The 1988 Armenian pogrom in Sumgait was largely due to the USSR’s weakening power, which was already experiencing its agony, says an Armenian high-ranking military official who eye-witnessed the tragic events.
Sumgait pogrom aftermath of Soviet government’s weakening power: Armenian general
STEPANAKERT, MARCH 1, ARTSAKHPRESS: Speaking to Tert.am, Major Generar Genady Tavaratsyan, who now heads the Armenian Armed Forces’ Strategic Planning Department, said he was in Sumgait on the tragic day as a member of a battalion which was sent to the Azerbaijani city to establish law and order.
“I was 20 at the time, a fourth-year student [at the Baku Higher Military College], and we dispatched to Sumgait together with the third-year students. Before leaving, we had no idea as to what was happening there, so it came as a great surprise to us after we learned it. It was something out of the ordinary for us, as we didn’t understand how a thing of the kind could possibly happen in the Soviet Union. We got there the first day, late in the evening of February 27. We found burnt buses in the city, with the furious crowd wandering about with metal sticks, subjecting ethnic Armenians to violence,” he said.
The major general further remembered police officers at passport desk giving lists of the Armenians’ addresses to the angry crowd as though it were a normal practice.
“The moral-psychological atmosphere in the city was against the Armenians. People who had lived side by side for many years were now battling against each other. There were, of course, neighbors who would offer help, hiding Armenians in their houses, but most did so not to be called bad people in future. I think the two nations had always experienced that mutual tension, which the authorities managed to restrain. But after the authorities weakened, the violence mounted,” he added.
General Tavaratsyan stressed the Sumgait pogroms should be more often remembered and written about. The problem must more often be raised at different international levels.
“We have concrete facts at our disposal. Armenians were murdered in Sumgait in peacetime. Their only aim was to annihilate a whole people in that city, Azerbaijan’s second largest city after Baku. And they accomplished their task within few days, which is evidence of premeditated actions,” he said.
According to him, the cause of envy towards Armenians over the years was that Armenians had always held high posts in Azerbaijan and been cleverer.
The Armenian side can make use of international platforms to show how Nagorno-Karabakh could be made part of Azerbaijan with that country implementing an Armenophobic policy.
“The Artsakh war might have been averted if the masterminds behind the Sumgait pogroms had been punished. But after blood was spilt, Armenia realized there was no talking to Azerbaijanis peacefully. I cannot say who is responsible, but the authorities were generally weak, and some took advantages of that. There was enough force to suppress, but some people pursued their own interests.”
