Kirovabad pogrom

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The Kirovabad pogrom was an Azeri-led pogrom that targeted Armenians living in the city of Kirovabad (today called Ganja) in Soviet Azerbaijan during November 1988.^[1]^[2]^[3]

The Kirovabad pogrom was succeed by the appearing of extremist slogans like "Glory to the heroes of Sumgait"^[4]. An unidentified Armenian press editor said the commander of the Soviet troops asked the Interior Ministry in Moscow for permission to evacuate some of the city's Armenian population of 100,000.^[5] However, attempts by Soviet troops to defend Armenians during the pogrom were to no avail.^[6] 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. ^[7]

On November 23, an attempt of pogrom against the building of the city's Executive committee took place. During the clashes between the aggressive crowd and the armed forces who tried to keep the order and to defense the Armenian citizens three militaries were killed, 67 peoples were wounded. Hooligans burned down and damaged the military machines.^[8]

At the time, Soviet human rights activist Andrei Sakharov, in Massachusetts during the unrest, said he had received reports from the Soviet Union that more than 130 Armenians were killed and more than 200 wounded in the violence.^[9] In 1990, Yuri Rost ^[10] mentions forty deaths, one third of whom were ethnic Azeris killed in clashes with the Soviet troops, however in the same year Sakharov admitted in his memoirs that releasing the figures about the numbers of Armenian causalities was a deplorable mistake. He writes^[11]:

“

During this time Armenian – Azerbaijani problems aggravated again. Pogroms and violence started in Kirovabad. The situation there was terrible – hundreds of women and children were hiding in a church, which with much difficulty was protected by soldiers, who (as reports claimed) were armed only with mine shovels. Soldiers indeed were having a hard time, and they behaved heroically. There were casualties among them. Soon we received information that a large number of Armenians was killed. As it turned out later, the reports came from one person, who let’s say was not quite accurate and responsible. But they reached Moscow through various channels and appeared to be independent and trustworthy. Lusya, who trusted these reports (and it was hard not to trust them) transmitted them to me in the USA by telephone, and I used the received figures in a telephone message to Mitterrand (he just arrived to Moscow with an official visit, and I called by night to the French embassy) and in a public statement. This was one of the deplorable mistakes that I have made in the recent years. Of course, I should not have at least used the concrete figures.

”

According to the high ranked KGB officers who were involved in these events, pogroms and violence were prevented due to the efforts of the Soviet army and local authorities, and there were no casualties among the civil population.^[12]

“

Soviet soldiers have blocked dozens of Azerbaijani attempts to massacre Armenians in their homes in the continuing communal violence in the southern Soviet republic of Azerbaijan, a senior military commander there said Saturday.^[13]

”

References

^ Ethnic Fears and Ethnic War in Karabagh Article - Scholar - SJ Kaufman
^ Armenia in Crisis: The 1988 Earthquake By Verluise
^ Imogen Gladman. Eastern Europe, Russia and Central Asia. Taylor & Francis Group, Page 131.
^ Contested borders in the Caucasus. Ethnic Conflicts in the Caucasus 1988-1994, Chapter 1, by Alexei Zverev
^ "Soviets Ask Halt In Ethnic Unrest In 2 Republics", The New York Times, 1988-11-25, p. A1. Retrieved on 2007-06-08.
^ 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.
^ Армяно-азербайджанский (Карабахский) вооруженный конфликт (1988-1994 гг.)
^ "130 Died, Sakharov Says", The New York Times, 1988-11-26, p. 6. Retrieved on 2007-06-08.
^ Yuri Rost, "Armenian Tragedy", London: Weidenfield and Nicolson, 1990, p. 82.
^ (Russian) Memoirs of Andrei Sakharov
^ (Russian) Trud. 10 points on Politburo scale
^ Azerbaijani bids to `massacre' Armenians told - Los Angeles Times, November 27, 1988