, December 3-14, 1987]
The Karabagh File, Documents and Facts, 1918-1988, First Edition, Cambridge Toronto 1988, by the ZORYAN INSTITUTE, edited by: Gerard J. LIBARIDIAN, pp. 81-84.
