Pogroms in Azerbaijan and Armenia of 1988-89 As Historical Echo of the 1915 Armenian Genocide (Погромы в Азербайджане и Армении 1988-89 как историческое эхо 1915 Армянского Геноцида)
The intended question to be posed in this essay relates to the Armenian
Genocide of 1915 and its evident connection to the massacres of Armenian
minority in Azerbaijan in 1988-89. The path I have chosen to answer this
question leads throughout the history of Genocide in 1915. Hence, the
tragedy at the outset of the twentieth century provoked the slaughter of
the same prosecuted ethnical minority by the same perpetrating ethnic
majority only seventy years later.
According to the theory introduced by sociologist Alfred Schults, any
event by its own nature has no meaning. His view is that a meaning is
something ascribed to events or objects and is based on two concepts
functioning evenly: the sediment of past experience and another one
projected in future. These two factors establish what he calls the system
of relevances that enables to interpret a current even out of dual
perspective based on past and future.[1] By all means this theory is
applicable to massacre of 1915 and the pogroms in 1988. The outlined
parallels between the two series of events denote a much more disastrous
circumstance under which all the Armenian population in Azerbaijan was
jeopardized by “the Turks.” In this case the Schutz’s theory indicates
that the significance of past events (the various massacres and genocide)
became evident in interpretation of the pogroms that occurred in 1988-
90.[2]
No crime carries as much destruction and cruelty as genocide. It aims at
loss of ethnic identity of a victimized party. Genocide intends not just
to kill, maim, or violate people; the ultimate purpose is to deprive the
victim of its future as a strong national entity. Any massive crime has
impact on contemporary and/or possible prospective relations of the victim
and the perpetrator on global political arena. One well-documented massive
crime against humanity is the Armenian Genocide of 1915 when number of
casualties was estimated from 600 000 to 2 000000 people. The bloody event
in history of Armenia caused not only human loses, but deprived Armenia
partially of ancestral territory.
On the 9th of December 1948, the United Nations adopted the Genocide
Convention, compiling the following definition in Article II:
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following facts
committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national,
ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
a) Killing members of the group;
b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated
to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
The definition of genocide accepted by United Nations has caused a great
deal of controversy, for it excluded social and political groups.
Thereafter, in the 1980’s Helen Fein developed a broader and more profound
definition of genocide, from which she excluded killing as a mandatory
attribute of warfare, and on the opposite, included groups being persecuted
based on their social and political belonging:
Genocide is a sustained purposeful action by a perpetrator to
physically destroy a collectivity directly or indirectly, through
interdiction of the biological and social reproduction of group members,
sustained regardless of the surrender or lack of threat offered by the
victim.[3]
In the case of the Armenian Genocide of 1915 the governmental atrocity
against its own people wasn’t specified anywhere in the scrolls of
International Law. It contained certain regulations on account of a
civilian, noncombatant population during wartime, but this incident became
first of its kind for which international law had no stipulation. When the
legislative definition of genocide was accepted by the United Nations in
1948, it turned out to be that Armenian genocide fell under each of the
five categories of it.[4] Although the pogroms in Sumgait and Baku of 1988-
90 resemble more the pogroms in Ottoman Empire in 1890’s rather than actual
genocide which occurred in 1915 and culminated in 1921 in the fight and
expulsion of survivors who returned to Celicia, the analogy between 1915
and 1988-90 is apparent.
Armenians were a minority population in both Azerbaijan and Turkey,
thus clearly identifiable for persecution. Armenians were more upwardly
mobile than the majority population, hence creating the possibility of
potential social conflict. The overarching political conditions were
unstable in both the Soviet Union and the Ottoman Empire – revolutionary
change often being a prerequisite of genocide. Armenians were scapegoated
for political events outside the borders of the country in which they were
residing.[5]
Armenian genocide is one of the first genocide of the twentieth
century. It became a model for the “political” type of genocide. The
majority of the current genocides followed this pattern.
In order to examine to what degree the Genocide of 1915 is related to
the pogroms in Azerbaijan in 1988-90 some history of Armenians is to be
examined.
Armenians have populated the highland region between the Black,
Caspian and Mediterranean seas for centuries long. This area presented a
crossroad between East and West. As a result of the geographic location
Armenia wasn’t govern by its own dynasties constantly. The state has
experienced direct foreign rule as well as paying fees to the surrounding
states. Besides the geography, Armenia had another disadvantage. It was
the only Christian state surrounded by Muslim entities, this aspect kept
Armenia apart from others. Such distinct difference referred Armenians as
second-class citizens after the Ottoman Empire annexed the territory that
had molded ancient and medieval Armenian kingdoms, in the sixteenth
century. The Ottoman Empire established on its territory confessional-
based Muslim, Jewish, Greek Orthodox, and Armenian millets. Through these
establishments the Ottoman administrative system legalized the social
inequality within a structure of the society. The millet system enabled
Armenians to preserve their cultural-religious identity, but kept them
politically and militarily inefficacious. Armenians didn’t pose any threat
onto the multinational, unequal society and retained in accord to certain
degree with the dominant Muslim millet as long as they paid the tributes to
the government and remained politically inactive.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries a wind of changes came
across the Ottoman Empire and caused external challenges and internal
instability. Incapable of competing with the West economically and
military, the ruling authority lost a number of provinces and ended up in
debt. Such immediate breakdown of law and consequent venality fractured
the foundations of Ottoman multinational society. Due the increasing
threats to continued existence of the Ottoman Empire, the sultans, under
the pressure of Great Britain, launched a program of remodeling that broke
away from the traditional sociopolitical theocracy.
The tanzimat period, stretching from 1839 to 1876, was designed to
commence theoretical equality of all Ottoman subjects. However, while the
decree went into power, the system of millets maintained, and the equality
within it correspondingly. During the political internal and external
torments Armenians endeavored to uphold and to follow the reforms in order
to secure life and property. They had no intentions to develop a task of
separation or acquiring independence from the Ottoman Empire.
Then followed the Russian-Turkish War, in which Turkey lost severely.
The military and diplomatic failure of the sultan Abdul-Hamid II attributed
to the break away of the most of Balkan provinces. Thus, the attention of
the European community was drawn to the “Armenian Question.” However, the
fact of European protectorate, explicitly expressed verbally in regard to
the domestic policy of the crumbling Ottoman Empire only aggravated the
condition of Armenians in Turkey. Armenians’ quest for security and
equality resulted in brutal pogroms ordered by Abdul-Hamid, which were
carried out by armed Kurdish brigands in almost every province inhabited by
Armenians. The ultimate purpose of Abdul-Hamid wasn’t to exterminate the
Armenian population, but rather to point out that they have to follow the
policies of the Ottoman Empire. Particularly, to look up at Europe was a
forbidden act. His successors aimed at creating an entirely
socionationalistic frame of the state, free from Armenians, rather than
just preserving a political status quo.[6] The only way to achieve the
goal was to whip out the entire Armenian population from the Ottoman Empire
territory.
In early 1913 the Young Turk government was overthrown by its
militaristic and nationalistic wing, with Enver, Taalat, and Jemal Pashas
in head of it. This threesome involved the country into WWI as the ally of
Germany. Later in 1915 the same government outlined and put into effect a
plan for the elimination of Armenians, estimated between two and three
millions subjects. The plan was carried out in phases. In April 1915
people represented the Armenian religious, political, educational, and
intellectual authority in the Western tradition, variously one thousand
individuals, were jailed throughout the entire Empire, and consequently
killed within few days. The next phase consisted of liquidation of the
young male adult population, which mainly were recruits of the Turkish
