Confrontation over Nagorno-Karabakh deepens THE TWO-WEEK STRIKE in Armenia was suspended on July 15 by the formally banned Karabakh Committee. For the third time mass actions have been called off to wait for consideration of the problem by a leading Soviet body. On this occasion, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet was supposed to review the Armenian demand on July 18. In the two preceding phases, each time the Soviet authorities set their faces against the Armenian claims, the struggle rose to a new level.
The strikes and demonstrations of the last weeks have set a new high-water mark, and by now formidable experience in independent organization must have been accumulated. After so many enormous mass mobilizations, the movement seems no longer to have anywhere to go but deeper. The next phase of the struggle may very well focus on the Armenian party. GERRY FOLEY
USSR viet, however, was to rule the Nagorno-Karabakh decision null and void. What is more, according to a report from the Washington Post service on July 15, it has begun a blockade of food supplies in order to starve the district out. That would probably be about as close to an act of war as the Azerbaidzhan authorities themselves are capable of. (Pravda has also referred to difficulties in provisioning but blamed them on the strike.) Implications for the party's authority
Thus, there is a situation of direct confrontation between two nationalities, without a single voice being publicly raised in the stronger nationality for a fair consideration of the claims and feelings of the weaker one. There could hardly be a more striking demonstration of the failure of the Communist Party to play the role of a "political vanguard," the absence of discussion, or of the party's lack of credibility. In Azerbaidzhan, it has unanimously taken a chauvinist position. In Armenia, it has been bypassed by the mobilizations.
Furthermore, even moderates who served as spokespersons for the Armenian claims in the first phase of the massive protests, such as the poetess Silva Kapoutikyan, also seem be have been outdistanced. Thus, while Pravda of July 9 claimed that the population of the Karabakh capital Stepanakert was"widely discussing the June 7 statements on Yerevan TV by the poetess Silva Kapoutiyan and the Catolicos of all Armenians, Vazgen I, who called for ending the strikes and condemned the incident at the Zvartnots airport," these declarations seem to have had little effect.
The authority of the Catholicos was probably already pretty threadbare. By comparison with him, the Polish hierarchy that tried to stop the August 1980 strikes were intransigent defenders of their people. The Soviet press ironically keeps trying to play him up as a great national leader.
The funeral of the two people killed at Zvartnots was the occasion of a demonstration of reportedly up to 500,000 people, representing one-sixth of the entire population of the Armenian SSR.
The failure of the Armenian CP to discourage the protests has led to the publication of some harsh remarks in Pravda, which have implications about the party's authority in general. The July 13 issue carried the following quote from an Armenian philosophy professor:
"When passions were heated up to the limit, why did not honest and brave people, able to restrain the youth from unconsidered actions leading to unfortunate consequences, show up alongside the people? And where were those people who until not long ago handed out and received red flags and gave loud speeches to sleep- 3 ing listeners? Didn't they give the impresJuly 25, 1988 • #146 International Viewpoint
OLLOWING the exposition of glasnost at Gorbachev's special party congress, it has been notable that Pravda has been giving regular coverage to the events in Armenia. Almost every day, there has been a column on the back page. It is more likely, however, that the reason for this is the pressure of the mass movement itself than any desire on the party of the all-Union authorities to widen the cracks of liberalization. The extent of the conflict must also have become widely known in the USSR by now. (Pravda opened its coverage of the latest wave of protests with a "response to letters from readers.")
In a country where the government speaks directly through the press, what the publications say has an immediate political impact. And when the population is not bound hand and foot, that can be dangerous for the rulers.
In fact, crudely biased coverage and commentary in the official press has become fuel for the fires of protest in Armenia, and after the latest rejection of the Armenia demands at the special party congress the flames have spread again. The press has had to be a bit more careful, take a slightly more subtle approach. The regular articles in Pravda use a bit of the truth to sugar a campaign of testimonies about people rejecting the protests. Almost constantly, on the other hand, the reports have played up opposition to the strikes and played down the scope of the actions.
The Soviet press has also been experimenting with new techniques, notably a hypocritical concern for the psychological damage the struggle is allegedly inflicting on the Armenian inhabitants of Nagorno-Karabakh. A third of one report, (they have not been more than a few paragraphs) consisted of an account of murders within an Armenian family. This case was subsequently woven in with the coverage. This sort of thing is quite reminiscent of the approach of the British media to Northern Ireland, except that it stands out more in the Soviet central papers, which almost never carry reports of violent crime. Another similarity is reports of arms finds.
In fact, the confrontation has sharpened dramatically with the spread of strikes in the Armenian SSR and the vote of the Nagorno-Karabakh autonomous district soviet on July 5-6 to leave Azerbaidzhan and join Armenia. The decision of the local soviet in effect raised the question above the legal technicalities and put it squarely on the level of the principle of national self-determination. The existence of the autonomous district itself confirms that it has a distinct national character, and as such it surely has the natural right to determine which republic it wants to be attached to.
The response of the Azerbaidzhan so-
USSR sion that a healthy moral-political atmosphere prevailed in the republic, closing their eyes to such monstrous phenomena as bribery and favoritism?"
The same issue carried the following quote from the chair of the executive committee of the the Artash raion soviet, R. Mkhitarian: "Perestroika has its open and secret enemies. Every destabilization plays into their hands." (The same quote was published again in the July 14 issue.) Apparently, the Soviet authorities are still trying to use perestroika as a weapon against the demonstrations. That is, if you demonstrate you are endangering the liberalization, and at the same time the protests are fomented by covert opponents of the reforms. This seems in particular to be a club to try to beat the local party members back into line against the protests.
that in the resolution of the conflict at theG blamed for the clash at the Zvartnots airport in the July 8 Pravda. A. Sarkisian wrote, "At the same time, I cannot fail to blame the local authorities also for the situation that has come about. I do not think that in the resolution of the conflict at the airport everything possible was done to prevent the clashes."
A rich experience of mass politics
Very little has been said in Pravda about the organization of the protests, although this subject was played up in the first official attacks on the movement. However, such prolonged and extensive actions, obviously not led by the official bodies, must be developing some sort of leadership. There was one claim in Pravda when the massive demonstrations resumed in May that the banned Karabakh committees were still operating. And in Pravda of July 12, Sarkisian mentioned one assembly that decided to continue the strike:
"On Sunday, a meeting was convened in the Institute of Ancient Manuscripts....As in the last month or month and a half, the meeting was led by the same people, calling themselves members of the Organizational Committee. On that evening it was decided again not to work." At the same time, Sarkisian wrote that "representatives of various strata of the population" appeared on TV and "did not support the idea of striking". (This last formulation was strangely weak, in fact.)
The political experience in Armenia in the last months has been the richest of mass politics in USSR since the onset of the Stalinist deep-freeze. So far, only a few surface features of it are yet visible.
These mobilizations already seem to have been welcomed in Eastern Europe as promising a new ally against the bureaucracy. It was notable, in that respect, that a banner that students hung up in Warsaw during Brezhnev's visit called for "sove4 reignty for all the peoples living in the • USSR." * International Viewpoint #146 • July 25, 1988