The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia

by Masha Gessen

About a month after Alexander Nikolaevich wrote the letter, the Nagorny Karabakh regional council, until then a ceremonial body, resolved to secede from Azerbaijan and join Armenia. Two days later, fighting broke out. The Politburo attempted to intervene by removing the head of the Nagorny Karabakh Party organization. Anti-Armenian pogroms broke out in Azerbaijan. Moscow removed Party bosses of both Armenia and Azerbaijan. Each republic voted to consider Nagorny Karabakh its own. Moscow sided with Azerbaijan. More anti-Armenian pogroms followed. Armenia expelled ethnic Azeris. Gorbachev had the Nagorny Karabakh secessionist movement leaders arrested (they were released six months later). Azerbaijan’s Supreme Soviet voted to secede from the USSR. Anti-Armenian pogroms broke out in the Azerbaijan capital, Baku, a large, opulent city—one of the world’s first oil capitals, where Azeris, Armenians, Jews, and assorted others had thrived for over a century. Now ninety Armenians were dead and the rest of the Armenians of Baku became refugees.