Turmoil in Azerbaijan: Legacy of Stalinist oppression of nationalities

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Over one million Azerbaijanis demonstrate in the shadow of Lenin.

SOCIALIST ACTION FEBRUARY 1990 3 "We shall demonstrate in the East what we have been able to demonstrate in the West: when Soviet power is in, national oppression is out."—V.I. Lenin, writing in 1921 after fighting broke out between Armenia and Georgia When political leaders in the republic of Lithuania began to speak of independence recently, Mikhail Gorbachev lashed out at them. Such talk, he warned, could lead to "discord, bloodshed, and death."

That was a couple of months ago. Now, in Azerbaijan, Gorbachev's horrible warning has come to pass. At midnight on Jan. 20 thousands of Soviet troops moved into the capital city of Baku. Hundreds of civilians were left dead in the streets.

Some reporters described a blitzkrieg. "They shot at everything that was moving, even people on their balconies," one witness said "A shower of stones came from the crowd onto the soldiers. In response, there was the sound of automatic weapons fire," a correspondent for Komoskolskaya Pravda reported in a dispatch that his editors refused to print. He added, "There's no doubt that this was an organized shooting of peaceful people."(The New York Times, Jan. 23, 1990)

A report by Bernard Guetta in Le Monde (Jan. 21, 1990) stated: "In only one of the city's hospitals, a hundred deaths and many casualties were reported. 'They keep coming. What is happening here is horrible,' ; a clerk said in tears. For the first time, blood has flowed as a result of an order by Gorbachev."

The entire area was placed under martial law. Strikes, public meetings and rallies, and even theatrical performances and sports events were banned. But the Kremlin's call for "order" met defiant resistance.

Two weeks after the troops were sent in, industry in the region remained at a standstill as the workers stayed out in a general strike. Tens of thousands of people burned their Communist Party membership cards at public rallies.

Azeri Popular Front leaders claimed that the Soviet troops were met with a general insurrection. A spokesperson of the Azeri Council of National Defense told reporters: "We control the situation all over the republic. Our checkpoints are on duty on all roads. The absolute majority of the people follow the orders of the Popular Front." (International Herald Tribune, Jan. 20, 1990)

Why did Gorbachev send troops?

At first, the occupation forces were said to be "peacekeepers," sent in to quell a series of pogroms against the Armenian minority in the republic of Azerbaijan.

Yet witnesses in Baku have reported that on Jan. 13, when mobs of unemployed young Azeris (mainly refugees from Armenia) began to beat up and murder Armenians, Soviet soldiers simply stood by without intervening. It was left to the Azeri Popular Front to organize patrols to protect and evacuate Armenians. (The New York Times, Jan. 29, 1990)

By the time of the Jan. 20 invasion, said Baku residents, "most Armenians had been evacuated and full-scale violence had ended." (ibid., Jan. 27, 1990)

Soon an alternative explanation came to light. Some Soviet authorities alleged that a full rebellion against Soviet rule had been in progress. The night after Soviet troops stormed Baku, Gorbachev himself appeared on television to say that the military had intervened to prevent an attempted coup by the Azeri Popular Front.

A week later, Yuri Afanasyev, a member of the opposition in parliament in Moscow, spoke more frankly when he said that the military was sent primarily to prop up a discredited Communist Party that was in danger of falling to popular pressure. (The New York Times, Jan. 27, 1990)

According to some accounts, by Jan. 20 when the troops moved in, the Stalinist Communist Party had already disintegrated and fallen from power in many areas of Azerbaijan.

Guetta wrote in Le Monde, "As in Lenkoran, another city of the republic whose authorities were thrown out pure and simple by the local section of the Front on Jan. 11, Baku was led by the nationalists, by the various tendencies of the Front-including liberals, fundamentalists, Westernized intellectuals, and fanaticized unemployed."

A harsh lesson Thus, the armed conflict between the Azeris and the Armenians-of which the Armenians were the main victims-provided a ready excuse for Gorbachev to impose the full force of the central government in the region. Azerbaijan is to be used as a harsh lesson for the people of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, or any other region that might hope for more freedom from Moscow-or from their local Stalinist bureaucrats, for that matter.

Indeed, political leaders on both the Azeri and the Armenian sides of the conflict have charged that Moscow hoped to fan the flames of discord between them. As long ago as last September, Arkadi Volsky, head of the special committee set up to run the territory of Nagorno Karabakh, told the Soviet Communist Party plenum that the region was on the verge of civil war.

Levon Ter Petrossian, a leader of the [Armenian] Karabakh Committee commented on Volsky's statement in an interview in Liberation (Oct. 3, 1989): "In talking about an "imminent civil war,' dramatizing things this way, Moscow is pursuing quite specific political aims that have nothing to do with Azerbaijan. It's trying once again to get Armenia to give up the conception of perestroika that the Armenians were the first to express in the USSR—democratization from below and not from above."

The Gorbachevites fear "democratization from below" like the plague. As in Stalin's time, they will take any measures, regardless Tass vla Reuters of the casualties, against popular movements that appear to threaten the privileged bureaucratic caste that rules the Soviet Union.

Stalin versus Lenin

Stalin was a master at the strategy of "divide and conquer," stirring up ancient rivalries among oppressed nationalities, and even moving different nationalities into the traditional homelands of other peoples. It was Stalin who in 1923 personally arranged the attachment of the territory of Nagorno Karabakh (80 percent populated by Armenians) to the republic of Azerbaijan.

Stalin's centralized bureaucratic rule required subordinating the rights, language, culture, and economic well-being of national minorities to those of the relatively privileged Great Russian people.

When V.I. Lenin, in the final years of his life, undertook a campaign against the growing bureaucracy, he repeatedly had to confront the lingering problem of Great Russian chauvinism—on which the bureaucracy was able to feed.

In 1922, Lenin said that Stalin bore responsibility for forcibly trampling on the national rights of Georgia, which borders Azerbaijan on the north. This was "a truly Great Russian nationalist campaign," he said.

Lenin believed that the non-Russian nationalities and republics of the USSR had to be offered more than mere "formal equality." Instead, he explained, "by one's attitude or by concessions, it is necessary to compensate the non-Russians for the lack of trust, for the suspicion and the insults to which the government of the 'dominant' nation subjected them in the past." (Collected works, Vol. 36, pp. 605-611)

Above all, Lenin said on numerous occasions, oppressed nationalities have the unconditional right to self-determination. This must mean, he emphasized, granting the right to set up an independent state if the oppressed nationalities should so choose.

Accordingly, the fledgling USSR-once known as the "prisonhouse of nations" —was now seen as a voluntary federation of nations. The Bolshevik government quickly granted independence to Poland. In Finland and the Baltic states, the situation was slightly different, since revolutionary governments that were pro-Soviet had been set up. Within months, however, these workers' governments were crushed by German, British, and Polish troops.

In 1918, the Soviet government signed a treaty recognizing the independence of the bourgeois government in Finland. Meanwhile, the Red Army helped drive the foreign troops out of the Baltic states. In 1920, Moscow signed treaties respecting the independence of Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania.

Gorbachev gets a lesson Lithuanian television recently showed an incident in which Gorbachev displayed how much he has "forgotten" Lenin's views on the national question. When Gorbachev saw an elderly worker carrying a sign calling for "total independence for Lithuania," he burst out: "Who told you to prepare that sign?" The worker replied, "Nobody. I wrote it myself."

"And who are you?" the Kremlin head demanded, "Where do you work and how do you imagine total independence?" The worker answered," I imagine it like during the 1920s, when Lenin recognized the sovereignty of Lithuania-because no nation has the right to attack another nation."

Gorbachev retorted, "I know perfectly well that Lithuania was quite provincial then. Nowadays, Russia has sold it gold, metals, and fossil fuels at a low price. Within the large family, Lithuania has become a developed country..."

The worker interrupted him: "Do you know how many Lithuanians were sent to Siberia during the 1940s and how many died?"

"I don't want to speak any more with this old man, " Gorbachev then declared. "If such an attitude and such slogans exist in Lithuania-then it can expect hard times."

"Hard times" on the model of Azerbaijan? Rather than promising "hard times" to the oppressed nationalities of the Soviet Union, the leaders of the Soviet Union should respect their right to self-determination, including the right to independence.

As Lenin pointed out, the distrust that the Soviet bureaucracy has sowed in these regions can be overcome only through "concessions." In the first place, the Soviet occupation forces—seen as "executioners" and "murderers" by people throughout the region—-must be withdrawn immediately.

There will be no easy solution to the problem in Azerbaijan and Armenia. The ethnic violence must stop. But any real solution can only be worked out by the Azeris and the Armenians themselves-without interference from Moscow.

Officials in the Bush administration were quick to support Gorbachev's crackdown in Azerbaijan. The action, said President Bush, was necessary to avoid threats to perestroika. White House spokesperson Marlin Fitzwater elaborated: "We understand the need to restore order where order has broken down."

The administation's concern for "law and order" can be truly appreciated, coming just weeks after its bloody invasion of Panama. At that time, in fact, the White House gave its approval to the Kremlin if it should wish to send troops into Romania. The message was clear: In the spirit of "detente," both governments agree to use military force to maintain "order" within their own "spheres of influence." -M.S.

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Working people are still trying to catch up from cutbacks, layoffs, and lousy contracts foisted on them the last time around.

New York City may be the nerve center of world financial capital, but it still pays one-fifth of its budget to the banks for debt service-like any Latin American country.

This is where Dinkins comes in. Rohatyn revealingly stated in a recent New York Times Op-Ed column that Dinkins is needed so that "the people who are going to be asked to sacrifice feel they are being treated fairly."

At a meeting of Wall Street contributors just days before the election, Dinkins admitted as much. When asked how he will handle the upcoming municipal contract talks, he said, "It may well be that I'll have to tell some of my friends they cannot have the things they want. But they'll take it from me."

City officials recently reported that the budget can only afford pay increases of 1.5 percent to municipal workers, whose contract expires this summer. Inflation is 5 percent and rising.

Racism continues to operate During the election-even as the candidates of both major parties tacitly agreed on the need to carry out the budget cuts on the backs of poor and working people-the racism that is such an integral part of capitalist society continued to operate within the mayoral campaign.

In a city where registered Democratic voters outnumber registered Republican voters by a ratio of 5 to 1, Black Democratic standard bearer Dinkins narrowly beat white Republican Giuliani by a 51 percent to 48

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Sympathy from the devil