Pogrom in Sumgait

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Protests in Yerevan after the violent conflict
Memorial plaque in Stepanakert for the victims of the Sumgait massacre

The Sumgait pogrom was a massacre committed against Armenians on February 27, 1988 in the Azerbaijani city ​​of Sumgait (Sumqayıt) . It initiated the beginning of ethnically and nationalistically motivated outbreaks of violence on the territory of the Soviet Union and was a first high point in the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh that flared up at the time .

According to eyewitness reports, Azerbaijani men attacked the city's Armenian minority . In addition to murders, eyewitness reports also reported rape and mutilation . In the course of the pogrom there is also said to have been a massacre in a maternity ward.

Eyewitnesses and the Russian reporter Andrej Pralnikow report that the militia and city authorities did not intervene despite calls for help and that this impunity further fueled the Azerbaijani attacks on the Armenian population. This also happened through stimulating speeches by Azerbaijani party leaders including Kjamram Bagirow and city party leader of Sumgait Muslim Sardeh. Foreign crews were brought in by bus to carry out the pogrom and received lists from property managers, from which names and addresses of Armenian families emerged. The light and power lines of many Armenians were cut off beforehand.

“Much suggests that the pogroms were organized. A secretary testified that before the violence broke out, she had been asked to compile lists of Armenians. "

The information about the number of victims varies. The official ITAR-TASS news agency reported 31 deaths. According to some subsequent eyewitness accounts, 33 civilians and eight soldiers were killed and another 150 people seriously injured. Other eyewitness reports estimated the number of victims among the Armenians to be far higher. The Society for Threatened Peoples published a list of 52 Armenian victims, including addresses and circumstances, on July 14, 1988, of whom 47 were murdered. Four were reported dying and one hospitalized. It was alleged to employees of the company that there were even more extensive lists and that more than 500 death certificates had been issued in Sumgait during the pogrom.

Explanatory approaches

The prominent Russian political scientist of Armenian descent, Sergei Kurginjan , who was in Baku at the time of the pogrom, categorically rules out a conflict-laden and planned confrontation between Azerbaijanis and Armenians in early 1988 in his book “Das Wesen der Zeit”. According to him, Western intelligence agencies were actually behind the Sumgait events. Their aim was to drive a wedge between the two ethnic groups in order to bring the USSR down.

The Swedish historian and Caucasus researcher Svante E. Cornell excludes western participation in anti-Armenian excesses . But like Kurginjan, he does not believe in a mobilized Azerbaijani nationalism in February 1988. The pogrom would have taken place long before the hot phase of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and the news of the expulsion of the Azerbaijanis from the southern Armenian city of Kapan in January 1988 would not have got around nationwide yet. The riots in Sumgait had rather shocked the majority of the Azerbaijani population.

According to Thomas de Waal, the unauthorized vote of the Armenian-dominated parliament of Nagorno-Karabakh on February 20, 1988 on the connection with Armenia served as the actual trigger for the change of mood in Azerbaijan. In addition, in the run-up to the pogrom, the situation would have worsened with the influx of Azerbaijani refugees from Kapan province and reports of discrimination against them in Armenia.  

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b We will exterminate you . In: Der Spiegel . No. 13 , 1992, pp. 138-148 ( Online - Mar. 23, 1992 ).
  2. ^ Dissident Tells Of Azerbaijan Atrocities , Philadelphia Inquirer Correspondent Report , philly.com, March 12, 1988
  3. ↑ Eerie Silence Hangs Over Soviet City . In: Washington Post , September 4, 1988
  4. ↑ a b The Terrible Days of Sumgait , Die Zeit , March 18, 1988
  5. ↑ One people, one country . In: Der Spiegel . No. 13 , 1988, pp. 162-164 ( Online - Mar. 28, 1988 ).
  6. ↑ Press release of the Society for Threatened Peoples on the first list of the dead from Sumgait, on the incorrect Soviet information and on the persistent pogrom mood against Armenians in Azerbaijan, June 14, 1988 published in Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh / Arzach in the struggle for survival , editor Manfred Richter, Edition Hentrich Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-89468-072-5 , page 157 ff.
  7. ↑ Кавказский узел: Как ни крути, но уши "третьей силы" в карабахском конфликте проглядываются. March 5, 2018, Retrieved May 8, 2018 (Russian).
  8. ^ Svante E. Cornell: Small Nations and Great Powers. A study of ethnopolitical conflict in the Caucasus . Routledge Shorton, Abingdon, United Kingdom 2000, ISBN 978-0-7007-1162-8 , pp. 69 .
  9. ↑ Thomas de Waal: Black Garden. Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War . New York University Press, New York & London 2003, ISBN 0-8147-1944-9 , pp. 30 .