The New Yorker, April 15, 1991 P. 55
REPORTER AT LARGE about two of the Transcaucasus republics Armenia & Azerbaijan. They are Soviet republics. "Glasnost" has undermined Soviet discipline. Reform has given birth to independence movements. It has also permitted the resumption of old feuds between people who no longer have to pretend they & their neighbors belong happily to the same Soviet family. Tells about a border dispute last Aug., which went on for 3 days. Since then the Soviet Army patrols border roads. Azerbaijanis living in Armenia & Armenians living in Azerbaijan have over the last two years bee subjected to large-scale expulsions, sometimes with physical harm. Gives history of the two republics to give idea of the roots of their conflict. There is a highland area known as Nagorno-Karabakh. Both sides claim it. In 1921 the Armenians appealed to the Caucasian Bureau of the Communist Party to transfer the area to the new Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic. It was decided to leave the region in Azerbaijan. For the next 67 years Soviet power stifled periodic Armenian efforts to raise the question anew. Recently there has been renewed agitation in Nagorno-Karabkh for separation from Azerbaijan & unification with Armenia. Eventually Gorbachev promised these autonomous republics would receive more freedom. Tells about the murderous violence in Feb., 1988 in the Azerbaijani city of Sumgait. Tells about the 4-day pogrom in Baku (capital of Azerbaijan) in Jan., 1990. Some people believed Moscow had let the pogrom continue in order to win international support for repression of the growing separatist movement. Tells about a visit to Yerevan, capital of Armenia, where there is a new govt.; the Communist Party was beyond salvage there.
