Accounts of Anti-Armenian Human Right Violations in Azerbaijan #012
                 Prelude to Current Events in Nagorno-Karabakh

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        |                                                         |
        |  I saw a naked girl with her hair down. They were       |
        |  dragging her. She kept falling because they were       |
        |  pushing her and kicking her. She fell down, it was     |
        |  muddy there, and later other witnesses who saw it from |
        |  their balconies told us, they seized her by the hair   |
        |  and dragged her a couple of blocks, as far as the      |
        |  mortgage bank, that's a good block and a half or two   |
        |  from here. I know this for sure because I saw it       |
        |  myself.                                                |
        |                                                         |
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DEPOSITION OF TATYANA MIKHAILOVNA ARUTUNIAN (NEZHINTSEVA)

   Born 1932
   Train Conductor
   Azerbaijani Railroad

   Resident at Building 13/15, Apartment 27
   Microdistrict No. 3
   Sumgait [Azerbaijan]

I hadn't lived very long in Sumgait, only eight years. I moved there from
Novosibirsk. My son entered the Baku Nautical School, and so I transferred
to Azerbaijan. Later I met someone and married him, and now my name is
Arutunian, my husband's name . . .

That there would be a massacre was not discussed openly, but there were hints 
and gibes, so to speak, at the Armenian people, and they were mocking the 
Russians, too. I was constantly aware of it at work, and not just this past 
year. I couldn't find a definite place for myself in the pool at work because 
I, I'll just say it, couldn't steal, couldn't deceive, and couldn't be 
involved in bribe-taking. And when I asked for decent working conditions they 
told me, "Leave, don't keep the others from working, you aren't cut out for 
this kind of work." And at work and around all the time I would hear gibes at 
the Armenians, like "The Turks had it right, they killed them all--the way
they've multiplied here they're making it hard for us to live," and "Things 
will be just fine if we get rid of them all." "No problem, the Turks will 
help," they say, "if we ask them, they'll rid Armenia of Armenians in half an 
hour." Well that's the way it all was, but I never thought, of course that it 
would spill over into a bloody tragedy, because you just couldn't imagine it. 
Here we've been living under the Soviet government for 70 years, and no one 
even considered such an idea possible.

But I had been forming my own opinions, and in the presence of authoritative 
people I would often ask, "Where is this all leading, do people really not see
what kind of situation is emerging here. The Russians are fleeing Sumgait, 
there are very few of them left. Why is no one dealing with this, what's going
on?" And when it all happened on the 27th and 28th, it became clear that 
everything had been arranged by someone, because what else are you to make of 
it if the First Secretary of the City Party Committee is marching ahead of the
demonstration with an Azerbaijani flag? I wouldn't be saying this now if I 
hadn't received personal confirmation from him later. Because when we were 
under guard in the SK club on the 1st, he came to the club, that Muslimzade. 
The women told me, "There he is, there he is, that's Muslimzade." I didn't 
believe the rumors that he had carried an Azerbaijani flag. I thought that 
they were just false rumors. I went over to him and said, "Are you the First 
Secretary of our City Party Committee?" He answers me, "Yes." And I ask him, 
"Tell me, did you really march ahead of that gang carrying an Azerbaijani 
flag, and behind you they were carrying denigrating signs, I don't know 
exactly what they said, but there was mention of Armenian blood?" And he tells
me, "Yes, I was there, but I tried to dissuade them from it." Then I asked him
another question: "And where were you when they were burning and slaughtering 
us? And he said, "I. . . We didn't know what to do, we didn't know, we didn't 
anticipate that that would happen in Sumgait."

Comrade Mamedov, the First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the 
Azerbaijani SSR, answered the same question for me: "No, we actually didn't 
anticipate the slaughter in Sumgait. At that time we were trying to contain 
the crowd of 45,000 in Baku that was preparing for a massacre." Those are his 
exact words, the ones he said in the office of the Council of Ministers of the
Armenian SSR.

And now, about the events themselves. Of course it's painful to discuss them, 
because it may seem that it's not true to someone else. Various rumors 
concerning what happened are making the rounds: some are true, others aren't. 
But unfortunately there are more true ones than false, because it was so 
horrible: in our age, here in the space age, the age of science, the age of
progress, I don't know, if someone had told me this story, if I were living in
or around Moscow, I wouldn't have believed it. Why not? Because it was really 
a genocide, it was a massacre. That's genuinely what it was.

For example, on that day, the 28th--I didn't know about the 27th because my 
husband and I were both sick, both of us had the flu, and we were in bed--on 
the 28th our neighbor comes to our place and says, "You're in bed? You don't 
know anything about it? There was a demonstration in town, and after it they 
were overturning Armenian cars and burning them. They were looking into cars 
and asking, 'Are you an Armenian?' If they answered in Armenian, then they 
turned the car over and burned it." This isn't made up, the wife of the Senior
Investigator of the Baku Ministry of Internal Affairs told us. He was 
returning home from his dacha with his wife, Raisa Sevastyanova, she's my 
neighbor. She immediately came and told LIS that they had landed right in the 
middle of it, I don't know what to call it, the cavalcade of automobiles they 
were stopping. He answered in Azerbaijani, they let them go, but they made him
honk the horn, they were kicking up a fracas. We didn't even believe it, and 
I said, "Certainly that didn't happen, how can that be?" And she said, 
"Muslimzade was leading the crowd, and the Sputnik store was completely
smashed because most of the salespeople there are Armenians. And when he saw 
that they had started breaking the glass in that store, he said, "Don't break 
the shop windows, don't destroy state property, but do whatever else you want.
" I didn't hear this with my own two ears, but it is a fact that the store was
torn up and the director of the store was beaten for employing Armenians 
although he's an Azerbaijani.

While we were talking, all of a sudden right across from us . . . Sevastyanova
is the first to look out the window and say, "Look, there's a crowd out 
there." And sure enough, when we looked out there we saw that the crowd had 
already started wrecking the neighboring building. There was an Armenian 
family there, a woman and two girls. They lived across from us. I'm sorry, I 
don't know the building number or the people's names, since we were in my 
husband's apartment, in Microdistrict 8, and I lived in Microdistrict No. 3. 
There was awful looting going on there at the time, the most hideous things 
were going on there then. One building there, ours, was attacked twice, once 
wasn't enough for them. They returned to the places where they hadn't finished
the Armenians off. If an Azerbaijani family dared to conceal Armenians, they 
beat the Azerbaijanis too. They also beat Russians, if it was Russians doing 
the hiding. Because there were Russians among them, they said so on 
television, there were people of various nationalities. But they didn't tell 
us why there were people of different nationalities. Because they wouldn't 
have touched the Azerbaijanis if they hadn't dared to stick up for the 
Armenians and give them temporary shelter in their homes.

At the time I saw this from the window I was there, Sevastyanova was there, 
and so was my husband. We went out onto the balcony and saw a television fly 
off a balcony. All kinds of things, even a sofa. Then, when it was all down 
there, they burned it up. Then we saw the crowd, and they were all oohing. At 
first I couldn't figure out what was happening. And later I told my husband, 
"Lendrush, l think they're beating someone out there." And he answered, "I 
don't know, could be." Suddenly the crowd separated for a moment, and I saw 
it, and Raisa Sevastyanova saw it too. My husband had turned the other way, 
he didn't see it. I saw a naked girl with her hair down. They were dragging 
her. She kept falling because they were pushing her and kicking her. She fell 
down, it was muddy there, and later other witnesses who saw it from their 
balconies told us, they seized her by the hair and dragged her a couple of 
blocks, as far as the mortgage bank, that's a good block and a half or two 
from here. I know this for sure because I saw it myself.

Then the crowd rushed toward our building. We were standing there, and you can
of course imagine what we were feeling. Were they going to kill us or not? And
I also had the awful thought that they might torment me the way they tormented
that woman, because I had just seen that.

I asked my husband. I gave him an axe and said, "You kill me first, and then 
let them do what they want with the corpse." But our neighbors, it's true, 
defended us, they said, "There aren't any Armenians in our entryway, go away, 
only Muslims live here." Disaster missed us that time.

But at two o'clock in the morning a crowd of about 15 people, approximately, 
came back to our place. My husband was already asleep. He can sleep when he's 
upset about something, but I can't. I was standing, running from balcony to 
balcony. Our power was out, I don't remember for how long, but it was as 
though it had been deliberately turned off. There were no lights whatsoever, 
and I was glad, of course. I thought it was better that way. But then I look 
and the crowd is at our balcony. This was at 2:15 in the morning. The first 
time they were at our building it was 6:30, and now it was 2:15 in the 
morning. But I never thought that that old woman on the first floor, the 
Azerbaijani, was awake and watching out, there were human beings among them 
too. So she goes out with a pail of garbage, as though she needed to be taking
garbage out at two o'clock in the morning. She used it as a pretext and went 
toward those young people. They really were youngsters. From my balcony you 
could see perfectly that they were young Azerbaijani boys. They spoke 
Azerbaijani. And when they came up to her she said, "What do you want?" And 
they answered, "We want the Armenian family that lives here" [pointing toward 
the second floor with their hands]. She says, "I already told you, we don't 
have any Armenians here, now leave, do you hear, this is an old Muslim woman 
talking to you," and grabbed the hand of one boy who was trying to walk around
her and enter the building anyway and started pushing him away. And so they 
seemed to listen to her. They were all very young, they started apologizing 
and left. That was the second time death was at our door.

I forgot to mention about one other apartment, a man named Rubik lives there, 
I don't know him really, I knew his daughter, I mean I saw her around, but we 
really didn't know them. But I do know that that guy who lives on the fourth 
floor across from our entryway went to Chernobyl and worked there for eight 
months, to earn money. Can you imagine what that means? He risked his life to 
earn X amount of money in order to better his family. He bought new furniture 
and was getting ready to give his daughter's hand in marriage, but, alas,
everything was ruined by those creeps and scoundrels. They threw everything 
out the windows, and the rest we saw from our balcony: how the neighbors on 
the left and right ran into the apartment and carried off everything that 
hadn't already been smashed or taken. What is one to think of that? It means 
that the parents in those families were in on it too. Unfortunately I came to 
be of the opinion that it was all organized and that everything had been 
foreseen in advance: both the beating of the Armenians and the stripping of 
apartments. Something on the order of "We'll move the Armenians out and take 
over their apartments."

I have worked honestly my whole life, you can check everything about me. I 
came as a patriot from China, waited for nights on end in front of the 
Consulate General of the USSR, I came to my homeland as a patriot because I 
knew that the Party and the Komsomol were holy things. But when I saw in 
Sumgait that there wasn't anything holy about them, that Party membership was 
bought, that Komsomol members joined only for personal gain, that there were 
no ideals, no ideas, God save me, everything was being bought and sold, I saw 
all of it and understood how they could allow that crap to go on like it did.

I can't talk any more about it . . . the image of that beating . . . When I
went out of my own apartment--they picked us up under Soviet Army guard, they 
had arrived from all over to suppress that gang--not only Armenians, but some 
Russian families and their children, too, came out of their apartments and
joined us, because no normal person who had seen that could stay there with 
the situation the way it was. And what's interesting is that when we left on 
the buses I rode and thought that at least one group of people, for sure 
people would basically rise to the situation, would have some compassion for 
the Armenians, would somehow understand the injustice of what was done. But 
having analyzed and weighed the whole thing, once I calmed down, having 
thought it all through, I came to a conclusion that is shared by many people. 
If a lot of Azerbaijanis didn't want their Armenian neighbors to be killed, 
and that basically depended on that Muslimzade--he said that he had wanted to 
calm them down--then is it possible that he didn't have people at hand to whom
he could whisper at the last minute, "Go and announce it on television: 
Citizens of Sumgait! Take what you can into your hands, let's protect our 
neighbors from this massacre?" Those crowds weren't such that there was no 
controlling them. Basically they were unarmed. They didn't have firearms, 
mostly they had knives, they had all kinds of metal parts, like armature 
shafts, sharpened at the ends, special rocks, different to a degree that we 
noticed them: there aren't rocks like those in Sumgait soils, they were 
brought from somewhere, as though it were all specially planned. So as I was 
saying, I weighed it all out and if any of our neighbors had wanted to defend 
us, why wasn't it arranged? It means that the government didn't want to do 
it. When the crowd was moving from the City Party Committee to the Sputnik, 
what, there was no way of informing Baku? No, there was no way, it turns out!
The crowd was doing violence in our microdistrict. I won't mention the things 
I didn't see myself, I'll only talk about the things I myself witnessed. They 
were in Microdistrict 8 beginning at 6 o'clock in the evening, when I saw them
from the other building, and they were somewhere else until mid-night or one 
o'clock in the morning, because at 2:15 they came back to our building. They
hadn't completely finished making their predatory rounds of Microdistrict 8. 
When they returned to our building I told my husband, "Lendrush, now the 
police are probably going to come, my God, now the authorities are probably 
going to find out and come to our aid." Well, alas, no, there were to be no 
authorities, not a single policeman, not a single fireman, not a single 
ambulance came while they were raging, as it turns out, as we later found out,
beginning on the Might of the 27th. There were dead people, ruined apartments,
and burned autos: one car near the bus station, it was burned and overturned, 
it was probably there about four days, everyone saw it and what went on in 
Block 45! Those who live there know, they saw from their balconies how they 
attacked the soldiers in the buses, how they beat those poor, unarmed
soldiers, and how on that square, I can't remember the name of it, where there
is that fork coming from the bus station, that intersection, now I'm upset and
I can't think of the name . . . there's a tall building there, a 9-story, and 
from the balconies there people saw that butchery, when the poor soldiers, 
wearing only helmets, with shields and those unfortunate clubs, moved against 
that mob. And when they fell, those 12-to 14-year-old boys ran up and using 
stones, big heavy stones, beat them to death on their heads. Who could have 
guessed that something like that could happen in the Soviet Union and under 
the Soviet government? The upshot is that this republic has not been under 
Soviet control for a long time, but no one wanted to pay any attention or get 
involved.

If you were to go and ask at my work many people would confirm that I tell the
truth, I've been struggling for truth for five years there already, the five 
years that I worked at the Azerbaijani railroad. Some people there considered 
me a demagogue, others who knows what; some think I'm an adventure seeker, and
some, a prankster. But I wanted everything to be right, I would become
outraged: how can this be, why is it people treat one another this way on a 
Soviet railroad, as though the Azerbaijani railroad were Azerbaijani property,
or the property of some magnate, or some "mafia": If I want to, I'll get you 
out of here; If I want to, I'll get rid of you; If I want to, I'll do 
something else? And there's a black market price for everything, in the most 
brazen way: a coach to Moscow costs so much, a coach on a local train costs so
much. Once when I was complaining to the head of the conductor's pool, he had 
the nerve to tell me, maybe you won't even believe this, but this, I'm afraid,
I heard with my own ears: "Tatyana, just how long can you fight for something
that you know will never have any effect? You're alone against everyone, so 
instead why don't you give more money to the chief conductor, and everything 
will go fine for you." I started to cry, turned, and left. What else could I 
do, where else could I go to complain? I realized that everything was useless.
And the root of the whole thing is that it all goes on and no one wants to see
it. I filed a written complaint, and they ground it into dust, they destroyed 
it, I still have a copy, but what's the use? When the General Procuracy got 
involved with the investigation of the bloody Sumgait affair, in addition to 
the information about what I saw, what I was a witness to, I gave testimony 
about the mafia at the railroad. They accepted my petition, but I don't know 
if they're going to pursue it or not. Because, you'll excuse me, I no longer 
believe in the things I aspired to, the things I believed in before: It's all 
dead. They just spit on my soul, stomped on everything, physically, and most 
important, spiritually, because you can lose belongings, that's nonsense, that
all comes with time, but when your soul is spit upon and when the best in 
you--your beliefs--are destroyed, it can be very difficult to restore them...

I want to tell of one incident. I just don't know, at the time I was in such a
state that I didn't even take minor things into account. Here is an example.
Of course, it's not a minor one. My neighbor, Raisa Sevastyanova, she has a
son, Valery, who is in the 9th grade in a school in Microdistrict 8. A boy,
Vitaly [Danielian], I don't know his last name, goes to school with him, or
rather, went to school with him. I was just sitting in an apartment trying to
make a phone call to Moscow . . . Oh yes, and there's one important detail:
When the massacre began, for two to three hours the phones weren't working in 
Armenian apartments, and later, in several Russian and Azerbaijani apartments.
But the fact of the matter is that service was shut off, you could not call 
anywhere. Why? Again, it means it was all planned. How come service is cut off
for no reason? And the lights went off. And those brats were raging as they
liked They weren't afraid, they ran about freely, they that no one would slap 
their hands and no one would dare to stop them.  They knew it.

Now I'm going to tell about the incident. So this little Vitaly, Vitalik, an
Armenian boy, went to school with Valery; they were in the same class. 
According to what Valery and his neighbor pal said--at the time I was in the
same apartment as they were, I sat at the phone waiting for the call to be put
through--a mob attacked the building where Vitalik lived. So Valery ran to
his mother and said, "Mamma, please let me go to Vitalik's, what if they kill
him? Maybe he's still alive, maybe we can bring him here and save him somehow.
. . . He's a nice guy, we all like him, he's a good person, he's smart." His 
mother wouldn't let him go. In tears, she says, "Valery, you can't go because 
I am afraid." He says, "Mamma, we can get around the crowd. We'll just watch, 
just have a look." They made it through. I don't know, I think Vitalik's
parents lived in Microdistrict No. 1, and when they got there, they made a 
superficial deduction. Knowing that balconies and doors were being broken 
everywhere, that you could see from the street which were the Armenian 
apartments in the building, they went here and there and looked, and saw that 
the windows were intact, and so they calmed down. But even though the windows 
in that apartment were not broken, everything inside was totally smashed, and 
Vitalik lay there with a broken skull, and his mother and father had already 
been murdered. Little Vitalik didn't even know they were dead. So two weeks 
ago, I don't know, he was in critical condition, no, maybe it was longer: we 
left Sumgait on March 20, spent some time in Moscow, and then we came to 
Yerevan. So it's been about a month already; it's so hard to keep all this 
straight. So Valery, the next day, when he found out that Vitalik's family has
been killed and Vitalik was ling in the Semashko Hospital in Baku, Valery and
his classmates got together and went to visit him. But they wouldn't admit 
them, telling them that he was in critical condition and that he was still in 
a coma. They cried and left, having also found out that the girl I saw being 
kicked and dragged was in that hospital too. As it turns out she was brought 
there in serious condition, but at least she was alive at the time . . .

When we got to the SK club we would see first one friend and then another, 
throw ourselves into their arms and kiss them, because you had wondered if 
these friends were alive or not, if those friends were alive or not  . . . And
when you saw them you were so glad to find out that the family had lived! When
you saw people you heard things that made your hair stand on end.

If you publish everything that happened it will be a hideous book. A book of 
things it is even difficult to believe. And those two girls who were raped 
were entirely black and blue, the ones at the SK, they know I'm not lying, 
that girlfriend came up to one of them and said, "What happened?" and she 
bared her breasts, and they were completely covered in cigarette burns . . . 
those rogues had put cigarettes out on her breasts. After something like that 
I don't know how you can live in a city and look at the people in it.

Now . . . When we stayed at the military unit for a while, they provided,
well, basic conditions for us there. The military unit is located in Nasosny,
some six miles from Sumgait. And living there we met with a larger group
of people. There were about 1,600 people at the unit. You know, there was a
point when I couldn't even go outside because if you went outside you saw
so much heartbreak around you. And when you hear the false rumors . . .

Yes, by the way, false rumors were spread in Sumgait saying that the Armenians
around Yerevan had destroyed Azerbaijani villages and razed them to the ground
with bulldozers. I didn't know whether to believe it or not. And people who 
don't know any better get the idea that it was all done in revenge. But when 
I arrived in Armenia and was in Spitak, and in Spitak all those villages are 
not only intact, but at that time had even been protected just in case, they 
were guarded, they got better food than did the inhabitants of Spitak. Not a 
single person there died, and no one is planning to harm them. Around Yerevan 
all the villages are safe and unharmed, and the Armenians didn't attack 
anyone. But actually, after an evil of the magnitude suffered in Sumgait there
could have been a feeling of vengefulness, but no one acted on it. And I don't
know why you sometimes hear accusations to the effect that the Armenians are 
guilty, that it is they who organized it. Rumors like that are being spread in
Azerbaijan. And if one old person says it and ten young ones hear it, they not
only perceive it with their minds, but with their hearts, too. To them it 
seems that the older person is telling the truth. For example, one says; "Did 
you know that out of 31 people killed (by the way, originally they said 31 
people, but later they found a 32nd), 30 were Azerbaijani and one was an 
Armenian?"

Of course I'm upset, but it's utterly impossible to discuss such things and
not become upset. Sometimes l forget things, but I know I want to return to
the time when we were in the SK club across from the City Party Committee.
When I saw Muslimzade in the SK club building I went to him to ask because I 
couldn't believe that he had marched in the front carrying a banner. I already
mentioned this, and if I repeat anything, please excuse me. I asked him, "Why 
did you do that and why are you here now, why did you come here? To laugh at 
these women who are strewn about on the floor?" The overcrowding there was 
tremendous, it was completely unsanitary, and several of the children were
already sick. It's true the troops tried to make it livable for us. They 
cooked for us on their field stoves and provided us with wonderful food, but 
the thing is that their main job was to ferret out the gang that was still at 
it everywhere, that was continuing its sordid affairs everywhere. Plus they 
were never given any direct orders, they didn't know what they were authorized
to do and not to do. And it was only on March 8 at five o'clock in the evening
that Krayev himself, the Lieutenant General, the City Commandant of Sumgait, 
was given full authority and told everyone over a microphone from an armored 
personnel carrier that now he could do what he wanted to do, as his heart 
advised him, and relocate people to the military unit.

But that's not what I want to talk about now. Muslimzade, characteristically, 
tried to get me out of the SK building and take me to the City Party
Committee, which is across the square from the club. He took me by the
hand and said, "Citizen, don't worry, we'll go and have a talk in my office.
I told him, "No, after everything you've done, I don't believe one iota of 
what you say. If I go to the City Party Committee I'll disappear, and the 
traces of me will disappear too. Because you can't stand it when . . . " Oh 
yes, and there was another interesting detail from that meeting. It was even 
very funny, although at the time I wasn't up to laughing. He was in a nice, 
expensive hat, and so as to put him to shame, so to speak, I said, "Oh, why 
did you come here all duded up like a London dandy, you smell of good perfume,
you're in your starched shirt, and you have your expensive hat on. You came
to ridicule the poor women and children who are lying on the floor, who are
already getting sick, whose relatives have died. Did you come to laugh at
them?" And the one who was accompanying him, an Azerbaijani, I don't know who 
he was or what his title was, he quickly snatched the hat off Muslimzade's head 
and hid it. Then I said, "My God! We're not marauders. We're not you! We 
didn't come to you with the intention of stealing!" "Well kill me, kill me!" 
Muslimzade says to me, "But I'm not guilty . . . kill me, kill me, but I'm not
guilty." And I say, "OK, fine, you're not guilty, have it your way. But give 
us an answer, we're asking you: Where were you when they were torturing and 
raping those poor women, when they were killing the children, burning things, 
carrying on outrageously, and wrecking all those apartments? Where were you 
then?" "You know, we didn't expect it, we did not know what to do, we didn't 
anticipate that something like that would happen in Sumgait." I started 
laughing and said, "It's truly funny." He says, "What could I do? We didn't 
know what to do." And I say, "I'm sorry, but it'll be ridiculous if I tell 
you: The First Secretary of the City Party Committee shouldn't march out in 
front with a banner; he should fall down so that the gang would have to cross 
over his dead body. That's what you should have done. That's the way it was 
during the war. Not a single party committee secretary compromised himself;
either he died or he led people into battle. And what did you do? You ran 
away, you left, you hid, you marched with a flag, because you were afraid, 
excuse my language, you feared for your own damned hide. And when we ask you, 
you tell us that you got confused and you ask me what you could have done? 
That's right," I told him, "the City party committee got confused, all the 
party committees got confused, the police got confused,. Baku got confused, 
they all lay in a faint for two weeks, and the gang ran the show with 
impunity. And if it weren't for the troops it wouldn't have been just two 
days, there wouldn't be a single Armenian left in Sumgait for sure, they would 
have finished their bloody affair, because they brazenly went up to some 
Russians, too, the ones who tried to say something to them, and they told 
them, 'As soon as we finish with the Armenians we'll come after you, too."

And by the way, there was a colonel, who took us to the military unit. He was
the one with the light blue collar tabs who flew in and two hours later
arrived on an armored personnel carrier when we were at the  SK and took us to
the military unit and who later started moving us from the military unit. We 
asked him, "What? How? What will come of us?" He openly said, "You know, for 
us the main thing now is to catch that gang. We'll finish that quickly. You'll
stay at the military unit for the time being, and we'll decide later." The 
General Procuracy of the USSR arrived, it consists of investigators from all 
cities. There were some from Stavropol, from everywhere, just everywhere, because 
the affair was truly frightful. About this, by the way, Comrade Katusev spoke;
as everyone knows, he's the First Deputy General Procurator of the USSR. When 
he gave us a speech from the armored personnel carrier at the military unit, 
by the way, he told us the honest truth, because he couldn't not say it, 
because he was still experiencing his first impressions of what he had seen, 
and he said, "There was Afghanistan; and it was bad, but Sumgait--it's
horrible! And the people who dared to do such a thing will be severely 
punished, in accordance with our laws." And that's a quote. Then one mother 
throws herself at him--her two sons had died before her very eyes--and says,
"Who will return my sons? Who is going to punish the [culprits]?" They tried 
to calm her down, and he said, "In order for us to conduct a proper 
investigation, in order that not a single scoundrel avoid responsibility, you 
must help us, because we don't know, maybe there was someone else in the gang 
who is now being concealed in homes, and maybe the neighbors know, maybe 
someone saw something. Don't be afraid, write about it in detail. So that 
you're not afraid . . . Everyone knows that many of you are afraid, having 
lived through such horrors, they think that if they write the whole truth 
about, let's say, their neighbor or someone else, that they will seek revenge 
later. We're going to do it like this: We're going to set up an urn and you 
can throw what you write in there. We don't need to know who wrote it. The 
names of the people who write won't be made public, but we need all the
information. Let each and every one not be afraid, let each write what is 
necessary, who they saw in that gang, who made threats or shouted threatening 
gibes about the Armenians . . . You must describe all of these people and put 
the information into the urn."

Two soldiers and a major guarded the urn. And, sure enough, many people, 
people who didn't even want to write . . .I know one woman who asked me, she 
came up and said, "You, as a Russian, the same thing won't happen to you as 
will happen to me. So please . . . I'll give you the information, and you 
please write it down for me." So she was afraid, and there were a lot like
her . . . But later, after Katusev made his speech, she sat and wrote down
everything she knew. And we threw it all into the urn. Now we don't know if 
it will be of any use. For a factual picture will emerge from all that 
information. One person can lie, but thousands can't lie, thousands simply 
can't lie. You have to agree with that, a fact is a fact. Why, for example, 
should someone say that black is white if it is really black?

   The First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Azerbaijani
SSR, Mamedov, as I said, was in Yerevan. My husband and I were at the Council 
of Ministers of the Armenian SSR and found out that Mamedov was present, the 
one who had come to convince the people of Sumgait to  return to their 
previous dwellings, to their old apartments. We asked for a meeting with him, 
and it was granted. When we went to see him he tried to behave properly, very 
politely, delicately, but . . . when the truth was told right to his face and 
when I asked him some of the same questions I had asked Muslimzade, "Where were
you personally when they were beating us? Now you're trying to convince us to 
return, why didn't you think at the time that they were slaughtering us where 
it was all leading?" he says, "You're telling the truth. Let's not mince 
words. You've told me right to my face, and I'll tell you straight. I'll tell 
you the pure truth. I was gotten out of bed in the evening, the whole 
government was up, including me, and we were restraining a crowd of about 
45,000 in Baku. But we never expected that in a city like Sumgait, with its 
fine international record, such a thing could happen. We expected it in Baku."
I say, "So that means you expected it all the same? Why were you expecting 
it?" And he says, "You know, it just happened that way. We were expecting it 
in Baku, we were trying to restrain it, but in Sumgait . . . " I say, "Fine, 
you didn't know for the first three or four hours, but then you should have 
known. Why did no one help us?" And he says, "Well, OK, we didn't know what to
do" and things like that. Basically it was the same story I got from 
Muslimzade. Later, when he said, "You go on back, the situation in Sumgait is 
favorable now, everything is fine, the Armenians are friendly with the 
Azerbaijanis . . . " To this l answered, "You know what . . . I'm speaking 
with you as a [member of a] neutral nation . . . I have never argued with 
Armenians or with Azerbaijanis and I was an eyewitness . . . You tell me, 
please, Comrade Mamedov, " I asked him, "What would you say about this
honestly, if you were being completely frank with us?" Then he said, "Yes, I 
admit that I am honestly ashamed, shame on the entire Azerbaijani nation, we 
have disgraced ourselves not only before the entire Soviet Union, but before 
the whole world. Because now the Voice of America and all the other foreign 
radio stations of various hues are branding us with all kinds of rumors, too."
And I say, "There's nothing to add to what really happened. I don't think it's
possible to add anything more awful." He says, "Yes, I agree with you, I 
understand your pain, it is truly an unfortunate occurrence." I repeat that he
said "unfortunate occurrence." And then he suddenly remembered himself, what 
he was saying--he had a pen in his hands, he was fidgeting with it nervously--
and said, "Oh, excuse me, a tragedy, really . . . " I take this to mean that 
he really thinks it's an "unfortunate occurrence." "And of course," he says, 
"I understand that having gone through all this you can't return to Sumgait, 
but it's necessary to cool down and realize that all those people are being 
tried." And he even gave a detail, which, I don't know if it matters or not, 
that 160 policemen were being tried. Specifically in relation to that bloody 
affair.

Yes, by the way, there is another good detail, how I was set up at work in
Baku after the events. I went to an undergarment plant, there was an 
Azerbaijani working there, and suddenly she tells me, "What, they didn't
nail your husband? They screwed up." I was floored, I hadn't imagined that
anyone in Baku, too, could say something like that. Well after that I went up
to see . . . to my office, I needed to find out about those days, what was
going to happen with them, how they were going to put down those days from 
February 29 to March 10 . . . and the administrator told me, "I don't know, 
Tatyana, go to the head of the conductors' pool. Be grateful if they don't 
put it down as unexcused absence." I was really discouraged by this. They all 
know that we were but a hair away from death and barely survived, and here 
they're telling me that I was skipping work, as though I was off enjoying 
myself somewhere. I went to the office of the chief of the pool, his last name
is Rasulov, and he's had that position for many years. Incidentally, he's a 
Party member, and is a big man in town. And suddenly, when I went to him and 
said, "Comrade Rasulov, this is the way it was . . . " He looked at me askance
and said, "And why are you"--he knows me by my previous last name--"why did
you get wrapped up in this mess?" I say, "What do you mean, why did I get 
wrapped up in this mess? My husband's an Armenian," I tell him, "I have an 
Armenian last name." And he screwed up his face, made a kind of a grimace, as 
though he had eaten something sour, and said, "I didn't expect that you would
. . . " What did he mean by that? And "how" should he behave, the chief of the
pool, a man who supervises 1,700 workers? Now, it's true, there was a 
reduction, but for sure there are still 1,200 conductors working for him. And 
if someone who supervises a staff that size says things like that, then what 
can you expect from a simple, uneducated, politically unsophisticated person?!
He's going to believe any and all rumors, that the Armenians are like this, 
the Armenians are like that, and so on . . .

By the way, that Mamedov--now I'm going back to Mamedov's office when I asked 
him "Are you really going to guarantee the safety of our lives if we return 
to Sumgait?" he answered, "Yes, you know, I would guarantee them . . . I don't
want to take on too much, I would guarantee them firmly for 50 years. But I 
won't guarantee them for longer than 50 years." I say, "So you've got another
thing like that planned for 50 years from  now? So they'll be quiet and then 
in another 50 years it'll happen again?!" I couldn't contain myself any more,
and I also told him, "And how did it get to that point, certainly you knew
about it, how they were treating the Russians, for example, in Baku and in 
Sumgait, how they were hounded from their jobs? Certainly you received
complaints, I wrote some myself. Why did no one respond to them? Why did 
everyone ignore what was going on? Didn't you prepare people for this by the 
way you treated them?" And he says, "You know, you're finally starting to 
insult me!" He threw his pen on the desk. "Maybe now you'll say I'm a 
scoundrel too?" I say, "You know, I'm not talking about you because I don't 
know. But about the ones who I do know I can say with conviction, yes, that 
comrade was involved in this, that, and that, because I know for certain.
"Well anyway he assured us that here, in Yerevan, there were false rumors, 
that 3,000 Sumgait Armenians were here, and 15,000 were in Sumgait and had 
gotten back to work. Everyone was working, he said, and life was very good. 
"We drove about the town ourselves, Comrade Arutiunian [First Secretary of 
the Communist Party of Armenia SSR] came from the Council of Ministers of 
Armenian, he came and brought information showing that everything was fine in
Sumgait." When I asked Mamedov how he had reached that conclusion he said, '
"Well, I walked down the street." And I said, "Walking down the street in any 
city, even if I were to go to New York, I would never understand the situation
because I would be a guest, I don't have any contact with people, but if you 
spend 10 days among some blue-collar workers in such a way that they didn't 
know you were the First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers, you'd 
hear something quite different." I told him, for example, that I drew my 
conclusion when we left the military unit to look at our apartments. They took
us all in turns to pick things up, since people had fled to the military unit;
they got on the bus just to save themselves as soon as possible. How are the 
neighbors in the microdistrict, how will they view us, what do they think? I 
thought maybe that in fact it wasn't something general, of a mass nature, some
anti-national something. And when that bus took us to our building, because it
was the same bus, while we were going up to our apartment, an armed soldier 
accompanied us. What does that say? It speaks of the fact that if everything 
there were fine, why do we need to have soldiers go there and come back with
us, going from apartment to apartment? And in fact, especially with the young 
people, you could sense the delight at our misfortune, the grins, and they 
were making comments, too. And that was in the presence of troops, when police
detachments were in the microdistricts and armored personnel carriers and 
tanks were passing by. And if people are taking such malicious delight when 
the situation is like that, then what is it going to be like when they 
withdraw protection from the city altogether? There will be more outrages, of 
course, perhaps not organized, but in the alleys . . .

  April 20, 1988
  Yerevan

		     - - - reference - - -

[1] _The Sumgait Tragedy; Pogroms against Armenians in Soviet Azerbaijan,
    Volume I, Eyewitness Accounts_, edited by Samuel Shahmuradian, forward by
    Yelena Bonner, 1990, published by Aristide D. Caratzas, NY, pages 166-177

