Word: armenian
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Some 1,200 miles to the southeast, in the Armenian Republic, the upheaval set in motion by the Sumgait riots was still under way, though in muffled fashion. Since February, Armenians have been in near open revolt over Moscow's refusal to transfer to Armenian control the mountain enclave of Nagorno- Karabakh (pop. about 160,000), where an Armenian majority has lived under Azerbaijani rule for nearly 70 years. Demonstrations first erupted when news began trickling back into Yerevan, the Armenian capital, that Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh were being beaten, raped and killed by Azerbaijanis, people who are ethnically related...
Since then the Armenian Republic has been paralyzed three times by widespread work stoppages protesting the Kremlin's refusal to countenance a border change despite the violence committed against Armenians next door. Twice the Soviet government has had to dispatch troops to Yerevan to quell disturbances. Last July a boy was killed by a plastic bullet and 36 people were wounded during a confrontation with soldiers at Yerevan's Zvartnots Airport...
Despite the crackdown, thousands of Armenians still gather nearly every Friday in Theater Square, a small plaza tucked behind Yerevan's neoclassical opera house. Around 7 p.m., old women, their heads wrapped in shawls, begin to perch on the steps leading to the theater. Bands of youths, sometimes unruly, wave the orange-red-and-blue Armenian flag, which last flew over the region when it was a free republic in 1920. Later, at about 7:30, a lone bugler approaches a microphone and plays a melancholy tune. When the last note dies, the crowd breaks into a chant: "Artsakh! Artsakh...
Trapped between the leadership in Moscow and a broad-based popular movement at home, the Armenian Communist Party has tried to equivocate. In June its newly elected first secretary, Soren Arutyunyan, along with the Armenian Supreme Soviet, defied Moscow's wishes by petitioning the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. to reopen the Nagorno-Karabakh question. (The enclave was assigned to Azerbaijan by Joseph Stalin in 1923.) But Arutyunyan also declared that the Yerevan demonstrators were "not supported by the broad masses." In reply, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev chided an Armenian delegation that had come to the Kremlin to plead...
...that happened, such a roar went up at the weekly demonstrations in Theater Square that authorities were forced to restage the election. This time Stamboltsyan won with an astonishing 98% of the votes. This week he is scheduled to take his seat as the first acknowledged radical in the Armenian supreme soviet...