InternationalArmenians love to gather in Freedom Square
Around this time in February 1988, they demanded Karabakh from the Kremlin
Published: Saturday February 21, 2009
A gathering in Opera Square in February 1988. Photolure
Yerevan - In the last week of February 1988, Opera Square was the main gathering point for the Armenian nation. The best translation of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost among all the languages encompassed in the Soviet Union was the Armenian hraparakainutiun - from the Armenian word for public square. The policy, which permitted open discussion of political and social issues and freer dissemination of news and information, came to life in the public square, Opera Square. The platform and the microphone had become a magnet for Armenians thirsty for justice - not only from Yerevan, but also from the provincial towns and villages.
The late Rafael Ghazarian, senior member of the Karabakh Committee, considered February 1988 and the following two years to have been the brightest pages in the history of the Armenian nation. During those years, he used to say, the movement was pure, there were no mercenary motives, and people were ready to sacrifice themselves for the movement. "People gathered at the square believed that the Karabakh issue would be resolved very soon and Moscow would remove the region from Azerbaijan's administration and hand it to Armenia, and by doing so restore historical justice."
For the first time in the Soviet Union, a national mass movement had begun, which challenged the political-administrative system, the party's autocracy, and the state. Mr. Gorbachev's adviser, the Armenian Karen Brutents, wrote in his memoir that Karabakh was not the first attempt under glasnost to challenge Soviet nationalities policy.
"In January 1986, the students of Yakutia University demanded education in their native language. In December of the same year, the youth in Almati protested the appointment of the Russian Kolbin instead of the Kazakh Kunaev to the post of First Secretary of the Communist Party's Central Committee in Kazakhstan. The passions were immediately suppressed and, in an official statement, they were evaluated as speeches containing ‘provocation with nationalist elements,'?" writes Mr. Brutents.
The first Karabakh rally took place on February 12, 1988, in Nagorno-Karabakh's provincial city of Hadrut. More rallies took place in the following days in Stepanakert, Yerevan, and different diaspora communities. The first rally in Armenia began in the city of Abovyan. On February 18 factory workers in the city started marching toward Yerevan, demanding the resolution of an ecological issue. One or two days later, the ecological protest turned into demands for Karabakh.
Karen Demirchian, head of Armenia's Communist Party left for Moscow, together with his spouse, Rima Demirchian. She says, "The ecologists' rally was taking place that day and Karen said that the next day, the Karabakh rally would take place. Nothing was surprising to him. He used to say that the issue would not be resolved then, as it was too soon and it had not matured yet. When the issue was raised, his thoughts were that Karabakh's status should be changed so that Karabakh would become an autonomous republic. In his writings there is evidence that he managed to reach agreements with [Politburo member Yegor] Ligachov and others."
Zori Balayan, one of the leaders of the movement, presented the situation in those days to British author Thomas De Vaal in the following way: "We gathered in Opera Square with purely ecological slogans, but amongst those present someone would say, ‘Karabakh is Armenia's historical territory.' No one paid attention to that. During the next rally other similar slogans were added. When Igor Muradian led the people towards the square, he brought with him Gorbachev's portrait. ‘Lenin, the Party, Gorbachev' was his slogan; he made it up. Three weeks later he made up another one, ‘Stalin, Beria, Ligachov.' This way, the nation got used to the idea that, apart from talking about [the polluting rubber factory at] Nairit and Lake Sevan, it was possible to also talk about national issues. A month later they referred to Nairit and Sevan only for five minutes."
On February 20 an incident that may have been unprecedented in the political history of the Soviet Union took place in Stepanakert. Karabakh's local parliament conducted a special session and with 110 votes in favor (110 of the 140 members of parliament were Armenian and the 30 Azerbaijani members of parliament did not participate in the vote), adopted a historic decision. They applied to the parliaments of Soviet Armenia and Soviet Azerbaijan, requesting them to transfer the autonomous region of Nagorno-Karabakh from the structure of Azerbaijan to Armenia. The Armenian members of Karabakh's parliament also applied to the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union in order for the issue to receive a position resolution.
While Armenians in Artsakh, Armenia, and the diaspora were excited by the possible resolution of the Karabakh issue and had gathered in the square for the sake of Artsakh, the Communist leadership of Soviet Armenia found itself in the crossfire. The people were pressuring them from below and the Kremlin from above.
Under these conditions, Mr. Demirchian entered the square and, as a response to the disapproval, announced that Karabakh was not in his pocket for him to hand to Armenia. No matter how true the words of the much-loved leader were, they were obviously ill-timed and resulted in the fierce reaction of the revolutionary mass.
"Karen announced to the people that Moscow had demanded the creation of a special committee for the Karabakh issue, but that seemed too little to people and they demanded the immediate joining of Karabakh to Armenia. When people complained, Karen said, ‘Karabakh is not in my pocket for me to give to you.' I consider this a historical saying: now we are waiting to see the response of the international community; how things will develop. Karabakh is still not in anyone's pocket to be taken out and given," Mrs. Demirchian said.
