Life and Freedom. The autobiography of the former president of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh
chummy with workers. I think this became the biggest problem for my predecessor.
A solid engineering education combined with production experience helped me become part of the team and establish a good collaborative relationship with the workers and engineering personnel.
In short, I liked my job.
I gained new knowledge and skills that would become very helpful in the future. I learned how to understand the collective psychology of people, especially of people from an unfamiliar social setting. I learned how to interact with them properly. In contrast to the Consumer Services Complex, where I started my Komsomol career, there was a strong sense of comradeship at the silk factory. Every morning, everyone entered through the same door; they all knew each other and cared strongly about reaching their collective production goals.
I don't believe in class theory, but experience has shown me that workers' solidarity does exist, despite all internal contradictions. I think it's what, in contemporary terminology, psychologists refer to as "corporate solidarity" – the sense of belonging to a collective body that gives each member additional strength. This strength revealed itself very soon in Karabakh when the Karabakh movement took shape and instantly gained robust momentum.
PART II
KARABAKH
CHAPTER 5
BEGINNING OF THE LIBERATION MOVEMENT
In the spring of 1987, everything began with peaceful and legal actions: collecting signatures for an appeal to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CC CPSU), to Mikhail Gorbachev to transfer control over the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (Region) from Azerbaijan to Armenia. A similar process of collecting signatures and submitting an appeal to the Central Committee occurred during Khrushchev's time, during the thaw of 1966–1967, and was brutally suppressed by the authorities. But this time, the situation was radically different: it wasn't us who suddenly began to demand change – it was the changes that broke into our lives. They came rapidly, bearing slogans like "democracy," "perestroika," and "glasnost." All of a sudden, we could talk about everything that was wrong. For the first time in many decades, we hoped that we – ordinary people – could influence these processes.
It was a fascinating period, one full of hope. The 1st Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR was in session, and people all over the country were glued to their TVs and radios following the live simulcast. Captivating, well-educated legislators spoke openly from the Congress podium about things that people preferred to whisper about in the privacy of their kitchens a year ago. They instantly became stars, got invited to television talk shows, and their interviews appeared in the press. Suddenly, television, newspapers, and magazines became extremely popular, attracting millions of viewers and readers. In the mornings, lines formed in front of Soyuzpechat newspaper kiosks, and most popular publications had sold out by noon.
It was like someone had suddenly opened all the windows in a stuffy room, causing everyone to get lightheaded from the excess of political oxygen. This unusual freedom brought about a belief that we could choose, make decisions, and chart our own future – our Artsakh's future. Yes, we truly believed that the changes were for the better, and that our lives and our state structures would improve.
Parallel to this, an erosion of power was also taking place. Discreet at first, it slowly gained momentum. In a highly centralized, ideology-driven, and ethnically diverse country, the government itself was breaking familiar stereotypes and barriers. However, it didn't realize that it was also eroding the very principles of the USSR's form of government. As a result, the country was becoming ungovernable right in front of our eyes. The planned economy was in freefall, while intensifying centrifugal forces made the process irreversible.
I am often asked, "Didn't the fall of the Soviet Union start with the Karabakh movement?" and I answer, "No, of course not." The conflicts simply surfaced where they had always existed and in places where tensions were the highest. Throughout Karabakh's history, the weakening of central power inevitably led to intensifying ethnic disputes. Any political turmoil at the center that disturbed the regular course of events and created a perception of chaos resulted in the desire of the people of Karabakh to reunite with Armenia. It happened in 1917–1920: after the revolution and the fall of the Russian monarchy, Karabakh became the arena for clashes between the Armenians and the Azerbaijanis. In Tsarist Russia, the administrative territorial division was structured around guberniyas (provinces or governorates), without taking into account the ethnic make-up of its territories. Karabakh was part of the Elisabethpol guberniya, while most of today's Armenia was part of the Erivan guberniya. The fall of the Russian Empire was followed by the creation of newly independent states in the South Caucasus. Each of them declared its borders, which, in some territories, overlapped: Baku believed that the borders should be laid according to the administrative division lines of the fallen Russian Empire, while Yerevan laid its borders along the boundaries where ethnic Armenians resided. Armenians defended their approach, since it gave them an opportunity to fulfill their centuries-old aspirations for a unified Armenian state. However, when the Red Army entered Baku and Yerevan, the Karabakh dispute was resolved in Baku's favor. Nagorno-Karabakh found itself part of Azerbaijan, even though its overwhelming majority was Armenian.
We, the people of Karabakh, always felt that our interests were being ignored and violated. Having an autonomous status within Azerbaijan didn't shield us against Baku's administrative domination. During the Soviet years, Baku's primary efforts in Karabakh were directed at settling Azerbaijanis there to change the area's ethnic composition. It seriously alarmed us because we had already seen an almost complete de-Armenianization of Nakhichevan. Soviet authorities looked at any relations between the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (Region), NKAO, and Armenia with suspicion and tried to curtail them as much as possible. The enforcement of Soviet atheism was being applied quite selectively. The last church in Karabakh was closed in the 1920s, and all Armenian churches, which Azerbaijani historians referred to as 'Albanian', stood without crosses. In contrast, a mosque functioned in neighboring Aghdam during the entire Soviet period. We even had to constantly fight for our right to speak our own language. Faced with manifestations of inequality everywhere, we felt like masters in Karabakh, but strangers in Azerbaijan.
Once, I characterized our relations with Azerbaijanis as 'ethnic incompatibility' and was harshly criticized for it for a long time. Perhaps it was a poor choice of words, indeed, but it was obvious that our peoples have entirely different ethnicity and religious and cultural traditions; put simply, we live differently. We have different preferences and ideas regarding government models in our countries, and we have different geopolitical priorities. Therefore, I believed that we could become good neighbors, but we definitely should not be subordinate to each other.
The desire to reunite with Armenia existed during the entire Soviet period of our history. Inconspicuous from the outside, this desire lay dormant in Armenian society, ready to awaken at any moment given the right circumstances. The initiative to collect signatures began in Yerevan and very quickly took over Karabakh. The process was unleashed by Armenian intellectual elites, primarily descendants of Karabakh who lived outside the region for different reasons. Everyone spoke of Zori Balayan[7], Bagrat Ulubabian[8], and Igor Muradian[9], but the movement didn't have a formal structure. It was spontaneous, like a wildfire: once ignited in a dry forest, it spreads rapidly and uncontrollably, swallowing everything in its path. At the time, I was still working as secretary of the Silk Factory Party Committee. Life flowed slowly – everything was calm, understandable, stable, and predictable. There was a good team spirit