Ethnic conflict and Gorbachev's reforms
Medvedev, Roy
Moscow, MARCH 3, 1988 he disturbances in Kazakhstan in December 1986, the demonstrations by the Crimean Tartars in Moscow and those in the Baltic states in 1987-88, the incidents in Yakutia and...
...they're the author's responsibility...
...We have not even been able to read Gorbachev's appeal to the Armenians and Azerbaijanians or a report of his meeting with representatives of the Armenian intelligentsia...
...All the Russian revolutionary parties recruited followers from among non-Russians, but the Bolsheviks with their ethnic program were the most successful in this regard...
...Problems arose for practicing Armenian Christians, though there were also problems for practicing Azerbaijanian Moslems...
...In the event that no agreement can be reached, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR or the Soviet of Nationalities should meet in session to conduct a detailed examination of the problem...
...This is not our most important ethnic problem but it is a complex one, deeply rooted in history...
...I continue to be disturbed by the paucity of glasnost, the lack of information on these events...
...If there's a delay, it's because a few editors are reading your article...
...After the fall of tsarism, the Trans-Caucasus was for several years an arena not only of civil war but of bloody ethnic warfare...
...During the last sixty years the number of Armenians in the province has decreased from 142,000 to 136,000, that is, from 94 to 76 percent of the province's population...
...As we're not an academic journal, we prefer that they, wherever possible, be dropped altogether or worked into the text...
...From then on the Soviet press has written only about ethnic harmony and we have had no mechanism for the study and resolution of ethnic conflicts...
...The Western press frequently publishes assertions that ethnic harmony in the USSR has proved to be a "myth of Soviet propaganda...
...There is an obvious link between these problems and the process of perestroika (restructuring) now underway in our country...
...At that time definite mechanisms existed for studying and resolving ethnic conflicts...
...Yet I continue to hope that intelligent solutions will be found to the current ethnic problems and the problems of glasnost and democracy...
...Do recent events in the area of ethnic relations pose a threat to Gorbachev's policy and reputation...
...The Soviet leadership may yet find a way to an intelligent and relatively painless solution...
...However, in the early 1930s, Stalin declared that the ethnic problems in our country had been resolved "fully and completely" and that a Soviet culture had been created, "national in form and socialist in content...
...Those events do, of course, represent a serious test of the current policy of reform...
...The victory of Soviet power in the Trans-Caucasus put an end to this bitter civil strife, which in some regions had cost the lives of 10-30 percent of the population...
...The Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh suffered certain encroachments on their economic and cultural interests: they were not even able to receive television broadcasts from Yerevan...
...And please remember that we can't return articles unless they're accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope...
...6) Please bear with us—we have accumulated quite a backlog of material, and you may have to wait for a few issues before you see your article in print...
...Those assertions are SUMMER • 1988 • 269 mistaken...
...However, the claim that there are no serious ethnic problems or conflicts in the USSR is a myth and an extremely harmful one at that...
...We know nothing about the declaration made by the Catholicus, the Patriach of the Armenian church, just as we have no details about the scope of the "excesses" in Sumgait...
...Community is no myth but the reality of our daily life...
...There are more than one hundred peoples and ethnic groups in the Soviet Union, and their economic and cultural cooperation, their mutual friendship and respect are not a myth...
...I married a Ukrainian woman and my son recently married an Armenian...
...Soviet newspapers are not reporting anything about the mass demonstrations in Yerevan or about the visits there by such Soviet leaders as Dolgikh, Razumovsky, Lukyanov, and Demichev...
...Powerful organizations for combating "bourgeois nationalism" have, however, been retained...
...In my opinion, the people of Nagorno-Karabakh should hold a referendum, as provided for by the Soviet constitution...
...Liberalization has either stimulated or aggravated conflicts that existed previously but had not seemed especially significant, given the all-pervasive social injustice and corruption of the leadership...
...In the 1920s, the Communist party paid a great deal of attention to ethnic problems, which were discussed at nearly every party congress...
...Those conflicts do exist in ever-increasing number...
...As we know, the ethnic or national question always held an extremely important place in the ideology of Leninism, as was only natural for a country like Russia with its many ethnic problems...
...Or take a chance and send us your article...
...Look at our last few issues to see if your idea fits in...
...Unfortunately, glasnost has been one of the casualties of the ethnic conflict in the Trans-Caucasus, just as it was during the first ten days after the disaster at Chernobyl...
...Its results should then be discussed by the Supreme Soviets of Armenia and Azerbaijan...
...Check all your figures, dates, names, etc...
...TRANSLATED BY RICHARD LOURIE...
...In some respects it has even grown more severe, as demonstrated by the tragic events in the Azerbaijanian city of Sumgait...
...No dot matrix submissions, please...
...One example is the war between Armenia led by the Dashnak party and Moslem Azerbaijan for control of Nagorno-Karabakh, which the Armenian nationalists considered a part of Armenia and the Azerbaijanian nationalists a part of Azerbaijan...
...On the holidays old friends gather at my house and they include Georgians, Estonians, Azerbaijanians...
...Without the support of the Latvians, Estonians, Finns, Poles, Georgians, Armenians, Jews, Tartars, Volga and Crimean Germans, Chechens, Ingush, Bashkirs, and even Hungarians and Chinese, the Bolsheviks could not have won the Civil War and created the Soviet Union...
...THE EDITORS 270 • DISSENT leadership's ability to find a just and intelligent solution to a problem that is a legacy of the past...
...However, Nagorno-Karabakh, whose population was 90 percent Armenian, remained a part of Azerbaijan and was given only the status of an ethnic province...
...During the demarcation of ethnic districts that took place in 1923, several regions in Armenia with a preponderantly Azerbaijanian population became part of Azerbaijan under the name of the Nachikhevan ASSR...
...At the same time, there was only a slight increase in the population of Nagorno-Karabakh and that in favor of the Azerbaijanians...
...4) Notes and footnotes should also be typed double-spaced, on a separate sheet...
...This, too, is one of the reasons for the aggravation of ethnic conflicts currently observable in the USSR...
...Unfortunately, discrimination in NagornoKarabakh was quite frequent...
...Nagorno-Karabakh was a small Persian principality with an Armenian population before it was incorporated into Russia in 1913...
...In the case of Nagorno-Karabakh, Moscow is acting as an arbiter in a very difficult dispute, which tests the current To Our Contributors: A few suggestions: (1) Be sure to keep a copy of your ms—the mails aren't always reliable...
...The formation of a new historical, social, and international community commonly referred to as the "Soviet people" is a reality...
...The Soviet press reports on the normalization of the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia, but the problem has not been solved, only postponed...
...For a long time those problems were ignored by both Baku and Moscow, causing legitimate dissatisfaction in Armenia, whose people were the first in the twentieth century to experience genocide and for that reason are painfully sensitive to all forms of ethnic injustice...
...2) Please don't write to ask whether we're interested in such and such an article—it makes for useless correspondence...
...The obvious liberalization of the regime and the abatement of the powerful authoritarian-bureaucratic machine that had oppressed us all has revealed the complex sources of the dissatisfactions that had built up in various parts of the country...
...Calling on the country to take a more active and responsible role in resolving social and political problems, Gorbachev has also unwittingly encouraged the Soviet people to take actions like the demonstrations in Armenia in which hundreds of thousands participated...
...Only glasnost and democratization could have allowed the increased expression and understanding of many of the ethnic problems, which, for a variety of reasons, have accumulated here over the last several decades...
...5) We're usually quick in giving editorial decisions...
...My father is Russian, my mother Jewish...
...Under Soviet rule, the population of Armenia increased threefold and that of Azerbaijan more than twice...
...Moscow, MARCH 3, 1988 he disturbances in Kazakhstan in December 1986, the demonstrations by the Crimean Tartars in Moscow and those in the Baltic states in 1987-88, the incidents in Yakutia and Uzbekistan, the increased activity of the Russian "patriotic" association, Pamyat ("Memory"), the continuing emigration of Jews and ethnic Germans, and, finally, the current clash between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the fate of Nagorno-Karabakh —all these events attest unequivocally to ethnic problems having become more acute in the USSR...
...3) Type your ms double-spaced, with wide margins...
Vol. 35 • July 1988 • No. 3
