Word: armenians
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Gorbachev, meanwhile, was striving for a peaceful solution. After sending four top-level troubleshooters to the region and issuing a public plea for restraint, the Soviet leader met secretly in the Kremlin with two well-known Armenian writers, Zori Balayan and Silva Kaputikyan. Gorbachev promised them that he would personally study the Armenian demands. As soon as that message was relayed to Yerevan, the protest leaders agreed to suspend the demonstrations for one month. In Nagorno-Karabakh, however, at least two Azerbaijani youths were killed in clashes with Armenians...
...miles north of the Azerbaijani capital of Baku. According to a local television worker reached by telephone, the trouble started when a group of some 50 Azerbaijanis arrived in Sumgait from Nagorno-Karabakh bearing word of ethnic fighting there. The apparent result was a murderous backlash aimed at local Armenians. An Armenian resident of Sumgait, sobbing into the telephone, told Reuters that Azerbaijanis had gone on a rampage of rape and murder against Armenians. He said that seven members of a single family had been killed and that many Armenians were trying to flee the city. At midweek a government...
...Azerbaijani-Armenian clashes apparently stemmed more from centuries of bitter ethnic rivalries than from separatist urges. Says a senior Western diplomat in Moscow: "I think it would be a mistake to consider them a challenge to Soviet rule as such, or to a socialist system." Nonetheless, the turmoil has once again shattered the ritual claim that Communist "internationalism" and "Soviet patriotism" have overcome the primitive instincts of nationalism...
Others take a less gloomy view of the Soviet leader's position. "Gorbachev should be encouraged that the Armenian demonstrations are not anti-Soviet or even anti-Russian," argues Columbia University Sovietologist Jonathan Sanders. "As a political actor he has shown a very astute response." Stephen Cohen, a professor of politics at Princeton, notes that "Gorbachev himself has seen something like this coming and has been ready for it." He adds, "Gorbachev has already explained that everything he is doing represents a diminishing state control and unleashing the unpredictable. Nobody can know what will happen...
Much depends, obviously, on how the present crisis is resolved. Gorbachev has won a month's breathing space, but the Armenians may take to the streets again if he doesn't grant them some concessions. It is doubtful that Gorbachev will agree to redraw the boundaries, which would only encourage similar demands by other nationalities. Nor, if he can help it, is he likely to resort to a military crackdown that would tarnish his reform image at home and abroad. Perhaps his greatest advantage is that the Armenian people remain relatively loyal to the Soviet Union and seem to trust...