The 1988 Sumgait massacre crystallized anti-Armenian hatred

20 years ago the city on the Caspian was a killing field

by Tatul Hakobyan

Published: Saturday March 01, 2008

The 70-year history of the Soviet Union is full of bloody episodes, but what happened in Sumgait was unprecedented. Firstly, the massacres occurred in completely peaceful times. Secondly, the massacres were based on ethnicity not political loyalties. Thirdly, the central Soviet and republican authorities, though they did not implement the massacres themselves (as they had in Tbilisi in April 1989), by their lack of response, gave the opportunity to realize the massacres to the working class, which was, according to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's expectations, supposed to establish social order.

As a result of the Armenian massacres in Sumgait during the last three days of February, at least 29 Armenians and six Azerbaijanis were killed; about 400 people were injured; and the 18,000-strong Armenian population of the city became refugees. The six Azerbaijanis were probably killed by Soviet naval officers when the armed forces attacked the young murderers gathered at the Sumgait bus station. This was on the evening of February 29, when the massacres of the Armenians was drawing to an end. Maybe this attack on the Azerbaijanis was carried out to give the massacres in Sumgait an inter-ethnic cast.

The fact that the Azerbaijani slaughterers were armed with similar metal bars, that they had the addresses of the apartments of Armenians, and had been separated into special groups, speaks about the prior planning of the massacre. On the other hand, however, it is obvious that if other Azerbaijanis had not sheltered Armenians in their homes, the numbers of the murdered and injured would have been more. Only after the afternoon of February 29 did the Soviet army get the order to interfere and use weapons; rescuing thousands of intimidated Armenians from further massacre.

In the spring of 1988 Samvel Shahmuradian recorded dozens of stories about the survivors of Sumgait. Some Azerbaijani authors insist that the Armenian massacres in Sumgait were realized by Azerbaijanis who had been exiled from Kapan. That Azerbaijanis expelled from Armenia may have been among the groups of slaughterers cannot be excluded. However, the slaughterers did not use the word "Kapan" to justify the massacre; to be more precise, they used the word to incite violence.

Constantine Pkhakadze, a Georgian who lived in Sumgait with his Armenian wife, has said that on February 21 an Azerbaijani friend had informed him that an anti-Armenian demonstration was to be expected within a week, but he had taken the information with a grain of salt. On the evening of February 26, Pkhakadze had seen a small number of people gathered in Lenin Square. One of them, not mentioning his name or surname, had recounted that he had run away with his compatriots from Kapan, where Armenians had killed both his and his wife's relatives.

"We have run away from Kapan," said the Azerbaijani with the long face and thin mustache, who was the organizer of the rally. The next day other stories had been added; supposedly the Armenians had invaded the girls' dormitory in Kapan, raped the Azerbaijani girls and cut off their breasts. The Azerbaijani who claimed to be from Kapan concluded his words with "Armenians get out of Azerbaijani lands and death to the Armenians."

On the afternoon of February 27, the second secretary of the Sumgait City Committee Bayramova appealed to the participants of the rally. "There is no need to kill the Armenians. Gorbachev has said that no one is seizing Karabakh. The territory has been and will remain Azerbaijani. Allow the Armenians to leave Azerbaijan peacefully. Give them a chance to leave," said Bayramova, concluding her speech.

What happened in Kapan

According to some assertions in Azerbaijani sources the inter­community clashes between Armenians and Azerbaijanis had begun prior to the February 1988 rallies. Historian Arif Yunusov persistently, but without any proof, insists that the exile and displacement of Azerbaijanis from Armenia had started in November 1987, and continued on January 25, 1988, and not 8 months after the massacres in Sumgait. Yunusov and other Azerbaijani and international authors, who repeat Yunosov word for word, have no quotes from even one of the thousands of Azerbaijanis supposedly exiled from Armenia before Sumgait.

Jhora Mkrtchian was the Chief of the Kapan Train Station until 1992. However, he does not remember a single Azerbaijani displaced before Sumgait. "The Azerbaijanis only started moving after the massacres, when pandemonium broke out. They wrote requests and those who wanted a wagon, received a wagon, those who wanted containers, received containers; they loaded their cargo, bought tickets and left. They left on the Kapan-Baku train. Many left by car."

The former second secretary of the Kapan Regional Committee Aramais Babayan says that in September 1987 news spread among local Azerbaijanis that a new city was being constructed in Azerbaijan and they were in need of laborers. "At that time a group of Azerbaijanis left Kapan. When they arrived there, they were told that a city was not being built. There were no possibilities of staying and some of them returned. None of them had left with their families", says Babayan.

From 1987 to 1990 Grigor Harutyunyan was the president of the executive committee of the Regional Council of Meghri; the second-highest ranking official in the region. He insists that only after the incidents in Sumgait did the Azerbaijanis start moving from the regions with their families. Harutyunian notes that before and after the years 1980-85, Azerbaijani youth left for Baku to receive an education and some of them did not return, just as some Armenians who came from the different regions of Azerbaijan to receive education in Yerevan stayed in Armenia. Harutyunian excludes the possibility of Azerbaijanis leaving with their families for Azerbaijan from the region of Meghri in 1987 without his knowledge.