Gorbachev uses earthquake tragedy to attack Armenians

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'more sand than cement' On Dec. 12, Pravda, the newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, admitted facts that showed that while the Armenian earthquake was a natural occurrence, the scale of damage and loss of life was in fact caused by the mismanagement of the economy during the "years of stagnation." This was a direct reference to the period under Leonid Brezhnev.

"Everything that was built during those years of stagnation collapsed," the Pravda article noted. "How could it be otherwise, since seismologists warned the builders several times..... Nevertheless buildings of five, eight floors rose up stubbornly."

The construction of the housing projects was of poor quality. Buildings that had "more sand than cement"—t0 quote Pravda The attempt to blame shoddy construction on Brezhnev is not likely to typical of the bureaucracy's economic mismanagement everywhere from "When the earthquake left 100,000 victims buried in ruins, when the Armenians were plunged into sorrow, and hundreds left the capital to help their fellow citizens, the people were stabbed in the back," the Karabakh Committee, the 11-person leadership of the Armenian independent mass movement, declared in a Dec. 11, 1988, communiqué.

"No other country, even the least democratic, would have dared to insult the mourning of our people, who were beaten and wounded by bullets two days after the earthquake. In view of Moscow's attitude, it is hard to convince the people that the only problem is a natural earthquake.

'This catastrophe has served to show that we were really deprived of sovereignty. ... Gorbachev sent his army to shut down the Karabakh Committee. Then he came to offer his condolences to our people. He arrested people, he shed blood, and he left. All those who do not condemn that, condemn themselves to slavery." (Libération, Dec. 17)

The reaction of the Karabakh Committee was on the mark. The Kremlin's attack on the Armenian movement had clearly nothing to do with maintaining "order." It was a response to the Karabakh Committee's attempt to mobilize support for the victims of the earthquake in the face of the paralysis, incompetence, and confusion of the bureaucratic institutions.

Supposedly, one of the principal objectives of perestroika is to promote rank-and-file initiative. But who could doubt that an organization that had proved itself capable of organizing demonstrations of up to a third of the population of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic as well as national general strikes could effectively organize help for the earthquake victims?

Committee leaders arrested

During the days immediately following the earthquake-the most important days in the rescue operation-the population had to rely on its own efforts. All eyewitness accounts agree in stating that the official relief agencies responded to the emergency late and inefficiently.

But the self-organization of the Armenians to rescue the victims was brutally repressed by the Soviet armed forces.

A correspondent for the French daily Le Monde reported on Dec. 13:

"While all the sirens were screaming and the ambulances continued to bring hundreds of wounded to the Yerevan surgical institute, on Dec. 10 the military authorities in the city forcibly dispersed a crowd that had come to offer contributions for the victims."

Five leaders of the 11 on the Karabakh Committee were arrested and sentenced to 30 days in prison after they refused to call on the people to go home. The following day, Sunday, Dec. 11, troops fired warning shots to disperse a crowd gathered to protest the arrests. Reports of the number wounded vary from one to three, but there seems no doubt that blood was shed.

For over a year, the Soviet authorities had refrained from using violence against the independent Armenian mass movement. It was only after the latest anti-Armenian pogroms in Azerbaidjan that the authorities began to punish the victims, rather than those responsible for the violence. Now, in an open and blatant manner, the Soviet leadership decided to exploit the earthquake disaster to attempt to crush the Armenian mass The Soviet bureaucrats welcomed the hypocritical assistance of the imperialist nations-of those who at best offered only a few crumbs to the hurricane victims in Nicaragua. But at the same time, they condemned the efforts of the leaders of the Armenian people to come to the aid of their own people.

Rise of independent mass activity The Armenian people have played the vanguard role in the struggle of oppressed peoples fighting for national rights. That is undoubtedly why the Kremlin is taking the gamble of trying to crush them now.

The bureaucracy's crackdown in Armenia san Hakobian, Ph.D. in history and member of the Department of Oriental Studies of the Armenian Academy of Sciences; and Ashot Manucharyan, deputy to the Armenian Supreme Soviet.

As of Dec. 29, 1988, all the Committee's members, except three, were in prison. Five of them were arrested several hours before Gorbachev's interview was broadcast and three shortly thereafter. Three others are presently in hiding.

Also more than 200 various Armenian political activists, representing differen! groups, are in detention awaiting charges. That does not include thousands more who were detained for violation of martial law. According to our sources in Moscow, "essentially all leaders of the Armenian democraticnational movement are presently in jail." Most of them have been detained for 30 poses a life-or-death challenge to the movements of other oppressed peoples, but not only to them.

The movements for national rights are the first form of the revival of independent mass activity since the establishment of the bureaucratic dictatorship. They have been opening the road for democratic action for the Great Russian workers and workers themselves.

The democratic aspirations of all the Soviet masses explain why the bureaucracy could not crush the movements for national rights at their birth. Therefore, the attacks being carried out on them today—in particular on the Armenian movement-represent a turnabout by the Gorbachev leadership that threatens the entire movement for democratic and socíal rights of every kind in the U.S.S.R.

No socialist or democrat should be confused about the terms of this confrontation by the bureaucracy's claims about the dangers of "nationalism," "communal conflict," or "local mafia." What is at stake is the right of the masses to solve their problems through mobilization, open debate, and democracy. convince the Armenian masses. This sort of construction is the time the bureaucratic caste usurped political power and days under powers granted to military authorities in the conditions of martial law that have been imposed in Armenia and parts of Azerbaidjan.

As for the Karabakh Committee, several members' relatives were told that they may be charged with "inciting mass disorder" and face a possible term of up to 15 years. The truth is that it is the Karabakh Commitee, through its immense popularity in Armenia, which on several occasions brought a halt to massive strikes that paralyzed the republic.

With the Karabakh Committee in jail, Moscow will have no choice but to keep the military in the area indefinitely, thus preventing resolution of the bloody AzeriArmenian conflict, which it itself unleashed. Maintenance of martial law in Armenia will further the clampdown on the movement for democracy in Russia proper and in the Ukraine.