Pogroms in Azerbaijan and Armenia of 1988-89 As Historical Echo of the 1915 Armenian Genocide (Погромы в Азербайджане и Армении 1988-89 как историческое эхо 1915 Армянского Геноцида)

The intended question to be posed in this essay relates to the Armenian

Genocide of 1915 and its evident connection to the massacres of Armenian

minority in Azerbaijan in 1988-89. The path I have chosen to answer this

question leads throughout the history of Genocide in 1915. Hence, the

tragedy at the outset of the twentieth century provoked the slaughter of

the same prosecuted ethnical minority by the same perpetrating ethnic

majority only seventy years later.

According to the theory introduced by sociologist Alfred Schults, any

event by its own nature has no meaning. His view is that a meaning is

something ascribed to events or objects and is based on two concepts

functioning evenly: the sediment of past experience and another one

projected in future. These two factors establish what he calls the system

of relevances that enables to interpret a current even out of dual

perspective based on past and future.[1] By all means this theory is

applicable to massacre of 1915 and the pogroms in 1988. The outlined

parallels between the two series of events denote a much more disastrous

circumstance under which all the Armenian population in Azerbaijan was

jeopardized by “the Turks.” In this case the Schutz’s theory indicates

that the significance of past events (the various massacres and genocide)

became evident in interpretation of the pogroms that occurred in 1988-

90.[2]

No crime carries as much destruction and cruelty as genocide. It aims at

loss of ethnic identity of a victimized party. Genocide intends not just

to kill, maim, or violate people; the ultimate purpose is to deprive the

victim of its future as a strong national entity. Any massive crime has

impact on contemporary and/or possible prospective relations of the victim

and the perpetrator on global political arena. One well-documented massive

crime against humanity is the Armenian Genocide of 1915 when number of

casualties was estimated from 600 000 to 2 000000 people. The bloody event

in history of Armenia caused not only human loses, but deprived Armenia

partially of ancestral territory.

On the 9th of December 1948, the United Nations adopted the Genocide

Convention, compiling the following definition in Article II:

In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following facts

committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national,

ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

a) Killing members of the group;

b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated

to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The definition of genocide accepted by United Nations has caused a great

deal of controversy, for it excluded social and political groups.

Thereafter, in the 1980’s Helen Fein developed a broader and more profound

definition of genocide, from which she excluded killing as a mandatory

attribute of warfare, and on the opposite, included groups being persecuted

based on their social and political belonging:

Genocide is a sustained purposeful action by a perpetrator to

physically destroy a collectivity directly or indirectly, through

interdiction of the biological and social reproduction of group members,

sustained regardless of the surrender or lack of threat offered by the

victim.[3]

In the case of the Armenian Genocide of 1915 the governmental atrocity

against its own people wasn’t specified anywhere in the scrolls of

International Law. It contained certain regulations on account of a

civilian, noncombatant population during wartime, but this incident became

first of its kind for which international law had no stipulation. When the

legislative definition of genocide was accepted by the United Nations in

1948, it turned out to be that Armenian genocide fell under each of the

five categories of it.[4] Although the pogroms in Sumgait and Baku of 1988-

90 resemble more the pogroms in Ottoman Empire in 1890’s rather than actual

genocide which occurred in 1915 and culminated in 1921 in the fight and

expulsion of survivors who returned to Celicia, the analogy between 1915

and 1988-90 is apparent.

Armenians were a minority population in both Azerbaijan and Turkey,

thus clearly identifiable for persecution. Armenians were more upwardly

mobile than the majority population, hence creating the possibility of

potential social conflict. The overarching political conditions were

unstable in both the Soviet Union and the Ottoman Empire – revolutionary

change often being a prerequisite of genocide. Armenians were scapegoated

for political events outside the borders of the country in which they were

residing.[5]

Armenian genocide is one of the first genocide of the twentieth

century. It became a model for the “political” type of genocide. The

majority of the current genocides followed this pattern.

In order to examine to what degree the Genocide of 1915 is related to

the pogroms in Azerbaijan in 1988-90 some history of Armenians is to be

examined.

Armenians have populated the highland region between the Black,

Caspian and Mediterranean seas for centuries long. This area presented a

crossroad between East and West. As a result of the geographic location

Armenia wasn’t govern by its own dynasties constantly. The state has

experienced direct foreign rule as well as paying fees to the surrounding

states. Besides the geography, Armenia had another disadvantage. It was

the only Christian state surrounded by Muslim entities, this aspect kept

Armenia apart from others. Such distinct difference referred Armenians as

second-class citizens after the Ottoman Empire annexed the territory that

had molded ancient and medieval Armenian kingdoms, in the sixteenth

century. The Ottoman Empire established on its territory confessional-

based Muslim, Jewish, Greek Orthodox, and Armenian millets. Through these

establishments the Ottoman administrative system legalized the social

inequality within a structure of the society. The millet system enabled

Armenians to preserve their cultural-religious identity, but kept them

politically and militarily inefficacious. Armenians didn’t pose any threat

onto the multinational, unequal society and retained in accord to certain

degree with the dominant Muslim millet as long as they paid the tributes to

the government and remained politically inactive.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries a wind of changes came

across the Ottoman Empire and caused external challenges and internal

instability. Incapable of competing with the West economically and

military, the ruling authority lost a number of provinces and ended up in

debt. Such immediate breakdown of law and consequent venality fractured

the foundations of Ottoman multinational society. Due the increasing

threats to continued existence of the Ottoman Empire, the sultans, under

the pressure of Great Britain, launched a program of remodeling that broke

away from the traditional sociopolitical theocracy.

The tanzimat period, stretching from 1839 to 1876, was designed to

commence theoretical equality of all Ottoman subjects. However, while the

decree went into power, the system of millets maintained, and the equality

within it correspondingly. During the political internal and external

torments Armenians endeavored to uphold and to follow the reforms in order

to secure life and property. They had no intentions to develop a task of

separation or acquiring independence from the Ottoman Empire.

Then followed the Russian-Turkish War, in which Turkey lost severely.

The military and diplomatic failure of the sultan Abdul-Hamid II attributed

to the break away of the most of Balkan provinces. Thus, the attention of

the European community was drawn to the “Armenian Question.” However, the

fact of European protectorate, explicitly expressed verbally in regard to

the domestic policy of the crumbling Ottoman Empire only aggravated the

condition of Armenians in Turkey. Armenians’ quest for security and

equality resulted in brutal pogroms ordered by Abdul-Hamid, which were

carried out by armed Kurdish brigands in almost every province inhabited by

Armenians. The ultimate purpose of Abdul-Hamid wasn’t to exterminate the

Armenian population, but rather to point out that they have to follow the

policies of the Ottoman Empire. Particularly, to look up at Europe was a

forbidden act. His successors aimed at creating an entirely

socionationalistic frame of the state, free from Armenians, rather than

just preserving a political status quo.[6] The only way to achieve the

goal was to whip out the entire Armenian population from the Ottoman Empire

territory.

In early 1913 the Young Turk government was overthrown by its

militaristic and nationalistic wing, with Enver, Taalat, and Jemal Pashas

in head of it. This threesome involved the country into WWI as the ally of

Germany. Later in 1915 the same government outlined and put into effect a

plan for the elimination of Armenians, estimated between two and three

millions subjects. The plan was carried out in phases. In April 1915

people represented the Armenian religious, political, educational, and

intellectual authority in the Western tradition, variously one thousand

individuals, were jailed throughout the entire Empire, and consequently

killed within few days. The next phase consisted of liquidation of the

young male adult population, which mainly were recruits of the Turkish

army. The number approximated 200,000. They were purged through mass

burials, incineration, executions and weakness in labor battalions. The

leftovers of those who survived those phases were primarily children, women

and aged people. All of them were to be deported to distant regions of

Empire. Within six months of deportation half of those who survived first

two phases were killed, buried alive or thrown into the sea or the rivers

along the way.[7]

The murder of Armenians was characterized like the war against

Entente, as a jihad or holy war. Throughout the Empire it became illegal

to assist the survivors. The governmental decree established a penalty for

everyone who broke the law, which was to hang those who were helping

Armenians in front of their own house; the house was to be burnt.[8] Yet,

history records the removal of some governors from the office for the

resistance to the supreme order. Many Kurds and Arabs throughout Empire

were saving the refugees. The outcome of the genocide was catastrophic.

Out of two to three million Armenians in Western Armenia, a million and a

half perished during the massacres. Thousands of those who escaped the

purge and fled to Russian Armenia died because of starvation that had been

dwelling in Russia after the WWI. Those Armenians, who converted to Islam

and remained within Ottoman Empire borders never regained the status of

citizens and lost the ability to retain a sense of religious or national

identity. [9]

The history of the massacres in Nagornyi Karabakh and Baku took the

following path.

The survivors of the genocide have been affected by a deep

psychological shock, caused by the pathos and negligence that the European

community attributed to the Armenian Question on the brink of the twentieth

century, and Turkish endeavor to deny the crime. Once the horror seemed to

be over, a totalitarian and oppressive, yet protective system of the Soviet

Union gave guarantee to its subjects to prevent any external attack or

invasion, or in a case of such to defense. Armenia’s fear of Turks has

almost vanished, even though neighboring Azeris by their culture, group

language and historical background belonged to Turks. Armenia had to

barter its right to seek justice and the recognition of the Genocide for

the security provided by the USSR. This illusion of peace and fear-free

life crashed in 1988. The aura of the past became vivid again. It

occurred after the doctrines of Mikhail Gorbachev on glasnost’ and

perestroika became an essential part on sociopolitical aspects of the

domestic policy. The president of the USSR declared that the time had come

to correct past errors of the Stalin era. The message seemed to be

addressed directly to the Armenian population of Armenia and Nagornyi

(Mountainous) Karabakh, for despite the prevailing percentage of Armenian

population located in Karabakh, the administration of this region was

conferred upon Azerbaijan by the central government in 1921.[10]

Since late nineteenth century and especially after 1915 nationalism

has been on a wave amongst Armenians. This preoccupying doctrine of

“biological survival, identity, and nationality” became the dominant

argument for trading-off national independence in 1920 to Soviets, aiming

thus, to escape another assault by the Kemalist Turks. However, the

protectorate of the Soviet government employed brutality and violence

towards the new republic. It led to an uprising in Armenia against Soviet

system in February 1921. However, the revolt was suppressed by Bolshviks,

and later on the territory was attached to the republic of Azerbaijan

populated primarily by Shi’ite Moslem Turks. In 1923, the Karabakh region

was defined as the “Autonomous Region of Mountainous Karabakh,” the

population was 94 percent Armenian at that time, and it was 75 percent

Armenian in 1988.[11]

The conflict over Nagornyi Karabakh didn’t come about overnight.

Nationalism and feeling of insecurity drove Armenians to petition to the

Soviet Supreme for unification of Armenia with Nagornyi Karabakh, however,

the central government didn’t take into consideration any of the appeals.

Granted Karabakh to Azerbaijan wasn’t the only legacy of Sovietization.

Some other factors contributed to the development of conflict over years.

First, all referrals to the genocide were prohibited from 1920 to 1965,

second, the Soviet dictatorial regime caused fragmentation of society,[12]

third, despite all the efforts Soviet rule failed to achieve it’s objective

of “ethnic symbiosis.” [13] Every time when there was a change in

leadership of central state government Armenia reasserted it’s national

ambition and longing for re-unification with Nagornyi Karabakh. This issue

involved all aspects of the Armenian national predicament: Karabakh is

governed by Azerbaijan, viewed by Armenians as the traditional enemy

Turkey, the population is experiencing various discrimination and is

coerced to migrate, the question of preserving cultural identity is

crucial, and economic issues are arising.[14]

During brutal decades of Stalin regime the movement for the

reunification of Karabakh was almost out of question, for any revolts were

put down immediately, and those found guilty were punished severely.

However, from 1956 till 1961, during Khrushchev rule, when his “Thaw”

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