Armenia and Karabagh: The Struggle for Unity
Christopher J. Walker
Minority Rights Publications
The radical changes that have occurred in the USSR since 1985 have naturally brought changes to the situation in Armenia, the smallest of the Soviet republics. Following the introduction of perestroika, there was no immediate renewal; Armenia remained stagnant and Brezhnevite until 1987. Then the Communist Party structure began to shift, and eventually it crumbled altogether, but not under the weight of reform; rather it collapsed because of popular demands for the unification of Armenia with a neighbouring, largely Armenian-inhabited territory which is within the jurisdiction of Soviet Azerbaijan.
.....
Christopher J. Walker acted as overall editor and co-author. He is a freelance writer and researcher specializing in Armenia its people and has written extensively on the subject.
Contents
Foreword / vii
Introduction / 1
1 The Armenian People / 7
2 Armenia and its history / 15
3 The era of massacres / 23
4 Independent Armenia: 1918-1920 / 31
5 Republican Turkey - the ambiguous inheritor / 35
6 Armenians in the Diaspora / 49
7 Soviet Armenia - a national home / 59
8 Karabagh in outline / 69
9 Ancient and medieval Karabagh / 73
10 Russia and Karabagh: 1805-1918 / 83
11 Securing Armenian Karabagh: 1918-1920 / 91
12 The end of the Republic of Armenia / 103
13 The years of suppression: 1923-1987 / 113
14 The struggle for unification: 1988 onwards / 123
Conclusion - Looking to the future / 133
Footnotes / 137
Select Bibliography / 144
Index / 147
FOREWORD
by Gerard Chaliand
The deportation and massacre of whole communities of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in 1915 was not only an Armenian tragedy, but also briefly shocked the international conscience. For a long time, it was forgotten by the outside world. Today it is regarded as the first genocide of the 20th Century.
At the time of the war and in the wake of serious military reversals, the pan-Turkist (or pan-Turanian) government of the Young Turks determined a drastic solution to the 'Armenian question'. Having already lost the Balkans and Libya in previous conflicts, the Young Turk government feared losing the empire's north-eastern provinces, where the majority of the Armenian population lived, to a Russian advance. Therefore it was decided to liquidate the Armenian population. In the course of the massacres and deportations which followed, about one and a half million Armenians perished, and about half a million Armenians became refugees.
Between 1918 and 1920 Armenia experienced a brief period of independence, when some of the survivors took part in the founding of an independent Armenian republic, encompassing areas in the former Russian and Ottoman Empires. The Sovietization of Transcaucasia ended this precarious independence, and the imperial carve-up imposed by Moscow left the territories of Mountainous (Nagorno) Karabagh and Nakhichevan under the administration of the new Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan from the early 1920s. While Nakhichevan is today populated almost entirely by Azeris, Karabagh remains 75% Armenian in population.
Armenians have tried to redress the massive injustice of the genocide and to gain international recognition for their cause.
From 1975 a minority resorted to violent means through terrorist activities, but subsequently Armenian organizations have used other, peaceful means, working through international bodies. This has lead to a recognition of the genocide by the UN Sub-Commission on the Prevention of Dis-crimination and the Protection of Minorities in 1986 and by the Council of Europe in 1987. World attention returned to Soviet Armenia from the beginning of 1988, when the Karabagh issue again came to the fore. In the context of glasnost, Armenia, like the Baltic states, is demanding democratization - a process which encompasses the aspirations of the majority-Armenian population of Karabagh to be united with Armenia.
Whatever the other achievements of President Gorbachev, his initiatives on the subject of national and ethnic issues have been disappointingly feeble. At a time when the status of Karabagh could have been solved peacefully - by, for example, giving the city of Shushi, which is inhabited mainly by Azeris, to Azerbaijan in exchange for the corridor of territory which separates Karabagh from Armenia to Armenia - President Gorbachev, as in many other national problems, preferred to maintain a policy of 'divide and rule'.
The crisis came to a head in February 1988 when the Soviet of Mountainous Karabagh voted to demand the transfer of the territory to Armenia. Unfortunately, the response of part of the Azeri population was a violent one: in Sumgait near Baku, anti-Armenian pogroms took place in February 1988, followed by further violence in Kirovabad in November 1988 and Baku in January 1990. A cycle of violence was set in motion. Armenians in Azerbaijan and Azeris in Armenia began a mass exodus, many fleeing to their national republics.
The anti-Armenian pogroms were not the actions of a majority of the Azeri population. But they make clear that the right to self-determination remains, even in the USSR today, a democratic prerogative which is denied to Soviet citizens. This book shows that it is the same struggle for recognition and self-determination which is the link between the genocide of 1915 and the events of the present.
Gerard Chaliand
Gerard Chaliand is a political scientist, an advisor to the Centre for Analysis and Planning for French Foreign Relations and the author of 20 books. He was President of the Groupement pour les Droits de Minorites (GDM, Paris) for 10 years. His family came from Armenia and he has continuing involvement with Armenia and its people.
Acknowledgements
Parts of this book have previously been published under different titles. Chapters 1 to 7 were first published in a different order and format in The Armenians, by D.M. Lang and Christopher J. Walker (MRG, London, fifth edition, 1987). Chapters 8 to 14 were originally published in French as Le Karabagh: une terre armenienne en Azerbaidjan by Patrick Donabedian and Claude Mutafian (GDM, Paris, 1988) and translated into English by Aline Werth. Material published in this book has been revised and updated to cover events until February 1991 by Christopher J. Walker, who acted as editor.
The transliterations of Armenian words used are those in common use in standard English language publications.
The opinions expressed in this book are those of the authors and editor. MRG gratefully thanks Gerard Chaliand for writing the Foreword to this book.
This book was produced by Kaye Stearman (Series Editor) Brian Morrison (Production Co-ordinator), Jacqueline Siapno (Editorial Assis-tant), Robert Webb (Publicity and Marketing Co-ordinator).
About the authors
Patrick Donabedian wrote Chapter 9 and part of Chapter 10. He is an art historian specializing in the medieval art of Transcaucasia and is the author of a number of articles on the subject.
David Marshall Lang is, with Christopher J. Walker, responsible for Chapters 1 to 7. He was formerly Professor of Caucasian Studies at The School of Oriental and African Studies, London University and is the author of several books on Armenia.
Claude Mutafian wrote most of Chapter 10 and Chapters 11 to 14. He is a historian with a particular interest in the Near East and Armenia, and has written extensively on this area of study.
Christopher J. Walker acted as overall editor and co-author. He is a freelance writer and researcher specializing in Armenia its people and has written extensively on the subject.
Introduction
The radical changes that have occurred in the USSR since 1985 have naturally brought changes to the situation in Armenia, the smallest of the Soviet republics. Following the introduction of perestroika, there was no immediate renewal; Armenia remained stagnant and Brezhnevite until 1987. Then the Communist Party structure began to shift, and eventually it crumbled altogether, but not under the weight of reform; rather it collapsed because of popular demands for the unification of Armenia with a neighbouring, largely Armenian-inhabited territory which is within the jurisdiction of Soviet Azerbaijan.
The near revolutionary situation that developed in Armenia in 1988 and 1989 related almost entirely to the struggle for this territory, known in Soviet parlance as the Nagorno Karabakh Autonomous Oblast, or NKAO for short. 'Nagorno Karabakh' (more correctly, Karabagh) means 'mountainous black garden'; oblast means 'region'. The population of this region, often known simply as Karabagh, or to give it its Armenian name, Artsakh, sought to end its association with Soviet Azerbaijan, to which it had been administratively assigned in 1923, and to unite it with Armenia, the republic with which its people shared language, cultural heritage and national identity.
These demands found a ready echo inside Armenia, and the popular mood there oscillated between great hopes, that perestroika would mean the ending of a 70-year-old injustice for the people of Karabagh, and bitter disappointment, that the Soviet state was, despite talk of change and renewal, unable or unwilling to make changes where they mattered most: on issues of nationality relating to the survival of national groups such as the Armenians of Nagorno Karabagh oppressed in alien, and often chauvinist, republics. Few nationalities had been so denied human rights and national identity as the Armenians of Nagorno Karabagh.
The struggle of the people of Karabagh, and of the parallel supporting struggle of the people of Armenia itself, is only one episode in the many struggles and tribulations of the Armenian people throughout …
Christopher J. Walker
Armenia and Karabagh
The Struggle for Unity
Minority Rights Publications
Minority Rights Publications
Armenia and Karabagh
The Struggle for Unity
Christopher J. Walker
Edited by
Christopher J. Walker
Foreword by
Gerard Chaliand
© Minority Rights Group 1991
First published in Great Britain in 1991 by
Minority Rights Publications
379 Brixton Road
London SW9 7DE
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any other means
without the prior written permission of the copyright holder.
Please direct all enquiries to the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 1 873194 00 5 paper
ISBN 1 873194 20 X hardback
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
CIP Data available from the Library of Congress
Designed and typeset by Brixton Graphics
Printed and bound by Billing and Sons Ltd
Cover photo of Armenians in Leninakan -
D. Brinicombe / The Hutchison Library
