In the last week of February 1988 Opera Square had become the main meeting place for the Armenian nation. The best translation of Gorbachev’s glasnost among all the languages encompassed in the Soviet Union was the Armenian translation: hraparakaynutyun (publicity). The square itself, the platform and the microphone had become a magnet for Armenians not only from Yerevan, but from provincial towns and villages who were thirsty for justice.
The last week of February 1988 also changed the life of filmmaker Tigran Khzmalyan, one of the chroniclers of the Karabakh war. The Soviet youngster, a fan of rock-and-roll, French movies and Russian literature, could no longer continue lecturing at Yerevan State University because “the world around me was changing.”
“Prior to the news of Sumgait, it was a unique Armenian soiree, a brotherly revolution. Later on, I was to write in my films and articles that the slogans of the great French revolution – liberté, égalité, fraternité (liberty, equality and fraternity), had come to life in the 20th century. For us, the last week of February was a true revolution – we entered the crater, were tempered and emerged a different people,” says Khzmalyan.
The late Raphael Ghazaryan, the senior member of the Karabakh committee, considered February 1988 and the following two years to be among the brightest pages in the history of the Armenian people. During those years, he recalls, the Karabakh Movement was clean, there was nothing mercenary about it, and people were ready to sacrifice themselves in the name of the movement. For the people gathered in the square, it seemed that the Karabakh issue would be resolved soon, Moscow would take the region out of Azerbaijan’s territory and transfer it to Armenia and in this way, historical justice would be restored.
“From the beginning, Igor Muradyan took over the leadership of the entire process; rallying around him were Ashot Manucharyan, Hambartsum Galstyan, Alexan Hakobyan and later on, Vano Siradeghyan, Babken Ararkstyan and others. We were stunned that hundreds of thousands stood listening to our speeches, believing and waiting for proposals, resolutions, and advice. For each of us this brought forth feelings of being chosen. There was to some degree the desire to be identified as a leader, even though we weren’t thinking about a position. Each one wanted to present themselves, to make speeches so that the people would say, ‘this is the real leader,’” says Ghazaryan.
On February 18 a protest rally by the workers of the Abovyan’s biomaterial’s factory took place. Several hundred people began moving toward Yerevan on foot to protest issues dealing with industrial hazards and to demand the closure of the factory.
In the meantime, the leader of Soviet Armenia, Karen Demirchyan left for Moscow with his wife.
“That day the environmentalists had organized a rally and Karen said that the Karabakh rally would take place the next day. This did not come unexpectedly to him. He used to say that the problem would not be solved at that time, it was too early and had not yet matured. When the issue was raised he thought about raising the status of NK; turning NK into an autonomous republic. His writings state that he had succeeded in coming to an agreement on the issue with Ligachov and the others,” says his wife Rima Demirchyan.
Vladimir Movsisyan, the vice-premier of Soviet Armenia remembers: “Demirchyan called me and said that the government had to find ways to restore order. He advised me to speak with the protesters. When I went, the protesters had already reached the residential area of Nork. I felt that stopping them was senseless. The protesters came and gathered in the square of the Opera. After listening to the participants’ speeches, I said that I cannot discuss serious issues with them in the square. I asked them to elect representatives to have discussions with the government.”
Fadeh Sargsyan, the prime-minister of Soviet Armenia had just returned from Moscow. “The conditions for the first big rally were created around the biomaterial’s factory, although it is clear that the organizers were using that as an excuse. On February 18 I returned from Moscow and met the protestors at the entrance of the Council of Ministers. My first deputy Movsisyan was talking with the representatives in the session hall. There were 50-60 people. I sat down and also took part in their conversation,” Sargsyan recalls.
The protesters agree to a proposal to create a commission of experts with the objective to study the situation. Rallies begin in the square of the Opera over the next several days, which at this point have nothing to do with environmental issues. The main theme being discussed in the square is Karabakh.
According to the leading activist Zori Balayan: “We gathered on Theater Square with purely ecological slogans, but among them was, let’s say, one slogan saying ‘Karabakh is the historic territory of Armenia.’ No one paid any attention to it. At the next rally there were a few of those slogans. Igor Muradyan, when he was bringing people there, also brought portraits of Gorbachev. ‘Lenin, Party, Gorbachev’ was his slogan. He thought it up. Three weeks later he thought up another one: ‘Stalin, Beria, Ligachov.’ In this way people got used to the idea that they could talk about the national question as well as Nairit and Sevan. A month later, Nairit and Sevan would get mentioned only for five minutes.”
For the first time in the Soviet Union, a mass national movement begins, which was a challenge to the Soviet system. “For the first time in the country’s history, decisions in NK’s Regional and Armenia’s Supreme Councils were made from the bottom up, through the will of the people and not through commands brought down from above. Real democracy was established in NK and Armenia and the bureaucratic apparatus was left obsolete. Hundreds of protests and rallies took place in NK and Armenia, which were unprecedented in their frequency, organization and mass appeal not only in the Soviet Union but in anywhere in the world,” writes Levon Ter-Petrossyan.
On the evening of February 22, the phone rings in Karen Brutents’ office. He was the advisor to the leader of the Soviet Union. It was Mikhail Gorbachev. Brutents remembers the first words of the country’s leader: “Karen, you have to leave for Stepanakert. The people there are upset and the situation has gotten out of hand. Take with you who you want and go.”
Today the sparse information being published in newspapers are only faintly reminiscent of the Karabakh issue and the ensuing conflict. During those times, the events were in reality revolutionary, writes Brutents. However, Karabakh was not the first case.
“In January 1986, the students of Yakutia University demanded education in their native language. In December of the same year the youth in Almati protested the appointment of the Russian Kolbin instead of the Kazakh Kunaev to the post of First Secretary of the Communist Party’s Central Committee in Kazakhstan. The passions were immediately suppressed and in an official statement they were evaluated as speeches containing ‘provocation with nationalist elements,’” writes Brutents.
When elucidating the events in Nagorno Karabakh, the Soviet media was one-sided. Pravda and Isvestia wrote a few lines that a group of extremists and nationalists had organized a rally in Yerevan.
The late Hambartsum Galstyan, with his sharp and derisive pen, described those romantic and revolutionary times: “Our aristocratic people were very offended by the two words, ‘nationalist’ and ‘extremist.’ And the number of people participating at the rally doubled, quadrupled. The speakers, without waiting for one another, were making speeches, making note of their rank, title and their service to their socialist homeland; extremely angry, they demanded their honor restored by the ‘sold-out scribes’ who had coined them nationalists and extremists.”
The daily rallies were bringing more people to the square. Probably the largest protest rally ever in the history of the Soviet Union, took place on February 25-26. By different accounts, anywhere from half a million to a million people were demanding the unification of Nagorno Karabakh with Armenia.
“Almost all the large enterprises had joined the strike. Strike committees were created in all of Yerevan’s large companies. Those sections of society upon whom the Movement could primarily rely upon were drafted during those days. In the first case, they were the workers of large industrial factories. The intelligentsia’s influence was extremely big in the movement. In the early stages of the movement, the students’ involvement was not particularly significant. Until the very end, the villages remained reserved toward the Movement,” writes Galstyan.
Mamvel Sargsyan, one of the activists of the Movement presents it in the following way: “On February 20, an organizing committee was created to direct the rallies in Yerevan. Aside from Igor and me, Gagik Safaryan, Alexan Hakobyan, Hambartsum Galstyan and another 10-12 people were in that committee. On February 26, when the rallies were banned, Igor announced that the ‘Karabakh’ committee was being formed, and its first meeting was to take place very soon.”
Galstyan adds: “To say that democratic elections took place would be wrong. I read a list of names, and we informed the people that in order to have well-organized and disciplined rallies, we were creating a ‘Karabakh’ committee. As for a president, it was undeniable: under the cheers and whistles of the participants, Muradyan was elected.”
Karen Demirchyan meets with some of the participants of the rallies, including Silva Kaputikyan. The poetess proposes to the leader of Armenia to join the people who have assembled in the square “in the name of our people, in the name of their unfulfilled rights.”
Kaputikyan described the dramatic situation in those days: “Instead of the usual irony on his face, Demirchyan was worried and wore an expression of hopelessness. He knew more than all of us. The meeting lasted a few hours and it was decided to meet again the next morning. The next morning the faces of the people of Karabakh were beaming with happiness. They had received news that in an extraordinary session late in the evening the members of NK parliament [Soviet of the Autonomous Region of Nagorno Karabakh], apart from the Azerbaijani members, had unanimously approved the decision to unify with Armenia. ‘Are you aware of that comrade Demirchyan?’ the people of Karabakh asked while congratulating him. Demirchyan was not in the mood to receive congratulations. ‘I know,’ he answered thoughtfully. ‘That decision, of course, changes the situation.’”
In February, the Kremlin studies the issue of Nagorno Karabakh.
Gorbachev writes: “We received information about the position of the leaders of the republics. The Azerbaijan leader, [Kyamran] Baghirov, insisted that Moscow should guarantee the unchanged status of Nagorno Karabakh. The Armenian leader, [Karen] Denmirchyan, suggested that the appeal of the Soviet of the Autonomous Region of Nagorno Karabakh should be considered in the Supreme Soviets of Azerbaijan, Armenia and the Soviet Union. It became clear that the arguments between Baku and Yerevan over Stepanakert would have to be resolved by Moscow.”
“[Nikolai] Ryzhkov said that we must ‘act in accordance with the Constitution’. [Vikyor] Chebrikov reported that these events were having a bad effect in other republics. In Estonia there was a growing sentiment in favor of leaving the Soviet Union. Tajikistan was debating its claim to Bukhara and Samarkand. I believed that the problem had to be resolved by political means, that the Central Committee should declare any change of borders unacceptable, and that we needed to draft economic, social and cultural proposals aimed at improving the situation in Nagorno Karabakh. We should let the Armenians and Azerbaijanis get together and decide the status of Nagorno Karabakh for themselves, and we ought to accept any decision they made.”
*****
An exceptional and informative work based on a rich and varied source base. Its impartiality is striking. A much needed monograph destined to persevere as the ‘textbook’ for Armenian diplomacy. As a pioneering initiative that presents an accurate reinterpretation of the Karabakh struggle for self-determination, this book captures the essence of the issue with an illuminating portrayal of many of the key figures and events that have come to define the Karabakh issue. The conflict cruelly shaped the destinies of thousands of average people and the ordeals they bore underline the responsibility of those at the top, in whose hands a resolution of the Karabakh conflict rests. The author’s secret, revealed in the pages of Green and Black, is that he does not shy away from presenting those facts and realties no longer considered expedient to remember. Anyone wishing to be informed and regarding the Karabakh conflict must read this book.
Paperback: 416 pages,
Language: English,
2010, Antelias,
ISBN 978-995301816-4.
