Sumgait Pogrom

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Sumgait (Sumqayit) is located about 30 kilometers (approximiately 20 miles) northwest of Azerbaijan's capital Baku, near the Caspian Sea.

The Sumgait Pogrom was the Azeri-led pogrom that targeted the Armenian population living in the Azerbaijani seaside town of Sumgait (Azeri: Sumqayıt) in February 1988. On February 27, 1988, large mobs made up of Azeris formed into groups that went on to attack and kill Armenians in both on the streets and in their apartments; widespread looting and a general lack of concern from police officers allowed the situation to worsen. The violent acts in Sumgait were unprecedented in scope in the Soviet Union and attracted a great deal of attention from the media in the West. The massacre came in the light of the Nagorno-Karabakh movement that was gaining traction in the neighboring Armenia SSR.

On February 28, a small contingent of relatively unarmed Soviet MVD troops entered the city and unsuccessfully attempted to quell the rioting. The situation was finally defused when more professional military units entered with tanks and other armored vehicles one day later. The forces sent by the government imposed a state of martial law in Sumgait, established a curfew, and brought the crisis to an end.

The event was remarked with astonishment in both Armenia and the rest of the Soviet Union since ethnic feuds in the country were largely suppressed and thus officially nonexistent. Policies such as internationalism and Soviet patriotism were constantly promoted in the republics to avert such conflicts. Foreign analysts on the Soviet Union would also go on to presciently predict that the massacre, together with the Nagorno-Karabakh problem, would present a major challenge to the reforms being implemented by then General Secretary of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorbachev was criticized to what was perceived as his slow reaction to the crisis and numerous conspiracy theories rose after the event.

[edit] The Karabakh issue

Main article: Nagorno-Karabakh

The city of Sumgait is situated near the coast of the Caspian Sea and was perhaps one of the most polluted in the entire Soviet Union. Sumgait itself is only thirty kilometers north of the capital in Baku, which has many oil refineries in the Caspian Sea. The city had been renovated in the 1960s and had become a leading industrial city with oil refineries and petrochemical plants built during that era. Its population at that time was only 60,000; however, by the late 1980s, with an Armenian population of about 17,000, it had swelled to over 223,000 and overcrowding among other social problems had began plaguing the city's residents. According to Soviet government officials, at least two thousand former convicts had been relocated to Sumgait during the 1980s.^[1]

Coincidentally, the issue of the region of Nagorno-Karabakh had resurfaced in the same period. The new General Secretary of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev had introduced his new economic and political policies, Perestroika and Glasnost, when he came into power in 1985. Glasnost was a policy that encouraged criticism made towards the government's economic system and a general openness in discussing issues that were once considered taboo under the regimes of earlier Soviet leaders. However, it was these new opportunities that were used as the rationale by the Armenian Chamber of Deputies of the National Council of Nagorno-Karabakh who sought to revive the issue of the enclave's status and vote to unify the autonomous republic with Armenia on February 20, 1988. Being an autonomy within Azerbaijan SSR since 1923 with a large Armenian majority, many Armenians felt they were correcting a historical wrong; claiming that Nagorno-Karabakh had been unjustifiably been granted to Azerbaijan.

Led by both the Russian intelligentsia and popular Armenian figures such as economist Igor Muradyan, poetess Silva Kaputikyan, and Glasnot-era writer Zori Balayan, a formal petition was sent to the Soviet government in order to redress the issue of Karabakh. Armenians had began massive protests in the days before the Council's vote and workers had staged strikes in the Armenian capital of Yerevan and elsewhere, demanding that the region be transferred under Armenian control. The vote by the council and the subsequent protests were condemned by state-run Soviet media however, they resonated more loudly amongst the Azeris who felt that Nagorno-Karabakh was an integral part of their culture and history. Thereafter, the Azeris also launched counter-protests in Baku and elsewhere and strenuously objected any alteration to their territory. Gorbachev would go on to reject the claims invoking Article 78 of the Soviet constitution which stated that the Republics' borders could not be altered without prior consent.

[edit] Triggers

A map of Sumgait shows a section of the city's apartment districts, notable landmarks, and main streets.

[edit] Radio broadcast

Although the exact origins of the attacks are shrouded, like many events of Nagorno-Karabakh, there is some evidence that government officials had foreknowledge of the impending attacks. On February 27, the Soviet Deputy Federal Procurator, Aleksandr Katusev broadcast a report in the evening, that was later carried by Baku Radio and Central Television, that two Azeris, Bakhtiar Guliyev and Ali Hajiyev, aged 16 and 23, were purportedly killed by Armenians in a skirmish between the two ethnic groups in the Agdam region of Karabakh on February 22. Katusev would later receive a stinging rebuke for revealing the nationalities of both the young men and the Armenians. The secretive nature the Soviet Union was still attempting to shake off despite Gorbachev's policies had many Azeris interpret that Katusev's broadcast was most probably under reported. This apparently was the flare that set off the Azeris to riot in Sumgait.

[edit] Rallies in Lenin Square

Several minor rallies had also taken taken place in Lenin Square on February 26, the city's main plaza. On the streets, the issue of Karabakh was discussed incessantly and many Azeris aligned with the government's stance on Karabakh. At the end of January of 1988 many Azerbaijani refugees from Armenia reached Baku, and most refugees were relocated to Sumgait's already overcrowded slums. Before the end of February, two more waves of refugees were to reach Baku.^[2] A contributing factor to the growing animosity were reports of mass violence being committed by Armenians in the largely Azeri populated towns of Kapan and Masis, Armenia.

However, this was contested CPSU's official newspaper, Socialist Industry, itself noting:

Many of the people we had occasion to speak with directly reported a whole chain of clearly provocational acts designed to embitter people, incite panic, and sow mistrust. What was the purpose, for example, of the hysteria of the person who yelled to those gathered at the square of Sumgait the awful story of the ruin of his family by 'Armenian murderers'. When the authorities became involved with the victim, they determined that he was by no means the peaceful resident of Kafan he made himself out to be; instead he was a convicted recidivist, now a sponger, with no permanent address...and no family whatsoever. ^[3]

The rallies also were attended by other officials including the principal of a middle school. The rhetoric by the Kapan refugees incited the crowd and efforts to calm them by Azerbaijani figures such as a secretary of the city's party committee, Bayramova and poet Bakhtiar Bagabzade, who addressed the crowd atop a platform, were to no avail. V. Huseinov, an Azeri and the director of the Institute of Political Education in Azerbaijan also attempted to calm them by assuring them that Karabakh would remain within the republic. Huseinov also stated that the refugees' claims were false; however, when attempting to convince the crowds of this, he was heckled with insults and forced to step down.^[4] Jehangir Muzlimzade, Sumgait's first secretary also spoke to the crowd in which witnesses felt that his comments, although containing no inflammatory language, incited the crowd even further.

[edit] Pogroms

Forewarnings by Azerbaijanis sympathetic to their Armenian neighbors instructed them to leave their lights on the night of the 27_th; those who shut it off were assumed to be Armenian. According to several Armenian witnesses and later on several Soviet military personnel, alcohol and anasha, an Azeri term referring to narcotics such as opium, were also reported to have been brought in trucks and distributed to the Azeri crowds. Such accounts remained unconfirmed by media reports.^[5] Shortly after Muslimzade's speech, he was given the Republic's flag and soon found himself leading the crowd. According to Muslimzade himself, he was attempting to lead the crowd away from the Armenian district and towards the sea but many Armenians saw this act implicating him as being a participant in the riot. Muslimzade, however failed to lead the crowd in that direction and it soon dispersed into various directions of the Armenian district of Sumgait.

[edit] Property damage

Images captured from a videotape show burnt automobiles and the massive throngs of rioters on the streets of Sumgait.

Most of the weapons during the attacks were sharpened metal objects said to be produced in the city's industrial plants.

As the mobs seeped in, the first acts of violence began near the city's bus depot where they vandalized and destroyed newspaper kiosks and stores owned by Armenians. The mobs would block roads and stop automobiles and Ikarus buses and then demand to know if Armenians were inside. If there were, the mobs would pull them out and beat them (some to death) using improvised weapons such as leadpipes, armature shafts, and sharpened metal; an indication that they probably were made in Sumgait's industrial plants prior to the attack.^[6] An account given by an Armenian who was residing in one of the city's hospitals described the chaotic situation from his ward:

The day before, on the 27th, from the hospital window I saw cars being burned. That was in the evening, about five, five-thirty. Entire streets were blocked with people. There was shouting and noise: "Down with the Armenians!...Kill them any way you can." There were slogans and flags. Almost every car that came through was pelted with rocks and buses and trolleybuses were damaged. "Drive the Armenians from here"...this was the type of shouting that could be heard. A crowd was walking along the street; it had a leader. He had a bullhorn...commanding with the bullhorn: "Shout Hurrah!...Destroy the Armenians"....All of Sumgait was mixed up in all this....That whole distance of slightly better than a mile was filled with crowds.^[7]

Many automobiles were also turned over and, sometimes with the occupants remaining in it, were set ablaze. A common method of seeking out who was Armenian in the vehicles was by asking them to pronounce the Azeri word for hazelnut, fundukh. Armenians however pronounced the first letter with a "p", instantly giving away their identity.^[8] Seeing the riots happening, many residents attempted to contact the police but reported that the phone lines had been cut.

[edit] Widespread violence

Most citizens living in the Soviet Union's cities lived in apartment buildings which were categorized into microrayons or city blocks. The Armenian district of Sumgait was flanked around such microrayons and most Armenians lived among their Azeri and Russian neighbors in apartments. In the same essence from the rioting outside, the frenzied mobs would enter the apartment buildings where they would search to find out where they lived. Oftentimes, the rioters would know where Armenians lived and those who took shelter amongst their Azeri and Russian neighbors, who also risked being attacked by the mobs, were spared from the violence.^[9] Other attempts to exclude themselves from harm included turning on the television to and watching Azeri music concerts, raising the volume to give off the effect that Azeris resided in the apartment.

Muslim women in the Caucasus also had a long time tradition of dropping their shawl on to the ground as a gesture for the men to abstain from participating in violence. Such efforts were made by some of the Azeri women in the corridors of the apartment but went largely unheeded by the men. The Azeris thus forced their way into the apartments and attacked the residents. The attacking groups were comprised of different age groups. While the main participants were adult males and even some women, there were also youth students who took part in vandalizing and looting from the Armenians' homes appliances, shoes, and clothing. An account given by an Armenian woman describes the break-in and violence that took place in her family's home:

So we're hiding, and I hear them breaking down the door. It's like they took a log and are beating the door with it all their might....The mob breaks down the door and races into the apartment, immediately filling two rooms....Aunt Maria is saying "What have we done to you? I just came here from Kirovabad...I've worked with Azerbaijanis my whole life." She starts pleading with them in Azerbaijani. They say "No, we have to kill you." They are stabbing her husband, and [Aunt] Maria is covering him with her hands, and gets stabbed in the arm....They start to break down the door to the bedroom....There are 60 to 70 of them....They have knives in their hands, various knives, large and small; I see one with an iron crowbar....There are so many of them, and I am pleading "Please, just don't kill us."^[10]

Numerous acts of gang rape and sexual abuse were also committed, taking place in both the apartments and publicly on the city's streets. An account of one such act that was also corroborated by witnesses to occur in other instances described how a crowd stripped naked an Armenian woman and "dragged her, carried her, kicked her in the back, in the head, and dragged her" through the streets.^[11] Other accounts that also circulated were stories of Armenian women in hospital maternity wards having their fetuses disembowled although such rumors were later said to be false.^[12] In the midst of the attacks, many Armenians sought to defend themselves and improvised by nailing their doors shut and arming themselves with axes; in some instances, killing the intruding rioters. Calls going to ambulances or to the police were late or in many cases, unheeded completely:

Those Azerbaijanis broke our windows, and I shouted so...I called so much on the phone—no police, not one of those bastards came to the aid of my children, my children lay on the street until four o'clock in the morning, in front of our building, one on the left, one on the right....When there's one little accident on the main drag in Sumgait, a hundred policemen show up to help. But when two sons...lie on the asphalt all night, no one comes to help....It started at ten o'clock in the evening and my children lay there until four o'clock, and they stole, stole, stole...I called for an ambulance—none. I called the police—nothing. One wouldn't come, the other wouldn't come.^[13]

The weekly Moscow News newspaper later reported that of the city's twenty ambulances, eight had been destroyed by the mobs.^[14] Looting was prevalent and many Azeris also discussed among themselves on who would go on to own what after they had broken into the apartments. In some cases, televisions were stolen, along with other appliances and house goods; many apartments were largely vandalized and set aflame.

[edit] Government intervention

Military police escorting Armenian civilians out of the town.

The Soviet government's reaction to the protests was initially slow. The contemplation of sending military units to impose martial law into the town was a nearly unprecedented act in the Soviet Union's history. Most Soviets could at most recount to the days of Second World War where such measures were taken by the government. The spirit of Glasnost had seen the Soviet Union more tolerant in responding to politically-charged issues. However, Russian officials in Azerbaijan, some of whom were witnessing the attacks, appealed to Kremlin leaders to dispatch Soviet troops to Sumgait.

In a Soviet Politbureau session on the third day of the rioting on February 29, Gorbachev and his senior cabinet, conferred on several subjects before even discussing the events of Sumgait. When the issue was finally raised, Gorbachev voiced his opposition to the proposal but his cabinet members including the State's Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze and Defense Minister Dmitry Yazov, fearing an escalation between Armenians and Azeris, persuaded him to send troops to intervene.^[15]

Meanwhile, on the previous day, a detachment of a small battalion of MVD troops from the interior, largely equipped with truncheons and riot gear (those troops who were armed with firearms were armed with blanks and not given the permission to open fire), had made its way to Sumgait, arriving in buses and armored personnel carriers. As they moved in to secure the town and intervene in the attacks, the soldiers themselves became the targets of the mob. In what became a startling sight for people living in the city, the soldiers were being attacked and maimed with the improvised steel objects. Their armored vehicles were being flipped over and in some cases destroyed with molotov cocktails as the troops found themselves in complete disarray:

At noon they, the soldiers, attacked them, and then the tables were turned. The mob went after the soldiers....The guys [soldiers] were tired, exhausted, some had their clubs taken away, others, their shields, they had been beaten, they were covered in blood....They beat the soldiers with their own clubs and shields. And those guys stood there and couldn't defend themselves, they couldn't open fire. They couldn't defend themselves, let alone us. Its comical....How could something like that happen during our Soviet period? Its painfully embarrassing! And they burned the armored personnel carriers, too....The soldiers lost their senses. And when they drove the personnel carrier and the bus at the mob of rage and fury, they drove right up on the sidewalk....The bus ran over three [people], one of the carriers ran over two, and the second, two more....they ran over seven before our eyes.^[16]

By February 29, the situation had worsened to the point where the Soviet government was forced to call for more professional, heavily armed troops and given the right to open fire. The contingent included a vaunted special forces unit known as the Felix Dzerzhinsky Division, a company of Marines from the Caspian Sea naval flotilla, troops from Dagestan, an assault landing brigade, military police and a parachute regiment; a military force composed of nearly 10,000 men headed by Lieutenant General Krayev. Additionally, tanks were moved in and ordered to cordon off the city. Russian journalist for the Glasnost news publication, Andrei Shilkov, reported seeing at least 47 tanks and also troops wearing bulletproof vests patrolling the town, an implication that firearms were present and used during the rioting.^[17]

A curfew was imposed from 8 P.M. to 7 A.M as skirmishes between troops and rioters continued. Krayev's orders were to send the soldiers to rescue Armenians left in their apartments. By the evening of the 29^th, troops in buses and personnel carriers were patrolling the streets of Sumgait in a full effect of martial law. Civilian buses and APCs under heavily armed guard transported Armenian residents to the Samed Vurgun Cultural Facility (known as the SK) in the city's main square. A building that was designed to fit several hundred people, the SK was housing several thousand Armenians.

[edit] References

[edit] See also

• Khojaly Massacre
• Maraghar Massacre
• Nagorno-Karabakh War