Kirovabad Pogrom
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The Kirovabad Pogrom was an Azeri-led pogrom that targeted the Armenian population living in the Azerbaijani town of Kirovabad (today known as Ganja) in November 1988 [1] [2] [3]. There were no civilian casualties during the incident. The Kirovabad pogrom was apparently sparked by false reports in Azerbaijani press that Armenians in Karabakh had desecrated a sacred grove and were building on it an environmentally hazardous factory. MVD troops were called out in the city of 200,000 to guard the Armenian quarter and thwart attacks on communist party's offices, which according to Armenian sources, happened after mobs beat an Armenian priest and toppled a statue of Marshall Hovhannes Baghramyan. [4] Soviet troops apparently tried to defend Armenians during the pogrom but to no avail. [5] The conflict intensified in the fall of 1988, as the Armenians of Kirovabad and the surrounding countryside were driven from their homes and forced to seek haven in Armenia, while the frightened Azerbaijani minority in Armenia fled eastward into Azerbaijan [6]. Still greater violence erupted in Baku in January 1990, catching by surprise the 200,000 Armenians of the cosmopolitan Azerbaijani capital, which was believed to be relatively secure. [7] General Viktor Omelchenko, the military commander of Kirovabad, recorded "more than seventy attempts to organize pogroms" against the city's Armenian community.[4] These series of events were sparked by other pogroms such as the Sumgait Pogrom. [8]
[edit] References
- ^ Ethnic Fears and Ethnic War in Karabagh Article - Scholar - SJ Kaufman
- ^ Armenia in Crisis: The 1988 Earthquake By Verluise
- ^ Eastern Europe, Russia and Central Asia 2004 - Page 131 by Imogen Gladman, Taylor & Francis Group
- ^ a b "Gha-Ra-Bagh": The Emergence of the National Democratic Movement in Armenia By Mark Malkasian - Page 171
- ^ Modern Hatreds: The Symbolic Politics of Ethnic War By Stuart J. Kaufman - Page 77
- ^ From Richard G. Hovannisian, “Etiology and Sequelae of the Armenian Genocide,” In George J. Andreopoulos1 (ed.), Genocide: Conceptual and Historical Dimensions, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994, pp. 111-140.
- ^ From Richard G. Hovannisian, “Etiology and Sequelae of the Armenian Genocide,” In George J. Andreopoulos1 (ed.), Genocide: Conceptual and Historical Dimensions, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994, pp. 111-140.
- ^ Pogroms in Kirovabad - Yuri Babayan
