Word: armenians
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...people follow the lead of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, "black" may become equally obsolete. Jackson declared last week that citizens of his race should henceforth be known as African Americans. "There are Armenian Americans and Jewish Americans and Arab Americans and Italian Americans," he explained. "Every ethnic group in this country has reference to some land base, some historical cultural base. African Americans have hit that level of cultural maturity...
Many painful and poignant images have emerged from earthquake-devastated Armenia, but one scene last week seemed to capture perfectly the changes that the tragedy has wrought in the Soviet Union. There, at the same table in the Armenian capital of Yerevan, sat Soviet Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov, representing a state that officially avows atheism, and Nobel peace laureate Mother Teresa, founder of the Roman Catholic Society of the Missionaries of Charity and one among 2,000 foreign volunteers taking part in the unprecedented relief effort. The tiny, veiled nun nodded approvingly as the Communist official showed...
Compounding Gorbachev's problems is the bloody conflict between Armenians and Azerbaijanis. In the days before and after the quake, tens of thousands of Armenians crossed the border into Soviet Armenia to escape violence, and many Azerbaijanis crossed the other way. Until Gorbachev rejected their claim to Nagorno-Karabakh, the Armenians regarded Moscow as their champion. Now, said Lynch, Gorbachev "has come to represent in Armenian eyes everything they deeply resent about Moscow...
This depth of feeling boiled over in Yerevan last week when 600 people demonstrated with slogans accusing Moscow of deporting Armenian children orphaned by the earthquake. Soviet spokesman Gerasimov denied the allegations and said six of the ringleaders of the protest, all from the Karabakh Committee, had been jailed. The Armenian distrust has become so explosive that the Soviet army positioned tanks at main intersections in Yerevan. Pravda blamed the Karabakh group for spreading a rumor that the disaster was the result of a nuclear explosion detonated by Moscow. Sotsialisticheskaya Industriya reported that a convoy carrying aid from Azerbaijan...
Clearly, Gorbachev's daunting tasks at home have been complicated immeasurably by the Armenian disaster. And even if he should succeed in swiftly bringing order out of the chaos, the ironic fact will remain that this Soviet leader appears more popular abroad than he is at home...