Word: armenians
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...that decision provoked an outcry from Armenians, who insisted on picking through the rubble until all their loved ones could be accounted for. On Friday Moscow suddenly reversed itself after dogged rescuers miraculously pulled out of the debris 21 more people, one in Spitak and the rest in Leninakan, who by then had been buried alive for more than a week. Said - Armenian official Eduard Aikazian: "We will continue looking for survivors until there isn't the slightest possibility of finding anybody...
...more immediate importance for Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev are the domestic effects of the quake. The enormous costs of rebuilding Armenian towns and villages will be a serious setback to perestroika, his program of economic restructuring. The political aftershocks are already severe. Even before the tragedy, Armenians distrusted Gorbachev because of his rejection of their territorial claims to Nagorno-Karabakh, a largely Armenian enclave embedded in neighboring Azerbaijan, a blood enemy of Armenia. The earthquake only heightened the Armenians' anger, and that prompted a furious Gorbachev to describe the airing of nationalist grievances at such a time as "immoral...
Last Friday a green loudspeaker truck patrolled Spitak, urging all women and children to leave the town. In clipped Armenian, the voice assured residents that they would be sent to trade-union vacation centers in Georgia and the Crimea. Officials said about 38,000 people had been evacuated from the entire earthquake-damaged region and up to 70,000 were expected to leave. But many women in Spitak and other devastated communities refused to go, preferring to keep vigil by the still entombed bodies of their loved ones. "Why should we leave?" asked an elderly woman in Spitak. "This...
...supplies that left from Italy. Private donors gave millions of dollars' worth of supplies and equipment that required more than twelve planes to ferry them to Armenia. Industrialist Armand Hammer donated $500,000, and Chrysler Corp. Chairman Lee Iacocca announced a fund drive. In Chicago, one of five major Armenian population centers around the U.S., the local community raised more than $800,000 and collected 20,000 lbs. of supplies, from blankets to medicine. The Armenian Relief Society raised more than $10 million in little over a week...
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...