Kitobni o'qish: «Life and Freedom. The autobiography of the former president of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh»

Project Consultant: Mark Rozin

Editors: Vasily Podobed and Marina Kostromina

Editor (English version): Logan Cull

Все права защищены. Данная электронная книга предназначена исключительно для частного использования в личных (некоммерческих) целях. Электронная книга, ее части, фрагменты и элементы, включая текст, изображения и иное, не подлежат копированию и любому другому использованию без разрешения правообладателя. В частности, запрещено такое использование, в результате которого электронная книга, ее часть, фрагмент или элемент станут доступными ограниченному или неопределенному кругу лиц, в том числе посредством сети интернет, независимо от того, будет предоставляться доступ за плату или безвозмездно.

Копирование, воспроизведение и иное использование электронной книги, ее частей, фрагментов и элементов, выходящее за пределы частного использования в личных (некоммерческих) целях, без согласия правообладателя является незаконным и влечет уголовную, административную и гражданскую ответственность.

© Robert Kocharyan, 2019

© Alpina PRO, 2023

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FOREWORD

The Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh became one of the first precursors of the USSR's demise. The weakening central power was evidently unable to cope with the economic challenges, while "perestroika" and "glasnost" were swiftly and dramatically undermining the nation's system of governance. The authorities proved ineffective in proposing anything innovative, appealing, and capable of mobilizing society. The country, anchored in absolute centralization and held together by a uniform ideology, was rapidly losing its bearings. But despite all of this, the threat to the Soviet Union's integrity became real and even inevitable only when cracks appeared along its most vulnerable fault line – the ethnic divide.

During these turbulent times, I found myself at the epicenter of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict, emerging as one of the key figures. Whenever protest rallies, strikes, states of emergency, martial law, armed militias, ethnic clashes, confrontations with the military, or war took place in the Soviet Union, they first happened in or around Karabakh. Ensuing events revealed that we didn't have a choice in Nagorno-Karabakh: we were desperately defending our right to live on the land of our ancestors. As a Communist Party official, I quickly became one of the leaders of the Karabakh Movement. I was in charge of its political component and led the creation of the underground armed resistance – the foundation of the future NKR Defense Army. The summer of 1992 was a particularly tragic period – Azerbaijani armed forces occupied half of Karabakh. In this perilous situation, I suggested an emergency crisis management model suitable for responding to the threat of losing Karabakh. I assumed responsibility, creating and leading the highest governing body of the Republic vested with extraordinary authority – the State Defense Committee. Its success was spectacular! In less than two years, we not only regained full control of Karabakh, we also managed to create a reliable security buffer around it.

Immediately after the war, I was elected as the first president of Nagorno-Karabakh. However, due to unforeseen events, I became prime minister and, later, president of Armenia during a critical period of its development. Conflict with the then-sitting president, which led to his resignation, the snap elections, the shocking terrorist act in the parliament… These were exceptionally challenging years, both for overcoming crises and for carrying out constructive work and successful reforms, that significantly changed the face of Armenia. Armenia's gross domestic product (GDP) multiplied five-fold during my presidency. I had the honor of serving as prime minister and president of two countries – one recognized and the other unrecognized – during the most volatile period of their establishment. So there is, indeed, a lot to tell…

Initially, I had no intention of writing a book, despite realizing that my biography was unique and might be of interest to others. I simply didn't think I could bring myself to tell my life story. I didn't have the habit of keeping a diary, I didn't like to immerse myself in memories, and I didn't flip through old photo albums. Simply put, I wasn't stuck in the past. I was always busy, always looking ahead, and planning for the future. Immediately after my term ended, many tried to convince me to start writing memoirs, but I didn't see the need. I seriously contemplated it for the first time after two meetings abroad, where I was invited as a guest speaker. The audience's keen interest in the events I described pleasantly surprised and inspired me. Many asked me why I hadn't written a book, saying they would read it. But my final decision came during AFK Sistema's strategic session in Altai, Russia, where I met Mark Rozin¹. After he interviewed me in my capacity as an independent member of Sistema's Board of Directors, Mark spoke about the importance of a book and insisted that I write one. At that point, I finally agreed.

Once I started working on the book, I admit I seriously regretted the decision. But it was too late to back down, as I'd never left anything unfinished in my life. Revisiting the past, especially the Karabakh period, turned out to be a difficult task. It seemed like a great deal had been hopelessly forgotten. I had to reread all my old interviews, watch surviving video materials, and talk to many participants of the events during those years. Amazingly, vivid memories from long ago began to resurface – even the faces of people I'd almost forgotten, their names, and the emotions associated with them. Throughout my life, I had trained myself to control my emotions. Writing this book, I learned to set them free. It also became a mechanism for liberating the images buried in the depths of my memory.

My aim for the book was not merely to describe historical events in which I participated, but to make it engaging. I wanted to depict the intricate tapestry of history and the thread we wove into it – to explore why we made certain decisions, what concerned us, what obstacles we faced, and what elements both facilitated our journey and served as our inspiration. For the first time, I wanted to reveal the behind-the-scenes details of the most dramatic chapters of our recent history.

At first, I thought of writing about everything that transpired during those captivating years, as well as naming everyone we traversed the arduous journey with, both in Karabakh and Armenia. But the multitude of facts disrupted the flow of the book, making it heavy, academic, and hard to read. As a result, I decided to focus strictly on the most significant events that I personally participated in.

I am grateful to all my colleagues, associates, and friends. I apologize to all those whose names are not mentioned in this book.

PART I
PEACEFUL LIFE

CHAPTER 1
CHILDHOOD

I was born and raised in Stepanakert – a small town at the center of Nagorno-Karabakh, or Artsakh, as our people call it. I remember a cozy, green, and pristine town tucked away in the mountains when I think of my childhood.

They say that a person forgets much of what happened to him within two years, except for the very best and very worst events. The only childhood tragedy that I remember is the death of our dog Julbars, who was hit by a car. All other childhood memories are enveloped in a fairytale-like warmth, a collection of many bright and happy images.

I remember very well the first time I swam on my own. I was about six years old. My brother and I were at a small lake not too far away from home. I waded in the water a little and then, accidentally, went in too deep, where my feet couldn't reach the bottom. I suddenly felt the water raise me up and hold me as I made hand movements to stay afloat – doggy paddle, of course – but I swam! During the same summer, I learned how to ride a bicycle. It came easy to me, naturally: with a single try, I was off, racing along the dusty road with the other boys. This ability to keep my balance and my passion for speed have stayed with me throughout my life.

I still remember our first family road trip to the Black Sea in our Moskvitch² car in great detail. We camped overnight in tents right on the beach. The sea, of course, left the strongest impression. Unlike our mountain creeks, it was so warm that our parents couldn't lure us out of the water. It was there that I learned how to snorkel pretty well, too.

Children spent most of their time in the streets back then. In the summer, we woke up early, raced to the river, and spent entire days there swimming, fishing, and playing. No one remembers most of our games nowadays; they are long forgotten. I loved to hike and often took a tent to the mountains with my brother or friends. I explored our famous canyon in Shushi far and wide. I knew all the trails and secluded places, climbed in all the caves, and could easily spend the night in the mountains, without a tent even.

In the winter, we entertained ourselves primarily with ice skating and skiing. Oh, how we loved when it snowed! Of course, no one had mountain skis back then, so we would take wide soldier's skis, install homemade heel holders, climb to the highest hill and zoom down the slope.

It snowed a lot, and the snow stayed. In those days, they didn't spray salt to melt the ice, so all the streets would practically turn into ice rinks. City buses had to use tire chains to keep from skidding on the ice. As the buses sputtered slowly up the hills to the upper part of town, we, on our ice skates, would cling to their backs to hitch a ride, then rush back down once they had reached the top. Our ice skates, snegourkey³ as we called them, were very different from those of today: nothing more than two steel blades tied to the soles of our snow boots with shoelaces.

Our family lived in a stone house that my grandfather built back in his day. I remember how we would apply a coat of red lead paint to the roof every summer to keep it from rusting. The house was rebuilt several times: initially, there was only one room, but over time two more rooms as well as a veranda and a basement were added. I can still clearly see the old photographs of my grandfather, grandmother, and great-grandfather hanging on the walls. To me, as a child, the house seemed enormous. Many years later, I was surprised to see how small it was in reality. The house survived the war, but it was demolished later; I discovered a construction site there not long ago. The orchard that my grandfather started had disappeared too.

That orchard was my father's pride and joy. A prominent agronomist, he loved his profession. Three immense mulberry trees hugged our house, and we, as children, climbed them all the time and ate their sweet, ripe mulberries. The grownups made mulberry molasses. And vodka, of course. To this day, if I do have vodka, it tends to be mulberry vodka.

There were six of us living together: my parents, my grandmother, my brother Valera, me, and our sister Ivetta – my stepsister from my father's first marriage – who was a college student. After finishing her studies, she continued to work in Armenia, but later moved to Moscow where she got married.

Valera and I shared a room. Being only two years apart, we used to fight a lot as kids – over unimportant stuff, of course. As the younger brother, I was feisty and didn't want to give in on anything. And then, suddenly, Valera grew up and became big and strong; he matured, and at that point, our relationship had transformed. The fights stopped, and a friendship that would span our entire lives began.

We also had family secrets. One of them – my father's story – I found out only as an adult.

My grandfather lived in Baku. When the Turks entered Baku in 1918, and the Armenian pogroms began, my eight-year-old father was separated from his parents. In a crowd of escapees, he ended up on a ferry across the Caspian Sea to Central Asia. Despite the chaos of a revolution, civil war, absence of government, and civil unrest everywhere, my grandparents and their daughters survived and finally reached Karabakh. My father, wandering around for a long time as a homeless child, somehow ended up in Tashkent. He got lucky – he and many other homeless children were taken in by a wealthy Armenian. The children worked for him, and in exchange, he fed them, even sent them to school, effectively saving them.

My grandmother didn't lose hope of finding her child all those years. Order was gradually restored in the country, and the regular mail service began working again. My grandmother's brother, who had gained an influential position in the local police force – he headed its anti-banditry division – was able to find my father, who had been lost six years earlier, and return him to Stepanakert. My father was already 14 years old at that time. My grandmother was ashamed that she had lost her child and forbade my father to talk about it. And we didn't know. We did, however, notice things here and there. For instance, my father's close friend from Tashkent visited us every year. "Who is this friend of yours? Why do you have a friend in Tashkent?" we asked, but our father never answered. Later, we found out that they worked together for that rich Armenian in Tashkent.

Another secret was about my grandfather.

I never met him; he died before I was born. Once, I came across a man in our ancestral village who said he knew my grandfather – "Reverend Sarkis" – very well. I asked him why he was calling my grandfather "Reverend." "Well, of course," he said, "your grandfather was the last priest in our region!" As it turned out, when my grandfather – a literate man – came back to Karabakh after fleeing the Baku pogroms, he was offered the opportunity to become a priest. Being literate was not common then. My grandfather agreed and served until the late 1920s, before the last church was shut down. Even though my father grew up a devoted communist, his application to join the Communist Party was denied for a long time based on his family history. My father took it to heart, and even after many years, he didn't feel comfortable talking about it with us.

My paternal grandmother had a stern demeanor – I never saw her smile. A priest's widow, she didn't believe in God. My brother and I sometimes teased her, "Grandma, they told us at school that God exists!" She would wave her hands at us and ask us not to talk nonsense. She never punished us, but we always listened to her, most likely sensing her inner strength and toughness. Our grandmother had three children: her eldest son – my father – and two daughters. The husband of one of her daughters died in World War II, and she lived with her son in Baku. My grandmother's younger daughter lived with her family in Stepanakert, not too far away from us. The younger daughter died early and unexpectedly while I was away serving in the army. Precisely a year after her daughter's death, my grandmother made a suicide attempt by taking too many sleeping pills. When she came to at the hospital, she explained, "I shouldn't have lived longer than my daughter."

In our family, the adults never fought and never raised their voices. My mom lived peacefully with her mother-in-law. Perhaps they sorted things out between them when the children couldn't see them? I don't think so; we lived in a happy home. My mom kept our household together. Strong-willed, strict to a degree, and practical, she defined our household order, kept track of our family expenses, and took care of our upbringing. She was responsible for everything that had to do with our education. I remember that my older brother had difficulty waking up early in the morning. I would be up before the alarm clock, but Valera had to be dragged out of his bed. Mother would wake him up, and he would mumble, half asleep, "Mom, please, one more minute… one more second…" And here she might raise her voice a bit.

The primary source of conflict between my mother and me was the music classes. Her distant nephew played the violin, and my mother's dream was that I would learn to play a musical instrument. When I was in the first grade, she sent me to music school, but I was embarrassed to carry the violin and hated it with a passion. When I walked with it outside, my ears burnt and I wanted the ground to swallow me up. I suffered for the first two years but found a solution during the third year. I would leave the house to go to music school, but instead, I hid the violin in the boxwood bushes nearby and played soccer with my friends. After the game, I would retrieve the violin and return home as if nothing had happened. I skipped music school like this for two months before my music teacher called my parents. My secret was out, and I got into very serious trouble. My mom wanted me to go back to music school, but I refused. Emphatically. By that time, I had already learned to resist. Finally, mom yielded but went after my brother. She made Valera take piano classes. He quit. Then she talked him into taking up the clarinet – same outcome. Mom persisted, but we defied her, and none of us became musicians.

Nonetheless, the head of our household was our father. He would come home late from work and frequently went on business trips. My father was passionate about agriculture and was responsible for the agriculture of our entire region. The successful development of viticulture in Karabakh was mainly due to his efforts. Moreover, he served as the deputy chairman of the regional executive committee for many years, even managing to carry out scientific work in the midst of his hectic schedule. After getting his Ph.D., he stayed in our town. This was quite unusual at the time – after receiving an academic degree, people would typically move to the capital cities: either Baku or Yerevan. But my father was convinced that he was needed here, in Nagorno-Karabakh. In these mountains, he, an agronomist, created the orchard-town and built the communist system, the ideals of which he sincerely believed in all his life.

Due to his busy work schedule, my father couldn't spend a lot of time with me, but he did his best to teach me what, in his opinion, every man must be able to do. I remember how he taught me to drive a car. We had an old Moskvitch sedan – I believe it was the 403 model with round edges. I was barely 13 back then and rather short. My dad sat me behind the wheel and asked me, "Can you reach the pedals?" – "I can" – "Can you see the road?" – "I can" – "Then, drive." And I drove.

He also taught me how to fire a gun – a 16-gauge single-barrel shotgun. We began by shooting at homemade targets we drew on plywood or cardboard, then we went hunting in the mountains. I was so proud of myself when I shot my first chukar partridge. Soon enough, my father allowed me to use the gun alone and then gave it to me for good. No kid in my neighborhood had their own gun yet. So we all would go hunting together in the mountains with that single gun.

I went to a Russian school, and I did well. Whether I liked the subject or not, I couldn't imagine entering the classroom unprepared. I couldn't imagine a bigger embarrassment than to stand by the chalkboard not knowing what to say. In general, I was quick and disciplined: as soon as I came home, I did all my homework, and then I was free. Math and physics were easy; I liked geography and literature. Languages, including Russian, were much more challenging for me. My essays were good, but I made too many spelling mistakes. The only two subjects that I really wasn't attracted to were the Armenian and English language classes. Ironically, fate would make me learn them as an adult. When I became Armenia's prime minister, I truly regretted that I skipped Armenian classes in school! I would never have guessed that I would need them so much: our Karabakh dialect is very different and hard to understand in Armenia.

The courtyard was essentially the center of our universe. The private home we lived in was next to an apartment complex, and all the neighbors – adults, children, and the elderly – gathered in its spacious courtyard every evening. They all knew each other well and spent their spare time together like a large extended family. There was a gazebo in the courtyard's center, where adults battled over chess and backgammon, poking fun at each other while we ran around. Once in a while, one of the players would say something particularly witty, and the gazebo would explode in loud laughter that bounced off the buildings and reached every far corner of the courtyard. And since everyone made fun of everyone else, the light-hearted laughter never stopped. In short, the atmosphere in the courtyard was amicable and cheerful.

Our courtyard was seen as upscale. The chief of police, the head of the People's Oversight Committee, and several officials of the region's Communist Party Committee lived in the big apartment building. In general, our neighborhood was cultured – people read books, and played sports. Kids played soccer, basketball, and – what was particularly popular at the time – handball at the school's nearby sports field. Naturally, we would argue, quarrel, and fight during the game on rare occasions, but it didn't ruin our friendship. Sometimes, we played soccer with kids from rougher neighborhoods down the street. Some games were friendly, some not so much. However, there were no serious fights; we mostly waved our fists in the air from the abundance of energy and excitement.

As with everyone in my generation, my childhood was carefree and happy. I might be biased, but I am convinced that there was something special about Karabakh. All around – in Azerbaijan, in Armenia, and in the entire Caucasus – corruption flourished, and crime lords had authority. But Karabakh remained an oasis of law and order. The word "bribery" was considered the most terrible insult, and people sincerely believed that they were building a communist society. Apparently, the ideals of equality and fraternity for all were in line with the traditional values of many generations of Karabakh people, and the dream of an ideal society took root in our land. Residents of Nagorno-Karabakh – upstanding Soviet citizens – sincerely believed in their bright future.

And that's how we lived – calmly and simply, thinking that nothing could disturb our quiet and isolated land, generations succeeding generations.

CHAPTER 2
MOSCOW STUDENT

In my last year of high school, I knew exactly what my next step would be: I would go to Moscow and apply to a technical university. I didn't look beyond that – the rest of my life seemed like a clean page that any story could be written on. I set my mind on a technical university because I liked science far greater than the humanities. I chose Moscow because the only university in Stepanakert was the Pedagogical Institute, and I never considered it an option. When Stepanakert high school graduates wanted to get a good college education, they would go to Yerevan or Moscow. It was impossible to study in a foreign country: borders were closed. In the Soviet Union, Moscow provided the best education, which meant that my path led to Moscow.

I aced my high school final exams, packed my suitcase, and departed for Moscow. My sister greeted me there – she lived in Reutov with her husband. I stayed with them while I took the college entrance exams. When I went to the Moscow Power Engineering Institute to submit my application the next day, I noticed that all the light poles nearby were full of tutoring ads. As it turned out, Moscow college applicants were far better prepared than us back home – we didn't even know what a tutor was. We thought that simply doing well in school would get you into college. I still had some time before the entrance exams, and I had some catching up to do. I found a tutor, scheduled classes, and dove into it. I remember my first two weeks in Moscow as a nightmare of round-the-clock studying.

Contrary to my fears, I did pretty well on the exams and was admitted to the university's Department of Power Engineering. I called my father. Mobile phones didn't exist yet, so I had to go to the post office, place an order, indicate the call duration, and sit and wait for the connection to make the long-distance phone call. My father was happy that I got accepted. Despite his usual emotional restraint, I could sense that he was proud that his son would go to college in the capital.

Now I had time to take a breath and look around. When I was in the seventh or eighth grade, I had visited Moscow, but it was a really short trip, and I didn't remember much of it. This time, however, for a young fellow from a small mountain town, Moscow's scale and atmosphere, its vast palatial underground metro, and its entirely different crowd were awe-inspiring. I didn't feel lost; instead, I was happy and proud. I spent the summer days walking around, absorbing the spirit of the capital.

My classes started in the fall. They turned out to be easier than I expected but not too exciting either. Perhaps the reason was that a fascinating and well-educated person, a walking encyclopedia – Kim Grigorian, my brother-in-law – came into my life. I had never met a man of such erudition before, and I haven't, perhaps, ever since then. Kim was also from Stepanakert. He had graduated from Moscow's Textile Institute and headed аn engineering design bureau at some large factory. I stayed at a dorm in Lefortovo but spent all my weekends at my sister and Kim's tiny apartment in Reutov. My informal education began there.

We spent evenings in the kitchen. Kim talked about unusual things. I grew up in a family where the fairness and effectiveness of the Soviet system were never questioned. As an ordinary Soviet boy, the son of a communist, I believed that I lived in the best country in the world. But now, day after day, evening after evening, Kim showed me the reality. I learned about Stalin's repressions and the millions of people who died of starvation during the collectivization. I learned about Red commanders arrested right before World War II and Stalin's secret pact with Hitler to divide Europe.

Kim wasn't an active dissident; he was just a clear thinker who relentlessly criticized the system. Few in the Soviet Union back then understood the horrific realities of Stalin's regime or how stagnant Brezhnev's rule was. Kim found a grateful listener in me and unleashed all these truths upon me. Toward the middle of the night, tired of our long discussions, we listened to jammed Radio Liberty programs or to jazz.

Kim introduced me to a range of literature on politics, philosophy, and theology. These were not samizdat publications, yet their content had a profound impact on reshaping my mindset.

We began with Baruch Spinoza's Theologico-Political Treatise. I had never read anything like it before. It was a very tough but insanely exciting read. The world opened up to me in a different way. I came to believe that only through a social contract, accepted voluntarily and based on reason, could an individual's passions and flaws be reined in. These ideas had little in common with Soviet realities, but I didn't try to tie them together at the time – I was simply absorbing them. Although it is possible that, decades later, when I became president of post-Soviet Armenia, this 17th-century book that I read at the age of 17 subliminally impacted many of my decisions.

Once, Kim gave me a copy of the Bible. It was a small, pocket-sized book with a soft cover that contained 1,000 pages – a miracle by itself. I read it quickly, not understanding why I needed it. I did not become a believer, of course. Still, it shook the ideological framework instilled in every one of us by the Soviet system. The Bible seemed more humanistic than "The Moral Code of the Builder of Communism," posted as visual propaganda in every school's hallways.

Although my conversations with Kim seriously shook me, they didn't turn me into a philosopher or a dissident. They had a cooling effect on my studies, however. Technical sciences didn't offer answers to philosophical questions, and these issues consumed me more and more. I had a feeling that I hadn't chosen the right college, but I continued to attend classes and completed the first semester quite well. At the same time, my social life as a student was thriving. I made friends, and together we walked around Moscow and went to the movies and cafes. There were many options for rest and recreation in the city that distracted us from our studies. The Metelitsa café on Kalinin boulevard (today's Noviy Arbat) was particularly trendy among students for some reason, and going there was considered very chic. On Saturdays, we went to the dance club in our dorm. One of these visits to the dance club ended up being a turning point in my student life.

At the end of May, right before the second semester finals, a new and somewhat arrogant guy showed up at the dance club. He behaved defiantly, believing that he could do anything he wanted and was clearly looking for a fight. I lashed out. Friends tried to stop me by telling me his dad was someone important, and it wasn't worth it. I didn't budge, and a fight broke out. I struck him hard. I didn't hurt him too much, didn't break a bone, but he ended up with a big shiner. I didn't pay too much attention to this: stuff happens – you get all worked up, then you calm down, make peace, and even become friends.

Two days later, I was summoned to the dean's office. They made me write a statement and threatened to expel me. I tried to explain that he had been looking for a fight. It turned out that this guy was related to someone in the institute's leadership. As a result, the dance floor incident got blown out of proportion. They didn't expel me right away, perhaps because the guy's guilt was too obvious: he was extremely drunk and instigated the fight. However, the issue dragged on; I found myself visiting the dean's office over and over, my relationship with the department deteriorated significantly, and my already waning interest in my studies dimmed completely. There was no way I could tell my parents about this incident, and for some reason, I didn't share it with my sister or Kim either.

In the end, I told the dean that I would transfer to another college and asked for a chance to leave on my own volition. He agreed.

It was summer again, another June. One year prior, I had come to Moscow, taken college entrance exams, got accepted, and called my father to tell him that I got in. My father was so proud of his son… Now, I was holding expulsion papers in my hand. The fact itself didn't bother me too much, but I was unbearably ashamed to tell my father, and I couldn't bring myself to talk to him for a long time. I knew that this news would become a real tragedy for him.

But I couldn't delay any longer, and I went to the post office. I gave our home number to the phone operator and sat down to wait for the connection. The time couldn't have crawled any slower. Minutes felt like hours. And finally, far away in the receiver, I heard my father's happy voice through static and crackling – his son was calling!

"Dad, I quit the institute."

My father was overwhelmed with the unexpected news.

"Why? What happened?"

I struggled to find an answer. I couldn't tell him about the conflict, and he wouldn't believe I had flunked my classes – I was always a straight-A student, after all.

"It just didn't work out. I don't want to study anymore. I'll join the army."

My father went silent. He didn't know what to say.

"I'll go to Kharkov."

My mother's brothers lived in Kharkov. I just couldn't go home – I didn't know how to look my father in the eye.

I hung out in Kharkov for a month and then went back to Stepanakert. I could see that my father was upset, but he didn't ask me anything. I was very much avoiding the conversation about my interrupted studies too.

I got a job as a machine operator-assembler at the electrotechnical plant. I worked five days a week, and on weekends, I would head to the mountains with friends, often bringing a gun. Fall, always incredibly picturesque in Karabakh, painted the hills with a range of bright colors. Sometimes, I didn't even feel like hunting, not wanting to interrupt the peace and quiet. Instead, I simply walked the mountain trails. My memories of being a college student in Moscow got pushed further and further back and gradually faded.

CHAPTER 3
THE ARMY

I didn't make any plans for the future; I waited to be called in for military service. All my friends got drafted on November 9, and I wanted to go with them, hoping that we would serve together. But the draft board seemed to have forgotten about me – my records had probably gotten stuck somewhere since I had gone out of town to attend college. So I had to ask for my father's help. He called the military commissar, whom he knew very well, and told him that I wanted to serve immediately. The military commissar was startled. He said, "You are the first to call asking to expedite military service. People usually ask me to help dodge the draft or delay it!" He fulfilled my father's request, and I was drafted right after the November holidays.

I ended up in the railway troops, whose existence I didn't even suspect before. I thought we would crisscross the country by rail performing military tasks. But as it turned out, we were to build those railways for others to travel on. The only thing that differentiated the construction battalions was that we weren't paid to do it. With this, any poetics of performing military service disappeared immediately.

First, I was sent to a boot camp in Cherepovets. The only memorable part of that town for me was the chimneys of its metallurgical plant. All the way to the horizon – chimneys, chimneys, and more chimneys, each spewing smoke of a different color ranging from black to orange. The following day it snowed, and the ground was covered with varying shades of the same smoke. The training center gathered groups from various republics, different regions of the country; there were about 10 of us from Karabakh, and none of my friends were among them.

Boot camp is a special place. A whole lot of guys from the same draft season end up in an unusual setting, where they must understand and get a sense of what military service is going to be like. In part, that understanding comes through adjusting and forming an internal hierarchy. For instance: who sleeps on the top bunk and who sleeps on the bottom, or who is responsible for cleaning the bathrooms. I didn't want to clean bathrooms at all.

It was here that I finally understood the essence of the "natural law" in Spinoza's Political Treatise. Fists, and the perpetual willingness to use them, became the only means of self-assertion. I was in good shape. My years of freestyle wrestling came in very handy, and my courage and will were over the top. Boldness and aggression, which I never thought I had, suddenly surfaced in me. Very soon, I started to get respect. A guy who grew up in a cultured family from an upscale part of a quiet town unexpectedly ended up in a setting where he had to fight for a place in the sun – brutally and without mercy. I faced the kind of reality I was shielded from during my childhood and adolescence. This played a critical role in my self-formation. I acquired the skills necessary to function in unfriendly and even highly aggressive environments. Without these skills, I probably couldn't have faced the ordeals awaiting me in the future.

From boot camp, I was sent to Pushkin, near Leningrad, and later to Vologda. It was the same story: adjusting and self-assertion, but it was much easier to do this time.

This type of service could hardly be called military service. I saw the shooting range only once, and I shot nine rounds there. I didn't see any military hardware, only tractors and dump trucks. For the next two months, I lived a free life in Leningrad. We repaired trailers in the workshops of the Defense Ministry for a month. We lived there, too, and worked hard, but we were free at night. I drove all over Leningrad dressed in a tracksuit. We didn't have any bosses, only a guard – a retired old man. Then I worked at an army farm near Viborg for a month. Together with seven other soldiers, I harvested potatoes and vegetables for our military base. We lived in the local cultural center under my supervision – no marching drills, no army service regulations. Here, too, just like in Pushkin, we worked hard during the day, but at night, we went to the local dance hall, where we were very popular with local girls.

I served my final year in Mongolia – in Darkhan and Erdenet. It was very different from serving in stationary military units. Our command was ordered to form a special battalion to build a railway from Darkhan to Erdenet in order to reach Mongolia's molybdenum mines. Every military base in the railway troops sent several servicemen, according to quotas, to form this new battalion.

To get rid of the troublemakers, commanding officers gave them favorable reviews and assigned them to the newly-formed battalion. I was serving in Vologda at the time and volunteered for the battalion to join my friend, who was number one on the list to be sent away. Kolya, from Bryansk, was our commanding officer's biggest headache. He was awfully rowdy, a regular in the stockade, yet brilliant and well-read. He annoyed the entire command with his very well-written complaint letters to various agencies. He wrote them all the time, triggering multiple inspections to check on the complaints. Our commanding officer was furious, of course.

I remember that during the morning flag assembly, enraged by another inspection, he screamed at the top of his lungs, "We can't find someone to write even a couple of lines for our unit's newspaper, yet this dick composed a whole letter and sent it to none other than the minister of defense himself!" I think our commanding officer was the happiest man in the world to hear that a critical railroad was to be built in Mongolia.

Thus, the new battalion boarded a train and spent the next 10 days getting to its destination. Imagine a crowd of the rowdiest heavy-drinking rebels – some new recruits, some about to be discharged – on a train together for 10 days. No one knew what they were capable of. The adjustment, this time on the road, began right away. We saw our platoon commander only twice – once at the place we boarded and once at the destination, but this time with a big shiner. I don't know how he got it, but I could tell that he had been drinking non-stop. As it turned out, the officers were selected using the same criteria: they were the ones to be gotten rid of. Even though the commanding officer and the political officer were capable professionals, it took a lot of effort to control this bedlam.

We reached our deployment location at night. There was nothing but a bare steppe, but we had to settle there. We put up tents. We had to do everything ourselves: organize our work, get equipment, and build shelters. There were no settlements for many miles around. You could drive for three hours and not see anything except for a couple of yurts and a herd of cattle.

In these harsh and very unusual living and working conditions, soldiers built very different relationships from those on regular stationary military bases. Sticks and carrots didn't work. The stockade was far away in Ulan Bator. There was nowhere to go after dismissal – only wild nature all around us. Our leisure time was built around the high bar, weights, parallel bars, and boxing gloves. There was a pool table set up for the officers in the field, but it remained there only until a sandstorm lifted it 50 meters high and slammed it onto the ground, smashing it to pieces.

Matters were not settled by the army service regulations. Although we were privates, three of us – Gena from Riga, Kolya from Bryansk, and I – ended up at the top of the hierarchy. We were on good terms with the officers, and our detachment was completing tasks ahead of schedule. But enforcing service regulations – the way they did in Moscow or Germany, where soldiers lived in good barracks, had showers, followed precise daily schedules, and were well fed – was impossible.

We didn't have barracks at all – we lived in tents. As the railroad construction progressed, our base moved three times to be closer to the work site. Each time, we had to settle in from scratch. The nature was breathtaking: very unique landscapes, unusual to my eye. Gently sloping mountains that stretched across the steppe underscored the vastness of pristine wilderness. The climate was markedly harsh: -35° centigrade in the winter and 40° during the summer. In May, it was -3° at night and 27° during the day. Yet, we stayed in tents, 30 soldiers in each tent. For heat, we used woodburning stoves with long chimneys. It was cold on the bottom of the bunk bed and scorching hot on the top, where all the earlier recruits slept. With no refrigerators in the steppe, meat would go bad before it could reach us during the summer. So that we wouldn't be eating canned meat all summer, our commanding officer let us put together a fishing brigade, which I joined thanks to my hunting skills. We caught burbots at night in the Orkhon and Selenga rivers for the entire military base and slept during the day. Sometimes we shot antelopes by chasing them down in GAZ-66 trucks, although it wasn't encouraged. This is how the summer went by.

Serving in the army was а priceless character-building life experience for me.

After being discharged, my relationships with my army friends didn't last for too long. We went our separate ways, and long-distance communications back then – without mobile telephone service and social media – required much effort.

CHAPTER 4
SUCCESSION OF CHANGES

Limitchik⁴

I was discharged from the army at the end of December, right before New Year's Eve, and made it home for the holidays. By then, all of my friends, classmates, acquaintances, and neighbors of the same age had already returned to Stepanakert, having concluded their military service. The phone rang almost every day. "Oh, you're already here? We have to meet!" I wanted to see everybody, and I met up with someone every day. During one of these get-togethers, I got drunk for the first time. Luckily, I realized it when I was already home.

A month and a half flew by in the blink of an eye.

As I began getting back into civilian life, I pondered what to do next. First, I tried settling down in Moscow. I flew to the capital and moved in with my sister in Reutov. I went to the Moscow Power Engineering Institute. I realized that nothing had changed there, and there was no way I could get re-admitted. So I gave up and began looking for a job. Those like me, who were dismissively called "limitchiks," were drawn in by the prospect of a Moscow residence status. We were actively encouraged to join construction projects, Moscow's Metrostroy transport authority, or work in the factories – jobs that weren't too popular with Muscovites. The capital grew rapidly, and working hands were desperately needed. Newspapers were full of laborer job ads.

Before long, I got a job as a laborer at the Reinforced Concrete Plant (RCP) #11, not too far away from the Hammer and Sickle metro station. I had no idea what RCP was – I chose it by chance. I wanted to get a construction job, and my sister researched all the ads and found a company that, by Moscow standards, was not too far away from home. Besides, they provided decent housing in a newly constructed high-rise apartment complex, which became the determining factor.

This is how I became a concrete worker. When people ask me about this period, I joke that it was a great experience interacting with Moscow's working class and living in a worker dormitory. It required considerable self-control to resist getting drunk on Sundays, like everyone else. Otherwise, my neighbors were good people.

We were manufacturing concrete columns used in the construction of multi-story residential buildings. It was a labor-intensive process: first, we installed the rebar frame in the mold of the future column, put it on a concrete vibrator, and poured in the concrete. Then, the crane operator placed the contraption in the drying chamber, where it stayed overnight. The following morning, the molds were removed. Finally, the ready column was cured for a couple of days and transported to the construction site.

It was strenuous physical labor, but I was fit, and I managed well. Besides, it paid well – 200 rubles net was considered a decent salary. Moreover, I never had a habit of putting money away, so I made a good living as a single guy.

Our dorm in Novogireyevo was only one commuter train stop away from Reutov, where my sister and her husband lived, so my interaction with Kim continued. I didn't participate in sports that year – my work provided more than enough exercise. In a worker dorm in the 70s, there was nowhere to work out anyway.

So, another year passed in a blur, without any significant developments. I mostly worked and educated myself, reading a lot. But I had always read a lot, even as a child, except for my time in the army.

The library in Mongolia was small, and I read everything remotely interesting there. Besides, life in the army was not particularly conducive to reading, just like jail. Later, during the Karabakh conflict, one of our activists – Murad Petrosian, who had spent a decade in jail – cited Lenin all the time. Once, I asked him, "Look, with your life story, why are you citing classicists of Marxism?" He said that he learned Lenin by heart simply because there was nothing else to read at the jail's library.

I became more and more fascinated with philosophy. I read the original authors, and if I read fiction, it was by authors like Anatole France, who artfully wove philosophy into the narrative fabric. I discussed what I read with Kim in detail. I marvel at myself now – how did I read all that? How could I get through boring authors like Francis Bacon? But back then, I read them unremittingly, excitedly, and enthusiastically. I read works by every author I could find, everything that had been published.

I was quite taken with La Mettrie. Perhaps he isn't all that profound a thinker, but he does have an engaging writing style. And, of course, I read the classics: Rousseau, Montaigne, Hegel, Kant, and Nietzsche in samizdat. I liked Hegel's earliest work, Life of Jesus, which is easy to read. Everything else by him is a nightmare! Every sentence takes up nearly half a page and requires multiple readings to grasp its meaning, which is often quite simple. I made it through Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. Still, I got stuck in the very beginning of his Elements of the Philosophy of Right, perhaps, because of his writing style. German philosophers left an impression on me with their burdensome prose, as if they intentionally complicated the language to emphasize the scientific nature of their views. Perhaps my torments while reading Hegel are the reason behind my overly concise speaking style.

I'm kidding, of course.

Much of what I read was soon forgotten. I read philosophy for fun; I didn't read it to study it. But I am sure it wasn't a waste of time: it gave my brain a good workout, and left a lasting impact on my personality. I felt a strong need to develop intellectually, to learn something new. Perhaps I subconsciously satiated my thirst for knowledge with intensive self-education while I wasn't attending college.

I didn't manage to make many friends in Moscow. I wasn't friends with anyone at work, and in reality, I couldn't be friends with them. They were good guys, but almost all of them loved to drink. They ran to the nearest bar or liquor store to buy a bottle as soon as they got their paychecks. That lifestyle was foreign to my habits and my understanding of life. However, I became friends with a neighbor from the apartment complex next to mine. His name was David Voronov. He was intelligent and cultured – a lot older than me – and at that time, he was already divorced. He was passionate about dogs and equally passionate about postage stamps. David constantly bought, sold, and traded stamps – "speculated" as they said back then. It was considered semi-legal, and one could end up in jail for speculating. He tried recruiting me, and I even learned a little about stamps, but it didn't go beyond curiosity. I wasn't attracted to buying and selling.

I spent my free time with David and another guy, Valera. What was there to do for fun? Not much – trips to cafés or dance clubs on weekends. We would get out of town to pick mushrooms, swim in the lake, or simply stroll through the woods in the summer – sometimes with friends, sometimes with family, with Kim. Since none of us had cars, we relied on the commuter train. While doing this, I discovered unbelievably beautiful places near Moscow, especially in the direction of Gorky. Friends visited from Stepanakert occasionally. Once, an army friend from Riga came to see me, and I visited him too. These were the only events outside of the regular routine during the year.

After one year, I concluded that it was time for me to go home to Stepanakert. I didn't want to spend any more time in a job that I didn't like, live in a setting that didn't appeal to me, or keep filling my life with a monotonous and mind-numbing routine that didn't offer any prospects. They tried to keep me at the plant, recognizing that I was very proficient at my job. And in general, I always took everything that I did seriously – be it my studies, work, or workouts. The plant manager called me to his office and tried to make me stay. "We can transition you to a welder's position. It's an easier job, and there are opportunities for growth there," he said. I replied, refusing, "Nah, I am not leaving because it's hard. It's simply not my thing."

Jolt

Of course, my parents were happy that I returned, but I knew that I wasn't meeting their expectations. They couldn't imagine that their kids would end up without a college degree. Higher education was something essential and mandatory for my parents. My mom had a hard time accepting that my brother and I didn't study music when we were kids. But it was inconceivable to her that her son wouldn't be graduating from college.

Nonetheless, I told my parents bluntly that I wasn't ready to continue my studies, and they left me alone. Although it upset my father, he didn't say a word. He had learned long ago that it was impossible to force me to do things.

And for the time being… I was finally home. After chaotic and neurotic Moscow, where the commute took up a big part of my life, everything in Stepanakert was familiar, native, calm, and – most importantly – nearby. Family, good old childhood friends. I got a job as an electrician at the Silk Factory, Karabakh's most prominent business enterprise. I lived as any man my age would: I actively worked out, which I always enjoyed, continued to read a lot, and spent time with friends. We were a good team: my childhood friend Yura, with whom I shared a desk since grade school, my brother's classmate Albert – an intellectual with a brilliant mind – and I. We enjoyed each other's company, and we were happy hanging out together. We spent almost every weekend outdoors. I hunted a lot, but with a different group of friends or my brother. I had always enjoyed hunting, and I knew our mountains well since early childhood.

I think it was the most tranquil and happiest period of my life. Happiness is when you live in peace with yourself instead of searching within to find purpose or the meaning of life. Just like when you don't think about your internal organs until they start causing you pain, you don't analyze the reason for your spiritual balance when you have it.

Three years went by quietly.

Thoughts of going back to college visited me periodically. Still, they didn't take root as they didn't go well with my eventful and pleasant life. I was always busy. We would either go hunting for a couple of days with friends or do some other activity, and I couldn't force myself to switch gears to do other things. "I have to go to college… I must. I will, but not now, later. Definitely…"

And then, one day, sometime in the spring, I got a summons from the military commissariat. I was to report for duty the next day for some kind of training. It alarmed me. I called a friend at the commissariat asking about it. He told me that we were to be shipped to Kazakhstan to either harvest or plant something or do some other work of similar nature. In other words – reclamation of tselina (a Soviet state development and resettlement campaign to turn underdeveloped, scarcely populated, highly-fertile lands – mostly located in the steppes of the Volga region, Northern Kazakhstan, and Southern Siberia – into a major agriculture producing region). "For how long?" I asked him. "For three to four months," he answered. Wow! I had planned to go to the Black Sea for the summer, definitely not Kazakhstan. I had absolutely no desire to reclaim tselina. Tselina? Really? The steppes again? I had already honorably served in the Mongolian steppes!

All my textbooks were ready at home, as I had always intended to start studying for the college entrance exams, but I couldn't find the time to do so. I had procrastinated, thinking that I had enough time ahead of me. But now…

In short, I didn't go to the commissariat. I quit my job within a day, gathered my belongings, and put all the necessary textbooks in a suitcase. I called my brother (he served in Georgia at the time, near Tskhaltubo). "Hi," I told him. "That's it, I decided to go to college! I am coming to stay with you to study for the exams." "I will not be here for almost a month," my brother replied. "You can stay here, no problem." I was in Georgia the next day. My brother's apartment was in a secluded and very picturesque location. I didn't know anybody there, not a single person. All I had was a suitcase full of books and a month to prepare for the entrance exams.

Oh, how I studied for those exams! And with such intensity and passion! It was simply unbelievable. I didn't know that I could mobilize to such a degree. In a couple of days, I had immersed myself in it completely, taking breaks only to eat and sleep. And even my dreams were mathematical. The setting was perfect for this kind of concentration: no one around, only the military base, the jail, and the tea plantation where the prisoners harvested tea under a convoy. I caught fish in the nearby river, rode my brother's small motorcycle to the local grocery store, and cooked for myself. The month passed. I knew that I was ready to take the entrance exams to any technical institute. All I had to do was to go there and get it.

I chose Yerevan Polytechnic University. I went to Yerevan straight from Georgia without making a stop in Stepanakert. I submitted my application to the Department of Electrical Engineering. I had to take two math tests: one written and one oral. In reality, two more exams were required – physics and a supervised essay – but applicants with a high school GPA of 4.5 and above (out of 5) were allowed to skip them. To be admitted, applicants had to get a combined score of 9 points (out of 10) on the two math exams.

First, I took the written test. I felt very confident: I finished it effortlessly and quickly and got out of the room. But, surprisingly, I only got a 4 (out of 5). Imagine my frustration! I had rushed and made a careless mistake, which I failed to catch before turning the test papers in. This meant that I had to get a perfect score on the oral math test. I answered all the questions and said to the proctor, "I need to get a 5 on this." "Why?" he asked. "I have a high GPA, and I was planning to take only the math tests. The next exam is physics, and I didn't study for it," I explained. Of course, I had studied for it, but not as well. "Ask me anything – I need a 5!" I insisted. The examiner wrote five math problems and said, "You solve these – you got your 5." It took me only about 20 minutes to solve the problems, one after another, quickly. The examiner glanced at the sheet and said, "Well done, 5!"

And I got in.

It was all thanks to that military commissariat summons. To this day, I remember the last name of our commissar – Kurochkin. And I am grateful to that Kurochkin for giving me a jolt. It sometimes happens in life when an unpleasant event shakes you up and makes you take decisive action. The commissariat summons sobered me up. It hit me that I had to change my life.

A Student Again

I didn't know Yerevan too well. It was strange, but despite being Armenian, I had only visited Yerevan twice before. Perhaps this was because I had few relatives there. My grandmother's brother – a very charming and incredibly modest retired colonel – lived in Yerevan. While attending college, I decided to visit him once. The old man didn't feel well and believed that he wouldn't last long. When I entered his room, he was lying in bed, sorting through the little boxes of his war medals. I was surprised and asked him, "What are these?" I began looking through the medals: Order of the Red Banner of Military Valor, Order of Lenin, one for Victory in Khalkhin Gol⁵ – a very rare medal – medals from the Russian Empire period, including an honor cross "To the Participant of the Military Parade in Odessa," the only parade in which the Russian Emperor took part. I don't remember all of the medals; there were many. In a separate box, there was a handgun, a small beautiful Walther with an inscription, "To Major Karapetian from the People's Commissar of Defense Klim Voroshilov." I didn't know that my grandfather had participated in all the wars – from WWI to WWII. It turned out that I didn't know anything about him. In the 1920s, he was the first communications signalman in Armenia. And I found this out incidentally, simply because I came to visit him that day.

I did well in college; I took it a lot more seriously than the first time around. The dean's office made me the class leader, given my good grades and my service in the armed forces. I provided for myself financially. As а straight-A student, I was getting a higher stipend, and in addition, I had taken a part-time job at our department lab. Later, I also got a second part-time job as a security guard at the wood carving museum. I ended up there thanks to my friend who already worked at the museum and got me in as his shift reliever.

The museum turned out to be a very interesting place, a bohemian club of sorts where the artistic elite got together over a cup of coffee. I met a great deal of fascinating and charming individuals there. Sometimes, we organized dinner parties at night, right there at the museum, which the director, Henrik Solakhian, knew nothing about. A few times, we made kabobs on the mangal exhibited at the museum. Once, we forgot to clean it before putting it back on display, and the director caught us after he accidentally rubbed against it and his clothes got smeared with soot. Of course, he made a scene, but he didn't fire us. After that, we bought a regular mangal, and the director gladly joined us for our evening cookouts.

Working at the museum was perfect for a student. It provided an income and human interaction and the right conditions to study. I needed the income badly: in December of my freshman year, my father passed away unexpectedly from a heart attack. He never complained about his heart, was in good physical shape, and rarely got sick. I loved and deeply respected my father. His good name helped me in my life for a long time afterward – people's attitude towards him was projected onto his sons. This meant a lot in tiny Karabakh, where everybody knew each other. I am glad that he saw me go to college again…

Return to Karabakh

I finished my third year in Electrical Engineering at the Yerevan Polytechnic Institute with straight A's and, to everyone's surprise, transferred to the distance learning program. I passed my fourth year finals ahead of schedule and went to Karabakh. The department head, the dean, and some of my professors begged me not to do it. They couldn't understand why a bright student – with great potential to stay at the department and pursue his doctoral degree – would drop everything and leave for Karabakh. They wanted to hear a compelling argument. But there was no specific reason, even though there was a combination of factors behind that deliberate and rational decision. By that time, I had already completed the basic course in fundamental sciences, and the next two years were meant to acquire a narrow specialization in electrical machines. There were no jobs for that in Karabakh. It meant that I would either have to stay and work at the Electrical Engineering Department or at some factory in Armenia. I didn't like either option, as I didn't plan to move to Armenia for good. Besides, I realized that I learn quickly and have a lot of spare time on my hands. My personal pace was faster than the one laid out in the academic curriculum. I figured that I could accomplish a lot more in those two years in addition to the academic program.

I continued my college education remotely: I self-studied in Karabakh, then traveled to Yerevan for a month. I took all my exams for the year – most of them ahead of schedule – and then returned home again. I graduated with honors, but not without a single B – in Thermal Engineering. I remember the Yerevan Polytechnic Institute of the 1970s as a top university with a solid teaching staff. To this day, the head of our department, who couldn't convince me to stay, believes that I left to organize the Karabakh movement. I wasn't able to convince him otherwise…

Moving back to Stepanakert very quickly led to another important event in my life: marriage.

I had attended the same preschool with my future spouse. After that, we went to the same grade school, where we were in the same group for four years. Then we split up for a while but ended up at the same school again, this time in parallel groups. I had always liked her, but there was no tender teenage connection between us – Bella hardly noticed me. I was overly quiet and didn't get involved in school activities. She, on the contrary, was very active and an exemplary straight-A student. After graduation, I lost sight of her, but fate brought us back together when I came home for my college break with a firm decision to enroll in distance learning. We met in town accidentally. I was driving my car and noticed her going up the street. I was happy to see her, so I stopped and offered her a ride home. We hadn't seen each other for a long time, and I didn't know anything about her life or what she had done after graduating from school. We talked for a while and decided to stay in touch, exchanging phone numbers.

We got married in the fall of 1980. I proposed, we got engaged, and then came the memorable wedding. At its very start, Victor, my already tipsy brother-in-law, opened a bottle of rosé champagne and spilled it all over the bride, from head to toe. Bella was upset, and I got pretty angry. The only way to save the wedding and Victor was to party all night.

We lived at my place – first with my mother and Valera's family. Then Valera, who worked at the Soviet Karabakh newspaper, received an apartment and they moved out. Our older son, Sedrak, was born in 1981. Our daughter, Gayane, and our son, Levon, were born at two-year intervals.

Bella turned out to have an exceptionally strong character. She never complained and went through the toughest of times silently. Sincere and affectionate, my wife always made an effort to help others. She knew how to build relationships and ensure a peaceful atmosphere at home.

I have always had a happy family life. Why? I never asked myself that question. I believe that there is no point in scrutinizing relationships or analyzing them. If you're comfortable, if you don't look for reasons to come home late, if you're ready to dedicate your Sundays to the family and don't consider it a great sacrifice, then continue living your life as you are, without overthinking what's good and bad about it. Take it as it is; otherwise, you will imagine problems that don't really exist.

Komsomol⁶

It was 1980. I got a job as an engineering technologist at the electrotechnical plant (during Soviet times, we had this type of a plant that produced lighting equipment). But I didn't get to work there for too long – less than six months. One day, I got a phone call from the director's assistant, who said, "You have been requested at the Komsomol city committee. The first secretary wishes to see Kocharyan urgently." "Me? He wants to see me? Why? How does he even know about me?" I asked. It turned out that the Komsomol city committee was looking for new cadres, and the plant recommended me.

I had nothing to do with Komsomol, really. Of course, I was a member of Komsomol, but so was everyone! I was never civically engaged. Moreover, I never liked Komsomol's leaders, as I considered them careerists. I always had a strained relationship with the leaders of the Komsomol organizations. I even had a conflict with one of them at the Yerevan Polytechnic Institute. Once, he and his entourage entered my dorm room without knocking. It was some sort of an inspection. I was sitting on my bed reading and, apparently, gave him an unfriendly look as I didn't appreciate the intrusion. The Komsomol leader noticed it and barked in a commanding tone: "You need to get up when your superiors enter the room!" I ignited instantly, "Listen, chief, didn't they teach you to knock first? It's not going to end well if I get up!" One of his men whispered something in his ear. He threatened to summon me in front of the committee to discuss my unbecoming behavior and left. Of course, he didn't do it; the guys told me that the discussion was deemed unnecessary. The Komsomol bosses behaved overly politely around me after the incident.

Interestingly, despite my bluntness and negativity toward the Komsomol bosses, they didn't express any resentment toward me. On the contrary, they always tried to get me involved in civic activity, saying, "You are a straight-A student. Students respect you and listen to you. You could be a good Komsomol leader!" True, I always excelled at my studies. I enjoyed math, analytical mechanics, and physics. I solved all the problems in the textbook with ease. Other students asked me for help, and I always helped them. Besides, I had a good company of friends at the dorm. We combined hard studying with active free time. We poked fun at each other and made our lives enjoyable. I could sense that my classmates respected me for my knowledge, actions, and character. But civic activity? Why do they always try to get me involved? I didn't want it at all! I never liked public visibility. Even as a child, I was shy, never took part in any school plays, and avoided loud gatherings. I would rather spend time hiking in the mountains or walking around in the woods with a rifle, alone or with very close friends.

In summary, I had never been attracted to Komsomol work, and yet, suddenly, I was being invited to the city committee. I had to go.

I went to the office of Komsomol's First Secretary Victor Kocharyan, and he offered me a job. He told me that they were looking for cadres, I was recommended, they saw a fit, and there was an urgent vacancy for a Komsomol secretary at one of the local enterprises. I declined categorically. "No way," I said. "I am an engineer by training, I've never done any Komsomol work, I have no idea what it is, and I don't want it – it's not for me!" He replied, "Well, think about it. It's a good career opportunity. Don't rush to say no. Think about it and tell me in a couple of days…"

Of course, I thought about the proposition. I understood that it was not only a new path for me, but also a good opportunity for career growth. My work was calm and boring; it wasn't straining or exciting. What does a technologist usually do? He spends several hours on the production floor, ensuring technological compliance. I tried to diversify my work, to think about production changes and improvements. I wanted to do a bit more than what was required of me.

Within a month of our conversation, Victor Kocharyan, with whom I shared a last name and who had offered me a job at the Komsomol city committee, secured a position at the KGB and eventually became the head of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic's Special Services. Later in life, we became family – he married my sister-in-law. But none of this had happened yet, as we had only just met for the first time. I didn't know him and couldn't imagine that destiny had brought us together for a long time.

Since I didn't show up, I received another phone call from the Komsomol city committee a few days later, asking, "So, what have you decided?" I grunted something along the lines that I hadn't decided anything, that I didn't know. But I thought to myself, "Darn, what if this is something that I really need?" I didn't believe in all that ideology by that time, but… I didn't have any skills for working with people. This was an excellent opportunity to acquire them and learn something new – something that I had never tried before and had avoided all my life. Suddenly, I saw a challenge for myself. It attracted me and wound me up.

The next day, I called the city committee and said, "You know, let's try it," and ended up in a Komsomol job. All my friends were shocked. They knew me very well, and they couldn't imagine that I would agree to it. I remember that it bothered me. I had always resented Komsomol bosses, and yet, had I suddenly decided to become one myself? But it was a conscientious decision, free of any ideological considerations. That decision turned out to be a pivotal point in my life.

I was appointed as the head of the most stagnant and confusingly structured Komsomol organization in town. It was at an enterprise with a cryptic name – Consumer Services Complex (CSC). No one wanted the job, and the position had gone vacant for two years. It was considered a failure. All of my predecessors were censured and fired soon after their appointment. It was indeed a difficult job. The CSC consisted of many different ateliers, cafeterias, and laundromats scattered around town. A team spirit naturally comes about at any factory or plant, where workers come to work together at the same location. My Komsomol members worked at different locations, did not know each other, and never saw each other. It appeared that no Komsomol work had been done for a long time at the CSC.

I didn't expect this at all. I thought, "Damn it, what do I do with all of this? What does 'Komsomol work' even mean, and how do I do it?" I started from scratch: I simply got to know people. This was a great opportunity to build communications skills. I would go to a workplace, greet everyone, and introduce myself, "I'm the new head of the Komsomol organization, Robert Kocharyan. Where is so-and-so? Not at his workplace? Where can I find him?" As it turned out, it wasn't very hard. I simply had to smile more and be prepared to talk to everyone, not just those I liked. I quickly managed to put together a pretty dynamic team of Komsomol members.

As my first task, I decided to have everyone meet each other. So, I told my guys, "Why don't we get everyone together for a relaxing evening? They have never seen each other!" We soon found a meeting place – all the banquet halls in town belonged to our complex. Moreover, our people serviced and maintained all these venues, so we didn't have difficulty organizing the meeting, either. So, we all got together and spent an evening with each other – everyone loved it. And that's how it all started.

I soon discovered certain skills that I never knew I had. First as a child, then in school, later in the army, and finally in college, I intuitively sensed that people listened to me, that I could influence them, captivate, and unify them around me. But now, it became my main goal, and it came to me naturally, without any effort. After a while, the organization actually began to work! And it happened without any ideology, as I never made any pompous speeches.

My efforts brought good results, and in eight months or so, I was offered a promotion and became an instructor in the Organizational Department (Orgotdel) of the Komsomol City Party Committee (Gorkom). This was a different type of work, primarily administrative. I spent most of my time on the phone, talking to countless local committees. As a result, I got to know many new people and our town very well.

But changes kept coming: in about a year, I was promoted to second secretary of the Komsomol city committee (a chain of promotions took place: the second secretary became first secretary, and the previous secretary was promoted to the regional committee). I had significantly greater responsibilities in the new position. I was responsible for youth sports in the city, tourism, and military-patriotic education. Sports competitions, youth summer camps, Zarnitsa and Orlyonok children's war games – the list of events was impressive, and my schedule was full. In reality, Komsomol work is not about sitting around in an office and issuing endless resolutions at all.

I was busy working with real people from early in the morning until late at night. By then, I was starting to like it. Komsomol turned out to be a great training ground. It provided a truly dynamic work environment, genuinely developed leadership skills, valued initiative, and constantly made me search for new ideas. Of course, I needed energy to be able to implement my new ideas, but I always had an abundance of energy.

I also had more formal responsibilities: I regularly chaired plenary sessions and meetings of the Komsomol Bureau. As part of the necessary routine, we approached them responsibly but without enthusiasm. It was the 80s; no one in the USSR believed in a bright communist future, and the lines for butter, meat, and toilet paper were no inspiration for heroic deeds. At Soyuzpechat's state-owned newspaper stands, Communist Party publications like the Communist and the Agitator were sold with the popular Soviet Screen magazine as a mandatory side-purchase. At the Komsomol city committee, all party functionaries, with rare exceptions, viewed ideology in very practical terms – like you would treat the user manual for a washing machine. Nowhere in our town did people tell more Brezhnev jokes than in our office building. And the best impersonation of Leonid Brezhnev was done by the head of the Organizational Department of the City Communist Party Committee.

The communist ideology that served as the foundation and binding agent for the entire country was decomposing everywhere, while the aging leadership of the party was unable to offer anything new and appealing.

At the time, the position of the first secretary of our city's Communist Party Committee was occupied by Zaven Movsesian – a good and kind man who climbed the career ladder from factory worker to party leader. We all respected him very much. Once, after a plenary session, he invited me to his office. He said, "I see you work very well, with enthusiasm – you have a lot of energy. But you don't cite resolutions of the Central Committee, nor do you quote Brezhnev." I got a little tense – indeed, I avoided the phrase "as Leonid Ilyich said" and confessed, "I can't bring myself to say it." Movsesian sighed, stared at me, and very softly, in a father-like manner, said, "Do you think I like it? But you have to say it at least once… We are supposed to do it." This man worked honestly, trying to be as useful as he could be in his position.

I spent two years in the position of second secretary of the Komsomol, then joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and was promoted to the position of instructor of the party's city committee. From there, I was sent to the silk factory as secretary of its Communist Party Committee. The silk factory was the largest production facility in the region – as they said at the time, the "flagship of our industry." This position reminded me of my first Komsomol job – everyone who was sent there in recent years was "rewarded" with party censures at the end.

At the factory, I was met with a massive workforce – good but complex. They were highly qualified professionals who knew the value of their work. Some of my weavers were recipients of the Hero of Socialist Labor title and many other government orders and medals. One of them was a member of the Regional Committee of the Communist Party, and another was a deputy of the Supreme Council of the USSR. Our engineering staff was so strong that our specialists were invited to other facilities in Azerbaijan when local engineers had difficulty installing new machinery or tuning high-tech equipment. And here I came along – the new young party organizer, sent from the city committee. At first, people were cautious: "What is he going to do? Will he act like a big boss? Will he become one of us?"

I had a good advantage, though – I worked at the factory for two years as an electrician. I knew many of the employees, understood the specificity of their work and knew the technological cycle. You can't earn the loyalty of your employees without a thorough understanding of the production process, no matter which management position you hold. On the other hand, it is absolutely unacceptable to get too chummy with workers. I think this became the biggest problem for my predecessor.

A solid engineering education combined with production experience helped me become part of the team and establish a good collaborative relationship with the workers and engineering personnel.

In short, I liked my job.

I gained new knowledge and skills that would become very helpful in the future. I learned how to understand the collective psychology of people, especially of people from an unfamiliar social setting. I learned how to interact with them properly. In contrast to the Consumer Services Complex, where I started my Komsomol career, there was a strong sense of comradeship at the silk factory. Every morning, everyone entered through the same door; they all knew each other and cared strongly about reaching their collective production goals.

I don't believe in class theory, but experience has shown me that workers' solidarity does exist, despite all internal contradictions. I think it's what, in contemporary terminology, psychologists refer to as "corporate solidarity" – the sense of belonging to a collective body that gives each member additional strength. This strength revealed itself very soon in Karabakh when the Karabakh movement took shape and instantly gained robust momentum.

PART II
KARABAKH

CHAPTER 5
BEGINNING OF THE LIBERATION MOVEMENT

Collecting Signatures for Reunification with Armenia

In the spring of 1987, everything began with peaceful and legal actions: collecting signatures for an appeal to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CC CPSU), to Mikhail Gorbachev to transfer control over the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (Region) from Azerbaijan to Armenia. A similar process of collecting signatures and submitting an appeal to the Central Committee occurred during Khrushchev's time, during the thaw of 1966–1967, and was brutally suppressed by the authorities. But this time, the situation was radically different: it wasn't us who suddenly began to demand change – it was the changes that broke into our lives. They came rapidly, bearing slogans like "democracy," "perestroika," and "glasnost." All of a sudden, we could talk about everything that was wrong. For the first time in many decades, we hoped that we – ordinary people – could influence these processes.

It was a fascinating period, one full of hope. The 1^st Congress of People's Deputies of the USSR was in session, and people all over the country were glued to their TVs and radios following the live simulcast. Captivating, well-educated legislators spoke openly from the Congress podium about things that people preferred to whisper about in the privacy of their kitchens a year ago. They instantly became stars, got invited to television talk shows, and their interviews appeared in the press. Suddenly, television, newspapers, and magazines became extremely popular, attracting millions of viewers and readers. In the mornings, lines formed in front of Soyuzpechat newspaper kiosks, and most popular publications had sold out by noon.

It was like someone had suddenly opened all the windows in a stuffy room, causing everyone to get lightheaded from the excess of political oxygen. This unusual freedom brought about a belief that we could choose, make decisions, and chart our own future – our Artsakh's future. Yes, we truly believed that the changes were for the better, and that our lives and our state structures would improve.

Parallel to this, an erosion of power was also taking place. Discreet at first, it slowly gained momentum. In a highly centralized, ideology-driven, and ethnically diverse country, the government itself was breaking familiar stereotypes and barriers. However, it didn't realize that it was also eroding the very principles of the USSR's form of government. As a result, the country was becoming ungovernable right in front of our eyes. The planned economy was in freefall, while intensifying centrifugal forces made the process irreversible.

I am often asked, "Didn't the fall of the Soviet Union start with the Karabakh movement?" and I answer, "No, of course not." The conflicts simply surfaced where they had always existed and in places where tensions were the highest. Throughout Karabakh's history, the weakening of central power inevitably led to intensifying ethnic disputes. Any political turmoil at the center that disturbed the regular course of events and created a perception of chaos resulted in the desire of the people of Karabakh to reunite with Armenia. It happened in 1917–1920: after the revolution and the fall of the Russian monarchy, Karabakh became the arena for clashes between the Armenians and the Azerbaijanis. In Tsarist Russia, the administrative territorial division was structured around guberniyas (provinces or governorates), without taking into account the ethnic make-up of its territories. Karabakh was part of the Elisabethpol guberniya, while most of today's Armenia was part of the Erivan guberniya. The fall of the Russian Empire was followed by the creation of newly independent states in the South Caucasus. Each of them declared its borders, which, in some territories, overlapped: Baku believed that the borders should be laid according to the administrative division lines of the fallen Russian Empire, while Yerevan laid its borders along the boundaries where ethnic Armenians resided. Armenians defended their approach, since it gave them an opportunity to fulfill their centuries-old aspirations for a unified Armenian state. However, when the Red Army entered Baku and Yerevan, the Karabakh dispute was resolved in Baku's favor. Nagorno-Karabakh found itself part of Azerbaijan, even though its overwhelming majority was Armenian.

We, the people of Karabakh, always felt that our interests were being ignored and violated. Having an autonomous status within Azerbaijan didn't shield us against Baku's administrative domination. During the Soviet years, Baku's primary efforts in Karabakh were directed at settling Azerbaijanis there to change the area's ethnic composition. It seriously alarmed us because we had already seen an almost complete de-Armenianization of Nakhichevan. Soviet authorities looked at any relations between the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (Region), NKAO, and Armenia with suspicion and tried to curtail them as much as possible. The enforcement of Soviet atheism was being applied quite selectively. The last church in Karabakh was closed in the 1920s, and all Armenian churches, which Azerbaijani historians referred to as 'Albanian', stood without crosses. In contrast, a mosque functioned in neighboring Aghdam during the entire Soviet period. We even had to constantly fight for our right to speak our own language. Faced with manifestations of inequality everywhere, we felt like masters in Karabakh, but strangers in Azerbaijan.

Once, I characterized our relations with Azerbaijanis as 'ethnic incompatibility' and was harshly criticized for it for a long time. Perhaps it was a poor choice of words, indeed, but it was obvious that our peoples have entirely different ethnicity and religious and cultural traditions; put simply, we live differently. We have different preferences and ideas regarding government models in our countries, and we have different geopolitical priorities. Therefore, I believed that we could become good neighbors, but we definitely should not be subordinate to each other.

The desire to reunite with Armenia existed during the entire Soviet period of our history. Inconspicuous from the outside, this desire lay dormant in Armenian society, ready to awaken at any moment given the right circumstances. The initiative to collect signatures began in Yerevan and very quickly took over Karabakh. The process was unleashed by Armenian intellectual elites, primarily descendants of Karabakh who lived outside the region for different reasons. Everyone spoke of Zori Balayan⁷, Bagrat Ulubabian⁸, and Igor Muradian⁹, but the movement didn't have a formal structure. It was spontaneous, like a wildfire: once ignited in a dry forest, it spreads rapidly and uncontrollably, swallowing everything in its path. At the time, I was still working as secretary of the Silk Factory Party Committee. Life flowed slowly – everything was calm, understandable, stable, and predictable. There was a good team spirit at the factory, like one big, tight-knit family.

And then, one day, two workers approached me and said, "Everywhere, people are collecting signatures to appeal to the Central Committee for the reunification of Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia. We also want to do it at our factory – we are the largest business enterprise in the region. Do you object?" Of course, I didn't object. I knew what was happening in town, even though I didn't give it any significance yet. "Let's do it," I said. "If they are doing it everywhere else, perhaps this time it will happen." I discovered that almost everyone at our factory signed the petition in a couple of days. Within a week, all Stepanakert enterprises signed it, and by the end of the month, everyone in our city! Very quickly, in about three months or so, nearly the entire Armenian adult population of Karabakh had signed the petition – with the exception of very senior Communist Party officials, who didn't dare do it given their positions but nevertheless still treated the process with sympathy, empathized with the people, and supported them.

Signatures were collected secretly, so it's hard to say who led the process – there was no formal structure behind it (at least I never heard of it). There weren't any apparent leaders, either, but perhaps Arkady Karapetian stood out the most (later, during the war, he led the formation of the self-defense forces). Meanwhile, the movement initiated by a small group of enthusiasts grew exponentially and soon embraced the entire population. This bright, astonishing process captivated our people on a deep emotional level and united us. Optimism overwhelmed us; people sincerely hoped that they would be heard in the framework of perestroika and glasnost. We were convinced that the truth was on our side, and we hadn't done anything anti-Soviet – we had simply signed a lawful petition to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the USSR, to its Politburo, and to Gorbachev.

On December 1, 1987, our Karabakh delegation went to Moscow and submitted the petition – signed by several tens of thousands of people – to the Central Committee of the USSR Communist Party. In it, we explained our position, citing documents on the history, ethnography, and culture of Nagorno-Karabakh in defense of our views. A month later, in January 1988, another delegation went to Moscow. Each delegation attempted to present a simple idea to the central government: there was a problem, a serious problem, that had already surfaced, could not be ignored, and needed to be addressed. This could be done gradually, there could be different solutions, but we couldn't pretend that it didn't exist. Otherwise, we would witness uncontrollable repercussions. The Central Committee said they understood the situation, but they could only look into its socio-economic dimension. They told us that there were some 20 similar issues in the USSR, and solving one could trigger a chain reaction. Moscow's position wasn't encouraging. On the contrary, it only added to the tension, mobilized our people, and pushed their natural stubbornness to its limit. Eventually, all that uncontainable energy burst out, drove people into the streets, and erupted into public demonstrations and mass protests.

Peaceful Demonstrations

Unsanctioned, spontaneous mass street rallies were unheard of in the Soviet Union. The last one probably took place during the times of the Russian Empire. The first demonstrations were peaceful, with sincere and naïve slogans – we all still believed that the central government's decision would be fair. People carried banners saying, "Lenin, Party, Gorbachev." The number of protestors grew with each passing day. We all felt that events of great historic importance were taking place, and everyone wanted to be a part of it.

Even the highest government officials, who – as one would suspect – should have been more cautious, took part in the demonstrations. The reality was such that if, for example, the first secretary of a Regional Communist Party Committee didn't rally with the people in front of the party headquarters, he would instantly lose all credibility.

Informal leaders began to appear – people who were brave enough to speak at the rallies, analyze the situation, and guide the people. Some of them had radical views, while others were more moderate. People knew many of them and respected them for their track records; they trusted them and paid attention to their words. They were plant managers, party leaders, college professors, writers, and representatives of factory workers.

An exciting process, unusual for the Soviet Union, of organizing a movement began to take shape. An informal group of leaders began to make all the decisions about the rallies. They decided when and where to hold them and how to ensure people's safety. No one elected us; it all happened naturally. We were joined together by a shared activity. It was winter, and it was freezing. We made sure that people stayed warm – we brought hot water, made tea for everyone, and distributed food. Paramedics organized a stationary ambulance service – just in case.

We got together at any suitable location (at work or at someone's house, for example), discussed the current situation, and made decisions. At the same time, general assemblies and party congresses were taking place at all Karabakh workplaces. The main topic of discussion was the same burning issue that interested everyone: the transition of Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia's authority. Moreover, all meetings concluded with the same resolution: to ask the higher authorities to rule in favor of NKAO's reunification with Armenia. These resolutions were passed along to the plenary sessions and party congresses of the regional central committees, city central committees, and congresses of people's deputies at all levels, and all were adopted unanimously.

Azerbaijan's central authorities tried to change our minds. Different party and government officials came from the republic's Communist Party Central Committee and tried to convince us to stop holding public rallies. They didn't feel very confident, though. We thought that the central government was lost and didn't know how to react to the situation.

In mid-February, Moscow sent in the army. At the same time, Baku reinforced its police force with additional personnel from neighboring Azerbaijani regions. This attempt at coercion went against the declared policies of the central government and incited a wave of outrage and negative vibes toward the Moscow authorities. Now the entire town took to the streets, and the rallies went on non-stop. The primary demand was to convene the Council of the People's Deputies of NKAO and make a decision to reunite with Armenia. A signature campaign was initiated among the legislators to convene the extraordinary session on February 20, with only one item on the agenda: Karabakh's secession from Azerbaijan and its unification with Armenia. Collecting enough signatures didn't require much effort in that situation.

On February 19, Azerinform – Azerbaijan's state information agency – announced that the Central Committee of the Soviet Union's Communist Party had not discussed any territorial matters and didn't plan to discuss them in the future. In protest, Karabakh announced a general strike. A strike was unthinkable in the Soviet Union – a truly extraordinary development. The very next day, a delegation arrived in Stepanakert – Kyamran Bagirov¹⁰, Viktor Yashin¹¹, and some other members of the Central Committee of Azerbaijan's Communist Party – to prevent the session of the Council of People's Deputies.

Bagirov instructed his security services to undermine the gathering. All day long, we used detours to move legislators, ensuring that the session took place. As soon as they got to Stepanakert, we provided them with the necessary material and talking points for on-the-floor arguments. Back then, legislatures were formed at the directive of the Communist Party, using quotas for workers and farmers, many of whom were not great public speakers. By the evening, we were able to get a quorum, and at 9 p. m., the session started. The square in front of the parliament building was overcrowded with people. Unexpectedly, Bagirov, Yashin, and Boris Kevorkov¹², as well as members of the Bureau of the Region's Communist Party Committee, arrived for the session. Bagirov was the first to speak. He talked about the brotherly friendship of our two peoples, our happy, peaceful coexistence in Azerbaijan during the past 70 years, and that a small group of irresponsible nationalists was instigating reckless actions. He promised to swiftly correct all the mistakes that Azerbaijan made in Karabakh. He stressed that the session of the legislature had no authority to address territorial issues and that Karabakh would remain part of Azerbaijan. Yashin spoke along the same lines.

In response, the legislators spoke passionately about the systematic undermining of Karabakh's interests. They said that the session had full authority to decide on any issue involving NKAO. Bagirov and Yashin often interrupted the speakers, promising that all the region's problems would be at the center of Baku's attention. Nonetheless, they couldn't change the course of the session. Having lost hope of getting what they wanted, they left. The session made the historic decision for Karabakh to cede from Azerbaijan and reunite with Armenia in their absence.

On the following day, February 21, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Soviet Union's Communist Party (CPSU) passed a resolution – "On developments in Nagorno-Karabakh" – in which our demand to become part of the Armenian SSR was labeled as "adopted as a result of actions of extremists and nationalists," and that it "contradicted the interests of Azerbaijani SSR and Armenian SSR." Azerbaijani state television and radio immediately announced that the events in NKAO had been caused by "specific extremist groups." But the appeal to the Politburo was adopted during the full session of the regional council of People's Deputies, which was preceded by the decision of party and government bodies of all levels in the region! The Politburo resolution practically labeled all Karabakh Armenians as extremists. We joked that as true communists, we had to conform to the Politburo's assessment.

The Politburo's actions were erroneous and short-sighted. I am not sure whether the Politburo realized that by labeling the popular movement to reunite with Armenia as actions by a small group of extremist nationalists, they irreversibly and permanently moved the situation into a different dimension. However, we soon realized that Moscow didn't intend to solve the problem, that we might soon be subjected to oppression, and that we had to prepare for it.

On February 22, Pyotr Demichev¹³ and Georgiy Razumovsky¹⁴ arrived in Stepanakert to implement the Politburo's resolution "On developments in Nagorno-Karabakh." They gathered the region's party and economic leadership at the headquarters of the Central Committee and instructed them to organize a campaign to "counteract nationalistic sentiments in NKAO." The central power probably thought that the harsh resolution of the Politburo would have a sobering effect on the region's party leadership. Still, they wanted to do some advance work to make sure of it.

One day before the meeting at the party headquarters, a whole delegation suddenly visited our Silk Factory Party Committee: the Secretary of the Central Committee of Azerbaijan's Communist Party, along with some department head of the same committee, the First Secretary of our city's Regional Party Committee, and Boris Kevorkov, the First Secretary of the Regional Committee. Kevorkov was born in Karabakh but made his entire career in Baku. People didn't trust him – he was known as an extremely harsh leader who faithfully served Azerbaijan's interests. The conversation with me went like this: "Look at you – you are young, you have a lot of potential… You have a shiny party career in front of you. You have influence. Work with us, help us out. We have to stop these demonstrations somehow. We have to calm people down." Then they showered me with promises of golden opportunities: career growth, a study program at the Academy of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and many other privileges. There were no threats. On the contrary, the tone of the conversation was amicable and soft, perhaps even too soft for a secretary of the Central Committee of a Republic talking to a factory committee secretary. They realized that they needed support from the local leaders and tried to get it in advance.

I didn't give them the support they were looking for. I told them directly, "Let's say you convince me and some others. It won't change anything! I don't think you understand the gravity of the situation." Later, I discovered that I wasn't the only one they visited.

The meeting of the region's party and economic leadership began. The atmosphere was tense, and everyone was nervous. Besides the harsh Politburo resolution, we were upset about unpleasant news from Yerevan – the Central Committee of Armenia's Communist Party didn't support the resolution of our Council of People's Deputies on Karabakh's secession from Azerbaijan. Our leaders spoke well and expressed criticism at Moscow's response. However, they felt tense, and their speeches didn't fully reflect the intensity of the people's emotions on the subject.

I asked to speak and was very blunt in my remarks. I think I managed to express the Karabakh people's seething emotions from the podium. I remember that moment very well: I addressed the audience, with my back, naturally, turned to the Presidium. I heard an angry whisper behind my back in the middle of my speech, "Enough, Robert, enough! Enough already, stop!" I turned around and saw a red-faced, enraged Kevorkov. I liked that and continued, addressing him, "It's good that you reminded me about yourself. I almost forgot! You personally bear the responsibility for everything that is happening now!" I said everything I thought about him and ended my speech with a demand for him to be dismissed.

The plenary session with the party and economic leadership didn't go as the senior officials had planned. Furthermore, within a day, Kevorkov was fired "for poor job performance."

He was replaced by the chairman of our agricultural industry, Henrik Poghosian¹⁵, who didn't stay in the position of the first secretary for too long, but proved himself as a worthy leader. Later, when the NKAO government bodies were disbanded and the Special Administration Committee was formed, Poghosian moved to Moscow. But for the time being, his appointment helped us as it provided an additional platform. Besides, when local leaders stepped into government positions, they empowered our movement.

Many have asked whether it was possible to avoid an armed escalation of the conflict. What if Gorbachev had decided to act and Moscow had actively gotten involved? I think that with the fall of the Soviet Union, the escalation of the conflict and its military phase were unavoidable. Only a strong power center could control the process, but Moscow was confused and in disarray. The central authorities didn't fully understand the developments. They didn't see a way out in the context of perestroika, glasnost, and democratization.

Confrontation

The situation became fully reciprocal: we held demonstrations to cede from Azerbaijan, while they held demonstrations to keep Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan. Unrest erupted in Shushi – a town nestled in the mountains above Stepanakert, where mostly Azeris lived. Once the residence of the Persian governor, Shushi had ancient Persian mosques and Armenian churches, and it was a cultural center for both peoples.

Clashes erupted between Armenians and Azeris both in Karabakh and along its borders. At the end of February, a large crowd gathered in the central square of Aghdam, Azerbaijan. The atmosphere was already tense. Moreover, the speakers managed to provoke aggression among the people. Responding to their calls to immediately punish the defiant Armenians, an unruly crowd of several thousand, armed with rocks, batons, and rebar rods, marched toward the Armenian-populated regional center of Askeran, destroying everything in its path. Near the outskirts of Askeran, the crowd was met by the police and local residents trying to defend the town. During the clashes, shots were fired and two Azeris were killed. We never found out who was to blame and who fired first. Equally, no one could reasonably explain why an armed Azeri crowd would have appeared at the edge of an Armenian town. No legal consequences followed either. But Azerbaijan's state news agency immediately reported on the death of two Azeris "as a result of clashes between the residents of Aghdam and Askeran." Local media immediately picked up the story and started sensationalizing the details of the event in every news broadcast.

This story was immediately used by extremist agitators at the Baku rallies, resulting in calls for revenge. Relations between Armenians and Azeris inevitably hurled toward ethnic strife. The tensions grew dangerously high.

Sumgait

Everything erupted on February 27 in Sumgait.

Anatoliy Mostovoy¹⁶ couldn't have described the Sumgait tragedy more accurately: "The nation didn't fall at the Belavezhskaya Pushcha – they merely divided the power there, not the country; the Soviet Union collapsed at the very moment it equated genocide with disorderly conduct. As the world's rupture ran through the poet's heart, the Soviet Union's rupture ran through Sumgait."

We protested in Stepanakert, but 200 miles away, on the other end of Azerbaijan, the Armenians of Sumgait suffered as a result. Many of them had moved there from Karabakh many years ago – they had heeded Komsomol's call to help build the town. They stayed because the industrial town really needed working hands. Armenian pogroms in Sumgait lasted for several days – February 27–29 – fully condoned by the authorities and unabated by the police, who did not intervene at all. People were brutally murdered, raped, thrown out of windows, and burnt alive. Armed forces entered the town only on the third day, introducing martial law and enforcing a curfew. The bloodshed came to an end, and Armenians began to evacuate.

A great deal has already been said over the years about who exactly was behind the events in Sumgait, so I am not going to discuss it in detail here. It's difficult to find the words to express the drama that shook all of Armenia. But it was a turning point that drastically changed our perception of reality. Before Sumgait, we were in a state of perestroika-inspired romanticism. With a provincial naiveté, we waited for Moscow's decisions, believing that all we had to do was express our people's will, deliver petitions, and send delegations. After the Sumgait pogroms, all these illusions disappeared. We realized that we would have to solve our problems ourselves and that there would be no easy decisions.

CHAPTER 6
ON THE BRINK OF WAR

The End of Illusions

The Sumgait tragedy sent all subsequent events onto a different trajectory. Our hopes that the situation in Karabakh would be resolved quickly and peacefully disappeared in a single day. The shocking details about the pogroms and murders were hard to comprehend. They reminded people of the Shushi pogroms that took place at the beginning of the century. Nothing of the sort had ever happened in the Soviet Union, and no one had imagined that it was possible. Very soon, similar events forced Armenians to leave their lands in Kirovabad and then Gatashen, Chardakhlu, Zurnabad, and many other villages. They resulted in a surge of mutual aggression between our peoples, who quickly recalled grudges of the past two to three hundred years, which, in turn, multiplied the scale of the protests. By this time, the Popular Front movement had already been formed in Baku, and hundreds of thousands of people protested in the streets.

At the same time, an unending wave of mass demonstrations continued in Stepanakert. Everyone in Karabakh realized that there was no going back. It was clear to us that staying within Azerbaijan was not an option, as it was no longer a matter of trampled rights, but of physical survival. Slogans and speeches reflected this perception. We thought that the Sumgait tragedy had demonstrated that the safety of Armenians couldn't be guaranteed in Azerbaijan and that Moscow authorities would revisit their stance on the Karabakh issue. I had believed that a decision to remove the NKAO from Azerbaijan's territorial control immediately after the Sumgait pogroms would have been the most suitable decision and could have prevented the impending war.

However, it looked like the central authorities did not comprehend the seriousness of what was happening and hoped to calm people down with promises. On February 29, Bagirov spoke on Azerbaijan's state television and radio, informing people about the clashes in Sumgait and Kirovabad, the instances of robbery, looting, and violence directed at Armenians. He appealed to the Azeris for calm. On the same day, Demichev arrived in Stepanakert, where 100,000 people demonstrated non-stop in the central square. He appealed to the distraught people, trying to calm them down with an announcement that the Politburo of the Communist Party had decided to revisit the Nagorno-Karabakh issue, study the materials more closely, and discuss it one more time. But at that point, almost no one trusted those promises anymore.

Totally spontaneously, right there at the demonstration, the Krunk Committee was formed. The necessity for a structure was hanging in the air, but it was Arkady Manucharov¹⁷, the director of the Stepanakert Building Material Factory, who articulated the idea. We discussed it among those standing by the podium, and everyone supported the idea. Manucharov took the floor and suggested that a committee be formed. People in the crowd began to shout out the names of those who had proven themselves and whom they trusted. Someone mentioned my name.

This was the very first attempt to create some kind of a coordinating body – in the future, we would be doing this many times. The name had a dual meaning: in Armenian, Krunk means a crane bird and symbolizes the return to the homeland and the comfort of a home, but it was also a Russian acronym for the Committee of Revolutionary Administration of Nagorno-Karabakh. Krunk was announced as a social-political organization, but in reality, it coordinated the emerging freedom movement. In the future, everything was done on behalf of the committee. New leaders – the most active participants of the recent events – joined Krunk. Arkady Manucharov was elected as its leader, while I headed its ideological section and wrote its program and bylaws.

The committee acted entirely legally. We gathered openly at the center of Stepanakert, across from the offices of the regional committee of the Communist Party, in the building of the local newspaper Soviet Karabakh, or at one of the town's business offices. Krunk had many members who were directors of enterprises and Communist Party committee secretaries at local plants. There was no regular meeting schedule – we didn't have time to put one in place, and the events developed rapidly. We met as often as necessary. We didn't keep minutes or records. All of us were experienced in party work and in business. We had good organizational skills, but Krunk was and always remained a product of the street protest movement. We didn't divide responsibilities among us. Each of us assumed a function that we could do best – everyone wanted to be as helpful as possible. Our meetings were dynamic and emotional, and we debated about how radical we should be. Some of us presented tougher demands; some were more moderate. Radical approaches could be sensed in the slogans and in the language of our public appeals. Some suggested that we stop short of demands, saying that we were appealing to Moscow and that we should try to convince them. Others said that the time for pleas had passed and we should start making demands. The third point of view was that words alone were not enough, no matter how convincing, and we needed more decisive actions, such as strikes. Both radicalism and restraint reflected the temperament of the participants in the discussion, rather than their approach to the future of Karabakh – there was no disagreement there.

Of course, our moderation and radicalism both looked the same to Moscow. From today's standpoint, all these arguments – which were very significant – could be seen as naïve. It was unthinkable to seriously debate whether or not to strike during Soviet times. The very concept was perceived exclusively in the context of workers' rights somewhere in the West! And here, we had a group of about 25 enterprise directors, college professors, artists, poets, and party officials – all members of the Communist Party – discussing a general strike. An incredible shift took place in people's minds within several weeks, reflecting the unprecedented situation in the country. I am not sure whether social psychology existed as an academic discipline in the USSR – at least we didn't hear much of it – but I think that sociologists would be fascinated to observe how quickly and drastically transformation happens in people and in society as a whole. Behavioral models, embedded into the psyche of disciplined and law-abiding citizens all their lives, crumbled in a matter of days. Both the individual and the collective perception of what is acceptable, and what is not, fell to pieces.

I was never a part of the moderate camp, but I didn't hold extremely radical views either. I tried to be rational, to not succumb to emotions, and to evaluate the risks and consequences of our decisions, being guided by the best interests of the cause. I understood that we had to use all the opportunities at our disposal to succeed. Besides holding protest rallies, it was essential to continue to work with Moscow. We needed to try to influence Soviet authorities, gain allies among influential individuals, tell the truth about developments in Karabakh, prove that we were right, substantiate our views, and insist on making the right decision.

We didn't plan to fight – it was something unreal back then. We wanted justice and peace. We continued to send delegations to Moscow, asked for meetings with the Politburo, interacted with People's Deputies, and spoke at different forums. In the beginning of March, I flew to Moscow as part of a delegation. We met with Yegor Ligachyov¹⁸ and heard again that Moscow was not ready to address our issues. Ligachyov made the same arguments as before, as if Sumgait had not happened. All members of our delegation (Maksim Mirzoyan¹⁹, Sayda Orbelian²⁰, Ivan Atayan²¹ and others) spoke honorably, demonstrating firm conviction and readiness to continue the struggle. The meeting didn't go very well; we didn't feel any sympathy or compassion – everything was being reduced to the socio-economic development of NKAO. Ligachyov didn't impress me at all, and the conversation left a bad aftertaste.

This was where I first met Yevgeny Primakov. The meeting was organized by his friend, Konstantin Geyvandov²², who then worked for the Izvestiya newspaper. We met at Primakov's home. At the outset, he asked me whether I was ready for a candid conversation. After confirming that I was, Primakov explained that the best way out would be to attain the special status of an autonomous republic within Azerbaijan. He presented the advantages of such a status in depth, hinting that the Azerbaijani leadership wouldn't object if we were to agree. Many years later, he wrote about our meeting in his memoirs: "The conversation was so relaxed that I, at the risk of offending my guests, said, 'Historically, Armenians have been known as scientists, merchants, artists, and military leaders, but not as politicians. Perhaps that's why there were great losses, like the Western part of Armenia that was ceded to the Ottoman Empire. Today, you have to act like very seasoned politicians. Maksim Mirzoyan was inclined to accept that, perhaps, today, the status of an autonomous republic was the best solution.' Robert Kocharyan rebuffed me, saying, 'Our people in Nagorno-Karabakh won't accept that.'"²³

This was my first trip to Moscow since the beginning of the Karabakh movement, and I tried to make it as useful as possible. There had been scarce official information about the developments in Karabakh, and that information didn't accurately reflect the reality of the situation. We tried to fill this void by telling the truth to as many people as possible, hoping that they would hear us, understand us, and support us. We interacted with people who had influence – Armenians in Moscow who held rather high positions in the Central Committee and in different government entities. We met with representatives of the then nascent Russian democratic movements. We tried to use all available resources.

We came back from Moscow confident that the government didn't intend to solve our problem. However, we saw that we had many friends and supporters in Moscow. We didn't plan to give up, so we had to think about what to do next and how to ratchet up the pressure.

A week later, a high-ranking delegation flew in from Moscow representing the Central Committee of the CPSU, the Council of Ministers, and the Gosplan. It had intended to present the draft plan for the socio-economic development of NKAO to the leadership of the oblast. However, members of the Bureau of the Oblast Party Committee and the Oblast Executive Committee stated that the people demanded a different solution and no one believed in implementing any plans within Azerbaijan. The delegation went back with nothing.

The following day, on March 17, a plenary session of the Oblast Communist Party Committee took place. It adopted a resolution to ask the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU to discuss the issue and make NKAO part of the Armenian SSR. During the same plenary session, the Secretaries of the Oblast Committees of the Communist Party – V. Bogoslovsky and D. Mirzoyan – were replaced by B. Malkov and V. Atajanian²⁴. Headed by Henrikh Poghosian, the Oblast Committee of the Communist Party joined the Karabakh movement, demonstrating defiance of Karabakh Armenians yet again. A new batch of anti-Armenian articles appeared in Moscow print media in response. We tried but failed to neutralize their impact – they were part of a larger campaign leading up to impending radical measures. The Pravda newspaper was at the forefront, publishing an article by Georgiy Ovcharenko²⁵ titled "Emotions and Reason" and publicly declaring us extremists once again.

Government sessions, both in Moscow and Baku, took place one after another.

On March 23, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted a decision "On measures related to the appeal of the union republics regarding the events in Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijani and Armenian SSR." The measures were harsh and simple: special forces were deployed to NKAO the same day.

In response, a general strike began in Karabakh.

On March 24, the Presidium of the Azerbaijani SSR Supreme Council issued a decree, "On tasks to implement the decision of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Council dated March 23, 1988." A separate decree disbanded the Krunk committee and banned all unsanctioned rallies and demonstrations in the entire NKAO territory.

Obviously, the gloves were now off. The authorities had suddenly switched gears from persuasion to intimidation and oppression. This approach clearly contradicted the policies of glasnost and democratization declared by the country's leadership. All these actions provoked a powerful new wave of protest rallies and demonstrations in Armenia and led to the creation of the Karabakh Committee. Levon Ter-Petrosian²⁶, the future president of Armenia, and Vazgen Manukian²⁷, the future prime minister of Armenia, were among its members. A new structure emerged that brought together strong, romantic, and pragmatic revolutionary leaders with extraordinary political skills.

The official government was losing power in Armenia rapidly. To halt this process, the Central Committee of the CPSU decided to implement personnel changes among the cadres. On May 21, it dismissed the First Secretaries of Communist Parties in Armenia and Azerbaijan – Karen Demirchian²⁸ and Bagirov, respectively. Most likely, the Politburo thought that the new faces would deflect attention and calm the agitated public. Demirchian was replaced with Suren Harutiunian, a rather dull personality, who didn't play any role in that historic time period. This replacement was celebrated in Karabakh: people remembered Demirchian's notorious televised statement that the NKAO Supreme Council decision on February 20 to integrate with Armenia ran counter to the interests of the brotherly peoples, and that, under his leadership, Armenia refused to integrate Karabakh into its territory.

Members of the Karabakh Committee were not yet known in NKAO, and I didn't know them either. But we hoped that with the creation of the new influential structure, Armenia and its leadership would begin to support us more. We actively sought to establish relations and cooperate with the committee. Our wishes were soon realized. Under pressure from tens of thousands of protesters in Yerevan, the Supreme Council of Armenia was forced to convene a special meeting. It lasted for several hours, while thousands of emotionally charged demonstrators were protesting in front of the Supreme Council building. Under these circumstances, it wasn't difficult to achieve the desired outcomes. On June 15, Armenia's Supreme Council voted to incorporate NKAO into its boundaries, citing the USSR's Constitution. Naturally, this decision was celebrated in Karabakh. Everyone felt a sense of the complete unity between Karabakh and Armenia. It was clear that the real power in Armenia belonged to the Karabakh Committee.

But our fate wasn't being decided in Armenia.

On July 18, the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Council addressed Yerevan's and Baku's appeals once again. It announced the "impossibility of territorial changes between the republics," adopting a resolution that left Karabakh within the borders of Azerbaijan. As a result, the general strike and a new wave of round-the-clock demonstrations resumed in Karabakh.

* * *

These developments were of great interest both in the USSR and abroad. It was during that period that we earned many supporters in European countries, as well. We achieved international recognition – reporters from prominent international news agencies and print and television media maintained a permanent presence in Karabakh. It was very common to meet a journalist from Le Monde or the BBC. Genrikh Borovik arrived with his film crew and made a documentary for Russian television which accurately reflected the situation for the first time. Andrei Sakharov²⁹, the famous scientist and human rights activist, visited us as well and wrote several letters to Gorbachev trying to convince him to listen to the "clearly stated will of the majority of the population of the autonomous oblast."

I found myself in the thick of it, actively working with regular visitors to Karabakh: groups of People's Deputies, sent to us directly by the then in-session Congress of the People's Deputies, and the press. I gave numerous interviews – every journalist who visited us wanted to meet with me. They wanted to hear my opinion – the opinion of a person who made a career in the Communist Party and became a liberation movement leader. Besides, I spoke good Russian, and my education and erudition allowed me to look at things more broadly and use easily understood concepts and arguments. I had a very specific goal: to make sure that as many people as possible learned the truth about what was happening in Karabakh. I wanted to announce our aspirations and our goals to the world. Providing information was crucial because, despite the declared policy of glasnost, censorship still existed in the Soviet Union. The media was forbidden to report anything on Karabakh that wasn't in line with the official position of the central government.

Besides journalists, representatives of different popular fronts from the Baltics, Ukraine, and Moldova were always present in Stepanakert. They revered the idea of independence, and they viewed the situation in Karabakh as a rehearsal of future events in their countries.

I also met with members of the Armenian intelligentsia in Moscow – in those years, many Armenians worked at different Moscow news magazines, and the majority of them were originally from Karabakh. They actively assisted us in establishing contact with influential individuals in the Communist Party's Central Committee, and later, with the People's Deputies. Zory Balayan, who knew a wide circle of writers and politicians, played a tremendous role in establishing contacts, especially with legislators. We mostly met with representatives of the democratic block: Yuri Afanasyev³⁰, Galina Starovoytova³¹, Anatoly Sobchak³², and many others. It was easier to work with democrats; they supported us. We invited the legislators to Karabakh, offering them a chance to witness the situation firsthand and draw their own conclusions – and many accepted. We organized public meetings and, after interacting with the local populace, our guests understood the stark contrast between reality and the official information.

Arkady Volsky and His Committee

For the first time, Arkady Ivanovich Volsky was sent to Karabakh in July 1988 as the representative of the Politburo of the Communist Party's Central Committee. By September, a state of emergency had been declared in Nagorno-Karabakh, a curfew was introduced, and all public events were banned. The Soviet Internal Troops established a permanent presence, their numbers ranging from eight to twelve thousand, depending on the situation. Several months later, in January 1989, the USSR Supreme Council decreed that NKAO would be placed under a special administration regime³³. Our local government structures – the Oblast Council of People's Deputies and the Oblast Committee of the Communist Party – were disbanded, and all power was ceded to the Special Administration Committee, which was headed by Arkady Volsky³⁴.

Volsky was an extraordinary person. Clever, and with an excellent sense of humor, he was exceptionally charismatic and unbelievably charming. His ability to establish relationships with just about anyone and his mastery of persuasion were unmatched. He was a captivating storyteller who could even tell jokes, deftly adapting them to local idiosyncrasies.

The Special Administration Committee was headquartered at the building of the former Oblast Communist Party Committee. Henrikh Poghosian's office was now occupied by Volsky. It was always crowded there: he liked interacting with people, and he genuinely strived to normalize a situation without resorting to harsh punitive measures. His forceful speech at the extraordinary session of the USSR Supreme Council on December 1, 1989, in which he denounced Azerbaijani state television's anti-Armenian propaganda, was well known.

Volsky and I met frequently. Being a shrewd and experienced politician, he understood that he couldn't have accomplished his mission of calming everything and everyone down without cooperating with the individuals who influenced various processes in Karabakh. Now, looking back, I can say that Volsky tried to do this with the maximum benefit to us in mind, according to his own perception of the situation.

Volsky was full of energy and worked hard, always meeting with senior executives of business enterprises and party officials. He seemed to be asking for everyone's advice, although I am not sure how sincere this was. Volsky was friendly toward us. He always tried to show that he wished us well, and he wasn't disingenuous – he genuinely wanted to solve our problems. Volsky was skilled at reading people and could adeptly utilize their strengths and weaknesses. He knew how to win people's loyalty. Thanks to him, Karabakh began to be better supplied. The directors of our enterprises often went to Moscow to negotiate investment contracts directly with central government agencies. They stayed at fine hotels near Red Square. Not only did it boost their self-esteem, it also significantly improved their attitudes toward Volsky.

At times, Volsky spoke passionately about certain incomprehensible and fantastical ideas he had for Karabakh's development. He asked us to make suggestions regarding the socio-economic development of the oblast. I am not sure whether he actually believed in any of these ideas, but they nevertheless aroused great enthusiasm in those who heard them. Sometimes this enthusiasm went overboard, stunning even Volsky himself. I remember once how, during one of these meetings, Maxim Mirzoyan, director of our local auto depot and one of the leaders of the Karabakh movement, suggested we start growing garlic in the oblast. Mirzoyan painted rosy pictures, energetically citing numbers and comparing the low production costs with high retail prices in the northern parts of the Soviet Union. He was trying to show that garlic had a high profit margin and would revolutionize Karabakh's economy. Volsky listened very attentively, and when Mirzoyan finished, he paused and exclaimed with feigned enthusiasm, "Wow, Maxim, what a nail biter!" No one felt offended by Volsky.

One time, a delegation from Japan visited us to conduct research on human longevity. In the Soviet Union, Karabakh statistically had the largest number of centenarians per capita, and our people genuinely believed that one of the reasons for this was the consumption of homemade mulberry vodka. The elderly population in our villages traditionally started each day with a shot of mulberry vodka, yet alcoholism was never a problem there. Volsky reported that the Japanese had become very interested in the vodka and took some back to Japan to test its effects on human longevity. About a month later, during one of our meetings, he announced that he had received an official report from Japan. After a long theatrical pause, he said, "The Japanese are convinced that mulberry vodka definitely affects human longevity. Your people wouldn't have lived twice as long if they didn't drink it!" I suspect that there had been no Japanese researchers to begin with, and that Volsky had made the whole thing up. At least, I had never seen them. But I know for a fact that Arkady Ivanovich Volsky didn't drink anything else besides mulberry vodka during his entire stay in Karabakh.

Volsky was also a skilled orator. He captivated audiences from the start. His soft and soothing voice had a hypnotic effect on people. "To eliminate all contradictions with Azerbaijan, we have to practically remove Karabakh from its subordination. Little by little, we will accomplish this. We will establish a partnership between local enterprises and their Moscow counterparts, institute direct subordination to central ministries, and effectively achieve your goal!"

Practical steps accompanied his words. Some enterprises were, in fact, directly subordinated to Moscow, which was a blessing: investments followed and goods appeared on the local market while the entire country was experiencing severe shortages. Volsky was very convincing, and a good number of our enterprise directors started to believe that his plan could solve our problems.

I, on the other hand, wasn't as optimistic. I believed that we had to build up the pressure and plan for the worst, as any kindheartedness on our part would only lead us to defeat. The sad reality was that the pogroms had taken place in Sumgait, the "road war" was underway, and skirmishes with Azeris had become commonplace. We were completely shut off from Armenia, while the military curfew and security checkpoints all over Karabakh didn't inspire much optimism. I could sense that the central government was in agony, Moscow was preoccupied with other things, and sooner or later, we would find ourselves one-on-one against Azerbaijan.

Although Arkady Ivanovich Volsky was a very insightful man and had a deep understanding of the country's situation, he could never have imagined that the Soviet Union would dissolve in just a few short years. We argued with each other a lot, and I eventually turned into one of his most unrelenting opponents. However, even though I actively resisted his plans and effectively obstructed his work, we built a warm and friendly personal relationship that lasted until the day he died.

With time, my anxiety turned into a premonition of the imminent collapse of the Soviet Union. Any hope of support from the central government vanished completely.

The Special Administration Committee could not solve the Karabakh problem, and that wasn't its purpose. Volsky had to buy time, distract us with economic issues, and reduce some of the pressure while stalling the political solution and putting the brakes on its process. I saw the danger in this approach, as I realized that delaying the political solution would only exacerbate the problem. We would have to solve the problem one way or another, but under far more challenging conditions.

By that time, the Special Administration Committee was discharging all governmental duties in Karabakh. The Commandant's Office was established and headed by the Commandant of the Special Region, who, like the Head of the Internal Affairs Department, was an ethnic Russian. Security agency chiefs were appointed by Moscow. Thus, all the legal levers of government were taken away from us. This forced us to create informal structures. The state of emergency strictly limited our rights and freedoms, so we had to act covertly. The Council of Directors, which led the movement while Krunk was banned, lost its operational effectiveness. Many of its members had believed Volsky and fully cooperated with the Special Administration Committee. They enthusiastically engaged in business activities, attracting investments, managing their facilities, building partnerships with other producers, and utilizing resources. In short, they did exactly what they were supposed to do. It was time to do away with the Council of Directors, as it had become increasingly difficult to discuss drastic moves there. We needed a new structure to lead both public and covert activity.

This is how Miatsum (Reunification) was born.

Miatsum

On June 30, I spoke at a public rally in Stepanakert's central square before several thousand people and announced the creation of Miatsum. I wrote its bylaws, and several days later, we gathered for its inaugural conference. We elected Miatsum's Board, which was made up of 11 members. I became its chair, and Serzh Sargsian³⁵ became my deputy. Officially, Miatsum was declared a public benefit organization; however, its published bylaws did not fully reflect our activities.

Those were challenging times. Ethnic skirmishes had drastically intensified at NKAO's borders and in the villages with mixed populations. Armenians had already been driven out of Shushi. So-called "road wars" ignited. Driving through Azeri villages had become dangerous, so everyone used side road bypasses, and buses were escorted by armored personnel carriers. News spread of blown up bridges, gunfights, and people being wounded and killed. Self-defense units were being formed in villages to guard perimeters at night. Despite the presence of thousands of troops, the conflict only intensified.

Public rallies, banned by the state of emergency provisions, took place non-stop and often concluded with protest street marches. No one tried to break up the demonstrations, as no one wanted to shoot at people – special riot police carrying batons didn't exist then. However, the authorities tried to use other methods to crush the protests: arresting movement leaders, disseminating incriminating leaflets, summoning individuals to the Commandant's Office, and issuing threats.

The USSR Prosecutor's Special Investigative Unit, which was quartered at the local prosecutor's office, closely observed everyone, and we were routinely questioned there. At the time, you could be detained for a single speech at a rally. We always expected to be arrested. All of our activists had spent time at a prison in Rostov; their names were known, and the Commandant's Office had the list. First, you would get a summons to the Commandant's Office, and then you would be flown to the prison in Rostov. People even got arrested without a warrant – a person would come home, get arrested on their doorstep, and be taken away for a month. There was a special flight that took detainees to the Rostov jail.

The authorities' tactics were simple enough: intimidate the leaders and decapitate the movement. They targeted those who mattered – people who shaped public opinion, actively engaged in the process, and organized protest rallies and demonstrations – trying to force them to cease their activities. In fact, those harsh measures didn't really impact the course of events, however. Some, of course, were intimidated, but the majority of our activists took the arrests philosophically and even with a sense of humor. Upon their return from Rostov, they shared funny anecdotes from their adventures. Very few stopped doing the things that had sent them to jail in the first place. Detainees were treated fairly well in Rostov. There were no beatings or harassment, and the Rostov police didn't show any hostility. However, those who ended up in Azerbaijani prisons were treated drastically worse.

Arkady Ghukasian³⁶, the editor-in-chief of the Soviet Karabakh newspaper, had also served time at the Rostov prison. While he hadn't spoken at the public rallies, he had written rather scathing articles. In January 1990, he was arrested and spent 30 days in the Rostov prison for the piece he had written condemning the organizers and perpetrators of the Baku pogroms. Simultaneously, Roles Aghajanian³⁷, our road construction department head, was also arrested. Upon his return, Arkady remarked that he had spent an unforgettable month in the wonderful company of intelligent and cultured men. For Arkady, an excellent storyteller with an extraordinary sense of humor, jail time had become the source of many funny stories and cheery anecdotes.

Arkady Manucharov had a harder time. At the end of November 1989, he was arrested on trumped up corruption charges. He spent a little less than a year in prison. They had tried to arrest him in Stepanakert, but he had miraculously evaded the Special Forces of the Internal Troops. Friends had helped him escape to Armenia, where he was eventually found and detained, probably with the help of Armenia's KGB. Dozens of intellectuals, directors of enterprises, and college professors were arrested.

In this situation, Miatsum had to take over the responsibility of carrying on the struggle in the public arena. At that point, we mainly relied on people who didn't occupy notable positions and weren't in the public spotlight – it gave us more room to maneuver. A special workers' group, which I had put together earlier, joined the organization. These were employees of different Stepanakert production facilities. It was headed by Rafik Gabrielian, a foreman at the local furniture factory. Members of the group passed around leaflets, mobilized people for public rallies and marches, raised awareness in the labor groups, and explained future goals. Soon we started printing and circulating the Miatsum newspaper. I never imagined that I would become the editor of an underground newspaper! We couldn't print our newspaper at the printing house, so we used office copiers.

People responded with massive participation in all the protests that we organized. Every week, we held unsanctioned and, therefore, illegal public rallies, which were followed by the arrests of our speakers. But we found new speakers for the subsequent protests. This intense, meticulous, and risky weekly activity took place in a challenging setting: NKAO was still under a state of emergency and a military curfew.

Security in Question

In August 1989, I took the spot of an outgoing Kirovakan member of the 11^th legislative session of the Armenian SSR's Supreme Council, and in February 1990, I became a member of the Presidium of Armenia's Supreme Council. The parliament was not a permanent body at the time, but it didn't diminish the status of a legislator. I was elected as a member of parliament almost in absentia, at the initiative of Kirovakan activists. I hadn't campaigned and met my constituents just once, due to their persistent insistence.

Incidentally, this was the first case in which a Karabakh resident was elected to Armenia's parliament. There had been a close emotional connection between Armenia and Karabakh at the time. We were like "connected vessels": events occurring in Karabakh were immediately known in Armenia and vice versa. Everyone knew my name, and I was becoming more and more popular. My organization of the public rallies in Karabakh, my trips to Moscow, and my series of interviews with different periodicals contributed to my recognizability in Armenia. Armenian journalists filmed all the events in Karabakh and showed them in the news.

Everyone could easily identify me when I traveled to Armenia, even passersby in the streets. People also knew the names of and recognized almost all of our activists: Arkady Manucharov, Zori Balayan (who lived in Yerevan), Boris Dadamian (who was a USSR People's Deputy)³⁸, Zhanna Galstian³⁹, and many others. People approached us, said hello, wanted to get to know us better, talk to us, and ask us questions. The war hadn't started yet, but people sensed that events of great national significance were taking place in Karabakh. We were seen as people who came from the epicenter of those events and bore the brunt of it all.

Leaders of the Karabakh movement were just as popular there: Levon Ter-Petrosian, Vazgen Manukian, Ashot Manucharian⁴⁰, and all the others. Their popular activities quickly garnered them public recognition.

I was elected to the 12^th legislative session of the Armenian SSR Supreme Council in May 1990, from the same electoral district and with the same campaign staff. But this time, 14 Karabakh representatives had already entered Armenia's parliament: 12 from districts in Karabakh, and Manucharov and I from districts in Armenia. Manucharov had been under arrest at the time, but was elected as a member of parliament from Charentsavan.

I am grateful to the Kirovakan guys for what they did. Members of the Supreme Councils of the republics had immunity within the entire territory of the USSR. That wasn't the reason for my election, but it helped me tremendously in my struggle for Karabakh's future. I was constantly summoned to the Commandant's Office, but I never went there. They couldn't arrest me legally or fabricate any graft charges against me – what abuses could a factory party secretary have made? Thus, I was never sent to the Rostov prison. I realized that I could be illegally detained by the military and sent to Azerbaijan, so I had to do what others did – carry a gun and spend nights at different locations.

The situation steadily deteriorated, with security considerations becoming increasingly critical. What had become an absolute necessity was the creation of our own armed units that could defend the Armenian population not only from the skirmishes with Azeris, but also from Azerbaijan's Special Purpose Police Units (SPPU) – stationed in every Azerbaijani village – which wreaked havoc. These police units were made up of local thugs who were dressed in police uniforms, issued firearms, and given permission to use them. We couldn't rely on protection from the Soviet troops – Azeri-armed groups were now considered legal police squads, unlike our self-defense units. Besides, the Azeris had cozied up to the Commandant of the State of Emergency Special Region, and it had worked to their benefit.

Our militia was made up of local units, armed mostly with hunting rifles, sometimes with old shotguns. At some point, homemade guns turned up, mostly of low quality. They came from Armenia, where everyone suddenly seemed to have become gunmaker enthusiasts. These defense units were not coordinated, and only the defenders of nearby villages talked to each other.

We needed to rearrange everything – to create new mobile units, arm them, and coordinate their activity on the scale of the oblast. We understood that hunting rifles would not protect us.

* * *

From the very beginning, I had good working and personal relations with the leaders of the Karabakh movement. By that time, the committee had already become a force to be reckoned with in Armenia. Later, in November 1989, it transformed into the Pan-Armenian National Movement (PANM⁴¹). I was elected to its Board, though I had only learned about it through the newspapers.

PANM's rallies drew tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of people. They were in the position to force the government to make decisions that contradicted Moscow's orders. Based on its influence in society, the PANM was, in fact, an alternative government.

I traveled to Yerevan to foster cooperation with the Karabakh committee, along with other political parties and organizations. Vazgen Manukian and, later, Vazgen Sargsian⁴² coordinated security matters at the PANM. The situation in NKAO became so complex that we no longer simply requested weapons and ammunition from Armenia, we demanded them. I didn't have any contacts among the highest government officials, so we worked through informal channels. Armenia had to deal with its own security issues more and more as clashes erupted on the border with Azerbaijan.

Everyone who had even the slightest opportunity, including the police, secretly helped us. One person might have had a shotgun hidden at home, another had useful contacts, someone else laid his hands on a couple of automatic rifles – all of these resources eventually found their way to us. Natives of Karabakh – who had moved to Yerevan a long time ago and made their careers and occupied high offices there – used all the means at their disposal to help us. For them, it was about the security of their ancestral villages and the well-being of their relatives. They bought weapons with their own money and delivered them to Karabakh. Visiting Karabakh and not bringing something for the self-defense units was a deadly sin. The more unstable the Soviet Union became, the easier it was to get weapons from the Soviet military. Seizures of weapons and ammunition were initiated – some real, some staged. By that time, everything was up for sale.

We used helicopters to transport the weapons from Armenia. Most of the time, they landed above Kolatak village, less frequently near Vank and Haterk. The main landing field was near Kolatak, in an incredibly picturesque spot in the Khachen river valley. Farther away from the village, the mild alpine landscape led to tall and rocky mountains, whose whimsical cliffs looked like giant protruding teeth. During the Soviet times, this was one of my favorite spots. I went there often to hunt and fish, either alone or with friends. We put up tents and fished in the river. The fish weren't too large, but there were plenty of them. Two or three people could catch a bucket full of fish in a couple of hours with a simple fishing rod. When my older son turned five or six years old, I started to bring him along there. He loved to sleep in the tent. Now, despite the war, the fish splashed in the water as before, but we didn't care.

I often flew in helicopters that were transporting military cargo. During one of those flights, I traveled with several villagers who had pretty sizable loads. The overloaded helicopter started to lose altitude above Kelbajar, and the pilot had to land it, or rather drop it, on a narrow mountain plateau. To continue the flight, we needed to lose some weight. I remember how difficult it was pulling one of the passengers away from the sack of flour he was clinging to tightly. Ultimately, we jettisoned half of the crates and bags onto the snow, allowing the helicopter to take off for Kolatak. It unloaded the passengers and went back to pick up the cargo, intended for the self-defense units.

* * *

At the time, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF), also known as Dashnaktsutyun⁴³, played an essential role in organizing the self-defense forces. Ready for armed struggle, it actively created chapters and armed units in Karabakh, which in time merged into a separate battalion within the NKR Defense Army. The name "Dashnak battalion" stuck to it forever. All the actions of the Dashnaks were in line with their party's signature secrecy and fidayin (resistance fighter) sentiment – swear on a gun, party bylaws, and coat of arms. The party refrained from any public activity until the end of 1991.

As the number of armed groups and weapons grew, we felt the need to coordinate the arms supply and the activity of the armed units. It was necessary to regulate all security matters. We created something resembling a coordinating council consisting of me, Serzh Sargsian, Samvel Babayan⁴⁴, and three ARF representatives – Georgy Petrosian⁴⁵, Zhanna Galstian, and Valera Balayan⁴⁶. We worked cohesively with each other, meeting once a week to discuss recent developments and plan the next steps. At the time, there were no serious disagreements among us. We did this as part of our Miatsum activities until 1990; albeit, formally, I was still secretary of the Silk Factory Communist Party chapter – no one had relieved me of my duties.

But Miatsum was a public organization, just like its predecessor – the Council of Directors. The government of NKAO had been disbanded by Moscow. We realized that we needed to create a group that embodied the totality of Nagorno-Karabakh and had a mandate to speak and make decisions on behalf of the oblast. Within a month of Miatsum's coming into existence, we began organizing to establish the NKAO National Council, which was voted into existence by the assembly of the representatives of the people of Karabakh on August 16, 1989. Actually, the creation of a national council had already happened once before in our history, in the 1920s. We followed the same principles: all administrative units of Karabakh – its regions and the town of Stepanakert – sent delegates to a national assembly, which became the prototype for the Congress of People's Deputies. This assembly elected the National Council, composed of 80 members, 20 of whom formed its Presidium. It was headed by Vachagan Grigorian⁴⁷, the USSR People's Deputy from the NKAO. It was a deliberate choice – his legislator's immunity would protect the chairman of the National Assembly if the authorities moved to arrest him. I became a member of the Presidium.

I wouldn't say that, in the beginning, the National Council functioned at its full capacity as the oblast's executive branch of government. Mostly, we used it to make various political statements. Its most significant accomplishment was the joint session of the Supreme Council of Armenia and the National Council of Nagorno-Karabakh that voted on the unification of NKAO and the Armenian SSR. It took place in Yerevan on December 1, 1989, immediately after the dissolution of Volsky's committee. We understood that Moscow was washing its hands of us by dissolving the Special Administration Committee, and we viewed our unification with Armenia as a countermeasure to Baku's expected repressions. I remember that, as part of Karabakh's National Council delegation, I struggled through the sea of people gathered in front of the session venue in Yerevan. As soon as people recognized us, they formed a corridor to pass through and chanted "Karabakh, Karabakh!" It was a very bright, memorable, and highly emotional moment, one that demonstrated the energy of the national unity with Armenia.

Very soon, with the formation of Azerbaijan's Karabakh Organizational Committee, we entered into an entirely different, and far more difficult, period, during which the National Council would become the real center of power. But that time had not arrived yet, and the National Council and the Special Administration Committee functioned in parallel. One represented the power of the short-lived Soviet Union, while the other represented the unofficial power striving to defend its country and ensure its people's survival.

The Special Administration Committee was dissolved on November 28, 1989. The main reason for its dissolution was pressure from Azerbaijan, which wouldn't accept its existence. Azerbaijan insisted that the committee's actions were absolutely unacceptable and accused Volsky of pandering to separatists. Azerbaijan's leadership believed that he stood in the way of crushing Artsakh by force. As a result, Azerbaijan got its way. Most likely, there were different positions on the issue within the Politburo, and at some point, the conservative wing prevailed. It's possible that the weakening central power simply gave in to Azerbaijan and got rid of the Special Administration Committee. It was replaced by the Republican Committee on NKAO, headed by the Second Secretary of the Central Committee of Azerbaijan's Communist Party, Victor Polyanichko⁴⁸.

CHAPTER 7
GUERILLA WARFARE

Effaceurs

Following the Armenian pogroms in Baku in January 1990 and the deployment of Soviet troops, it became clear that the Sumgait massacre wasn't an isolated incident. It was evident that our peoples wouldn't be able to coexist peacefully in the foreseeable future. Armenians were hastily leaving Azerbaijan, and Azeris were leaving Armenia. A mass exodus of populations ensued.

It seemed that Moscow, recognizing its inability to control the situation or guarantee public safety, had left the Armenian population of a small and rebellious autonomy to the mercy of Azerbaijan. In other words, it had greenlighted the organized ethnic cleansing. The internal troops of the Soviet Union's Ministry of Internal Affairs took part in the deportations of Armenians from Getashen and Martunashen in March of the same year.

It was a very challenging time; psychologically, it was even more difficult than the full-scale war that followed the fall of the Soviet Union. During the war, at least you clearly knew who you were fighting and why, and you understood that this was the only way to survive and not become a refugee. Under Polyanichko's leadership, Azerbaijan – shielded by the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs troops – began systematically uprooting Armenians from their ancestral lands. Now our resistance led to confrontations not only with Azerbaijan's Special Police Units, but with the Soviet army, as well. The entire year of 1990 was nothing more than a succession of dramatic events that foretold the impending collapse of a great country.

But let's go one step at a time.

Arkady Ivanovich Volsky flew back to Moscow. We said goodbye to each other warmly, not knowing that he would never return to Karabakh again and that the fate of the Special Administration Committee had already been sealed. It was replaced by the Republican Committee on NKAO, headed by the Second Secretary of the Central Committee of Azerbaijan's Communist Party, Victor Polyanichko (at that time, the Second Secretaries of all republics were ethnic Russians).

Polyanichko was Azerbaijan's man, and the new Republican Committee on NKAO reported to Azerbaijan's government. It was created to "combat Armenian nationalist extremists," which, to Baku, meant all Armenians.

The committee was a tool that Azerbaijan planned to crush our will with and keep NKAO within its borders – and, preferably, free of Armenians, as it turned out later.

The name "Committee" only created an illusion of collegiality. In practice, Azerbaijan established a punitive authority, with Polyanichko himself enthusiastically assuming the role of executioner. All security forces were subordinated to him. In reality, the Soviet troops stationed in Karabakh were also under his control through the Commandant's Office, which enforced the State of Emergency rule. While Soviet army personnel didn't necessarily harbor any animosity towards us, we started to sense their overt hostility. Naturally, our attitudes toward them changed accordingly.

The newly formed committee banned the remaining government structures that were still accessible to us across the entire territory of NKAO, including the oblast and regional Councils of People's Deputies, and all party and public organizations. The exception was the Shushi region, where all the constitutional government bodies remained intact. Azeris were in the majority in the Shushi region, and the ban didn't include them. Moreover, party organizations in Azeri villages were given additional authority. Some were nearly elevated to the status of regional party committees.

The territory covered by the state of emergency was expanded. Besides the entire Nagorno-Karabakh oblast, it now also included adjacent Armenian and Azerbaijani regions. New restrictions were introduced in Stepanakert: the drama theater, as well as all movie theaters and museums, were shut down. All sporting and entertainment events were banned – even during state holidays. In January 1990, the Commandant of the State of Emergency Zone outlawed the Miatsum movement. In addition, the terms of the military curfew were expanded: besides walking the streets, it was now illegal to gather in courtyards. Patrolling soldiers yelled sternly, "Armenians, get inside!"

The Commandant's Office was responsible for enforcing the terms of the state of emergency. It was also in charge of the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs troops, as well as special tactical detachments – Azerbaijan had created an enormous army of Special Purpose Police Units (SPPU). The detachments were stationed in every Azeri village in Karabakh. They were primarily local residents, who were issued police uniforms and firearms and were paid a monthly salary.

Imagine two neighboring villages – one Armenian and the other Azeri. The Azeri village was protected by a well-armed SPPU of about 80 men, while the Armenian village had only several members of the local militia armed with hunting rifles. Absolute inequality had been set up. Instances of robbery, assault, and cattle raiding in Armenian villages significantly increased during this period. It wasn't a coincidence. Acting in the name of the Republic's authorities, uniformed, armed, and badged SPPU servicemen shamelessly committed crimes against Armenians and were covered up for by Azerbaijan's entire law enforcement system. This was the reason why the SPPU became the primary target of the Armenian underground's military campaigns during that period.

With the intensifying blockade, we were being cut off not only from Armenia, but from the outside world in general. The railroads were blocked – passenger service was cut first, followed by the freight trains. Up until that point, it had been possible to go to Yerevan by car, albeit with a military convoy. Now roads were blocked, and shortages of food, industrial goods, and fuel soon followed.

Shielded by the USSR internal troops, the authorities took control of the Stepanakert airport, the last remaining link to Armenia. The number of flights from Stepanakert was cut drastically, and the airport was put under the control of Azerbaijan's SPPU. Any young male adult flying to Yerevan could be arrested. Moreover, Azerbaijan's authorities had a plan to close the airport. Under the guise of building new housing for the Meskhetian Turk refugees from Central Asia, the nearby Azeri village of Khojalu was being expanded in the direction of the airport all the way to its runway. This would make the airport inoperable, as it would be too close to residential buildings. Enormous resources were dedicated to the construction project.

Karabakh was being completely isolated. Helicopters were the only way to connect with the outside world.

* * *

There are two government buildings in Stepanakert's main square, separated by about 100 yards. Today, one houses the president's office, and the other houses the Nagorno-Karabakh Cabinet of Ministers. During Soviet times, these were the headquarters of the Central Committee of the oblast Communist Party and the Oblast Council of People's Deputies.

At that time, the Republican Organizational Committee occupied the offices formerly belonging to Volsky's committee at the Communist Party headquarters. The Executive Committee of the officially defunct Council of People's Deputies continued to operate in the building next door. The Executive Committee was chaired by Leonard Petrosian⁴⁹, and Oleg Yesayan⁵⁰ was his First Deputy. Both power structures coexisted in parallel – one was outlawed by them, while the other was categorically rejected by us.

None of us ever visited the Organizational Committee's building, and they never came to us. The commandants tried to establish contact between us, but unsuccessfully: we viewed Polyanichko and his "committee" as the enemy, and they saw us in the same light. The Communist Party building was cordoned off with barbed wire, with reinforced checkpoints installed and the SPPU brought in for security. The entire grounds were meticulously guarded day and night, and one couldn't enter the building without a special pass. They sat there in complete isolation, afraid to go into town. They came in and out under the protection of armored military vehicles. From that building, Polyanichko's "committee" planned all operations to crush the national liberation movement of the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians.

During that time, operations to "enforce the passport regime in the state of emergency zone" were carried out on a massive scale. They were ordered by the Organizational Committee, planned by the Commandant's Office, and carried out by Soviet internal troops and Azerbaijan's SPPU. In essence, these were raids, during which troops encircled villages, searched all houses, and checked residents, trying to find weapons and combatants. Of course, these raids took place exclusively in our villages, as it was assumed that only Armenians could be militants. Below are the reports of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs cited from Victor Krivopuskov's book Rebellious Karabakh. During those years, Krivopuskov served as the chief of staff of the operative investigative unit of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs in the NKAO.

In 1990, we carried out 160 military operations to enforce the passport regime and implement the June 25, 1990 Order of the president of the USSR "on prohibiting the formation of illegal armed units and confiscation of unregistered weapons." Of these 160 operations, 156 took place in towns and villages inhabited entirely by Armenians.

Every such operation invariably ended with mass arrests, with no justification required. As a rule, those arrested were people selected at random who had nothing to do with the self-defense force. Our fighters knew they were being hunted and took precautions, rarely getting caught.

Those arrested were handed over to Azerbaijan's law enforcement and incarcerated in Azerbaijan's prisons without the right to a defense. By that time, ethnic strife and mutual hatred had reached a point where prison guards began lashing out at Armenian prisoners by harassing and torturing them. (There was another reason that had encouraged arrests – money. Frequently, relatives had to pay a ransom for a prisoner's release.)

During the same period, the Commandant's Office had established control over roads inside the NKAO. Checkpoints were installed everywhere, and it was hard to get around them, even on village dirt roads. To ensure the free and discreet movement of people and weapons, we constructed numerous access roads to bypass Azeri villages and checkpoints. We restored old abandoned roads and built new ones, clearing obstacles and compacting the ground with tractors. In fact, we created an alternative road system, thanks to which we were able to get from Stepanakert to the farthest regional center, Hadrut, circumventing all checkpoints.

In response, the military altered their tactics, relocating checkpoints to new and unexpected locations. But this didn't work for very long – although it was small, Karabakh was quite densely populated, and the local residents quickly figured out new checkpoint locations by following the movements of armored personnel carriers and police SUVs. The news then spread around the neighborhoods, and within several minutes, every car passing by was warned of the checkpoint ahead. Drivers then passed the information all across the region. As a result, it was pretty hard to catch our militia groups off guard.

The rules of guerilla warfare worked in our favor. We were in an environment that supported us but was hostile toward them. It gave us an enormous advantage.

Friends and Enemies

In order to withstand the intensifying pressure, we tried to boost our military capabilities and minimize losses by establishing contacts and streamlining cooperation with the Soviet military. We had good relations with some of the regional commandants and senior officers of the USSR internal troops. The Soviet military was deployed, following orders to respond to a flash point. They had no reason to be hostile towards us, and we felt the same towards them. The military was aware of the temporary nature of their deployment, as their rotations occurred every six months. They also saw that the nation was in complete chaos, and the Soviet Union was nearing its end. In that situation, they had no reason to be particularly zealous or make enemies among the people who had nothing against them and could take revenge on them. It was easier to serve the six months quietly and go back home. Many officers, particularly those in the middle ranks, had genuine sympathy for us, liked us, and endeavored to assist us. In their hearts, they didn't approve of the actions of the Organizational Committee, and some even tried to thwart them to whatever extent they could.

Sergey Kontsevenko, head of the oblast KGB, was one of the first security officers we established good relations with from the very start. Leonard Petrosian was the first to get close to him. Leonard noticed that he was a reasonable man, didn't hold any prejudices against us, and was loyal toward us. Through Leonard, we set up a meeting initiated by Kontsevenko. Even I felt suspicious about it.

Outside of town, we had restaurants where people went to eat kebobs and spend time talking and relaxing. We met in one of these restaurants. Kontsevenko said at once, "Guys, I didn't volunteer to come here. I don't want to work against you. I sympathize with you, and I am ready to help you." This is how our cooperation began – which, of course, we didn't advertise. Our friendship with Kontsevenko perhaps saved lives, maybe even mine.

* * *

We knew that the authorities were fed up with us and could take extreme measures against us. Provocations by Azerbaijan's security services became more frequent, and all the movement leaders began carrying weapons.

I was still under the cover of legislator immunity. At some point, I was even elected to the Presidium of Armenia's Supreme Council, which I never got to attend, but it had become harder to officially arrest me. Nevertheless, military personnel from the Commandant's Office routinely visited my home with summonses, and once, they even paid a visit to my wife at her workplace – the sanitary-epidemiological center – demanding her to immediately disclose my whereabouts. Never losing her composure, Bella acted surprised, saying, "Wow, I would like to know myself! I haven't seen him for several months. Please let me know if you find him."

At the time, Kontsevenko warned me, "Robert, be careful. A special group has come to see Polyanichko. They've been ordered to kill the movement's leaders. They have a list of names and a plan of operations. Corpses will be dumped on the Armenian border. Armenians will be blamed for eliminating the vicious extremists themselves. Your name is at the top of the list." We heard the warning, but continued to operate normally, taking extra precautions. I modified my movement routes so that no one could predict where I would be by studying my habits. My daily routine remained almost the same, but I changed the place where I would spend the night from time to time. I remember that Serzh Sargsian and I slept in my brother's garage for a couple of months. Once, I took my older son Sedrak there so we could spend at least some time together.

We were fearless. You get used to danger quickly: they hunt us, we hunt them – it is what it is. Besides, we knew that it would have been very hard for an outside group to organize our assassinations in our own town, which we controlled, and whose population supported us. So I think that, in the end, they simply didn't dare to do it.

* * *

The head of the Internal Affairs Administration, Vladimir Kovalev, sent in from Moscow, was a very interesting and complicated man. He was short and physically fit. He was energetic and brave – while the Organizational Committee hid behind a barbed wire fence, he drove his Niva around town alone. He ran laps at the stadium every morning, proving to everyone that he had nothing and no one to fear. There were rumors that he underwent some kind of special training during his service in Afghanistan.

He began to work with zeal as soon as he arrived in Stepanakert. This created new headaches for us. We tried to establish contact with him, at least to have a meeting as a start. But nothing worked – he categorically declined any communication with us.

So we had to change our tactics.

One day, when Kovalev was going somewhere in his Niva, a small truck started to follow him. It was a standard closed-body truck with gates in the back, so Kovalev didn't suspect anything. Near the stadium, the truck abruptly passed him on the bridge. Kovalev followed the truck at full speed, despite the truck's slowing down. When the distance between the vehicles reached 30 to 45 feet, the back gates suddenly opened, and a long burst of automatic gunfire hit the Niva's windshield at point blank range. Surviving something like that seemed absolutely impossible. But, not only did Kovalev survive, he wasn't even hit by a single bullet! His incredible reaction time, composure, and, presumably, his Afghanistan experience were what saved him. Short and nimble, as soon as he saw that the back gates of the truck had opened, he ducked and took cover down in the space under the steering wheel by the pedals. The car cleared the rest of the bridge, then swerved into a ditch and stalled.

Within several days, Kovalev himself asked for a meeting either through Kontsevenko or Krivipuskov; I can't recall. We agreed.

We arranged to meet at the Hamza restaurant, near Stepanakert. Once again proving his bravery, Kovalev came alone to a place that was unknown to him. Serzh Sargsian and I greeted him and invited him to share a meal. The meal wasn't incredibly lavish, but kebobs and mulberry vodka were served. To my surprise, Kovalev turned out to be a decent and reasonable man. He told us straightforwardly, "Guys, I am not the enemy. I was sent to serve here, and I will do so diligently. I have no intention of fighting you – this is your land." From what he told us, we understood that the repressions against Armenians were not his idea and that Polyanichko didn't like him too much because of his integrity and firmness of character – the very traits we appreciated in Kovalev. Overall, we had a good, honest conversation. Kovalev didn't touch the mulberry vodka, however – I think he wasn't a drinker in general. We concluded the meeting on an almost friendly note, exchanging sincere handshakes before parting.

Afterwards, he helped us many times. Thanks to him, we were able to free several of our most valuable fighters, who had been arrested by Azerbaijan's SPPU. Sadly, he died in a helicopter crash in November of 1991.

* * *

By then, we had formed armed detachments and demonstrated that – besides organizing public rallies – we were also able to blow up bridges and communications. The Karabakh people had made it clear that, in addition to making requests to the government, they were also ready to fight it, to assert their rights and freedom. The Karabakh people demonstrated that they could punish their enemies and had the means, and the will, to do so.

As a result of these actions, the number of those who wanted to fight us decreased substantially, making it easier for us to work with the Soviet military personnel. New commandants in the state of emergency zone contacted us immediately upon arrival – they knew the rules of the game from their predecessors. They also supplied us with special passes required to get around the oblast. We wrote our own names on the blank letterheads that were stamped and signed by the commandants.

Their motivation for cooperating with us was simple: When you are in charge of personnel in a military group, you want to avoid any incidents, have your men serve peacefully, and go back home safely. The most reliable way to make this happen is to establish good relations with those who could cause you headaches. I hope that dealing with us was pleasant for them as well – we became friends with some of the military men and continued our relations even after their tour of duty in Karabakh was over.

* * *

Good relationships with the officers of the Soviet internal troops and the national security service allowed us to soften the consequences of their actions to some extent. Whenever our people were arrested, we managed to have prisoners transferred to hospitals with the help of the Soviet security officers and to "evacuate" them later, at night. Often, our associates really needed medical attention – many of them were brutally beaten – but it was hard to get General Vladislav Safonov's⁵¹ (I will say more about him later) permission to be hospitalized. This was especially true when Safonov realized that no matter how good the guards were, the hospital room would be empty in the morning. No witnesses. No one saw anything – no one entered the hospital room, and no one walked out of the hospital…

There were instances when our fighters got caught by Azerbaijan's special police and Soviet special forces and were transferred to Baku's notorious Bailovo prison. In such cases, we could get them out only through a prisoner exchange. This meant that we needed to capture someone important enough so that Azerbaijan would be interested in exchanging prisoners.

That's how we freed Samvel Babayan, the future commander of our army.

Samvel was arrested on June 1, 1991, upon his return to Stepanakert from the Hadrut region, where he had been forming a battalion to liberate the village of Khandzadzor. Of course, it was our failure: he was captured in the town center, right under our noses. Samvel spent six months in different prisons – first in Shushi and then in Baku's Bailovo. After he was transferred to Shushi again, Azerbaijan's Deputy Prosecutor General, Shukyur Abbasov, visited Stepanakert on a working trip. We didn't have anything against him personally, and his colleagues from our prosecutor's office said that he was a decent man. But we needed someone important, and it was our only chance to get Samvel out of jail. Abbasov belonged to a prominent and influential family, so our chances for a successful prisoner exchange were high.

A young guy named Ashot – a member of the resistance and a friend of Samvel's brother, Karo – worked as a driver for our prosecutor, Robert Hayrapetian. Ashot told his friends about the arrival of a VIP. Within the hour, Karo's group had broken into the prosecutor's office headquarters, kidnapped Abbasov, and fled to a mountain village.

It took us almost two months to negotiate the exchange. By that time, Samvel had already played an essential role in forming and commanding our armed battalions, so I personally negotiated with the Soviet military officers. We presented them with an entire list of imprisoned Armenians so as not to reveal who was the most valuable to us among the prisoners. We finally agreed on the terms and set a date.

Usually, prisoner exchanges were facilitated by the Soviet military and took place in a cemetery on the border with Aghdam. It was getting dark by the time we got there in our military SUV. Two armored personnel carriers (APCs) – one on each side, about 100 yards apart – were already waiting at the prearranged location. I climbed onto one of them, then both APCs started to move and stopped as they got near each other.

With difficulty, the servicemen pulled a heavy man out of the second APC like a cork from a wine bottle. The stout man, who turned out to be the captive prosecutor's brother, had probably gotten stuck in the narrow hatch because he was also wearing a bulletproof vest. They approached us, peeked into the car to make sure that we had brought the right person, and suddenly began to complain:

"Wait, you want 10 of your men in exchange for one of ours?"

"Well, look at him, he is pretty chubby!" I joked. (Samvel's friends had fed Abbasov pretty well in the village.) "He's well over 300 pounds. Now look at our guys, they're emaciated and barely standing…"

"Alright, take your men," they said.

"Wait," I answered. "I also have to make sure that you brought the right men."

I climbed onto the APC and looked through the hatch. It was dark inside; the dome light was too dim, and I could hardly see anything inside the APC. I used my flashlight trying to find Samvel, and I didn't. I said, "Wait a minute, not everyone is here!"

Then one of the prisoners whispered into my ear, "Everything is ok, it's me, I'm here!"

It was indeed Samvel. I didn't recognize him at first – he had changed a lot in prison. He had lost weight and looked as if he'd been roughed up. But despite all that, he had held up pretty well. Samvel had lucked out – those who arrested him simply didn't realize who he was. Otherwise, we would never have seen him again.

* * *

Thanks to our relations with the heads of security agencies, run-ins with the Soviet military declined significantly. We were warned of impending raids, and it worked well for both sides. We had enough advance notice to get our people out of the danger zone and didn't have to plan release operations later. Moreover, they carried out their duties and looked good in front of their bosses.

Of course, we couldn't have constructive relations every time and with everyone. Some fought us very fiercely. I am sure that this fierceness was based on generous material support – money and gifts. The country was falling apart, there were shortages of goods everywhere, and the future didn't look all that bright. Under those conditions, not everyone had enough moral character to withstand temptation. We couldn't outbid Azerbaijan – we simply didn't have that kind of money. But we could vividly demonstrate the law of physics which states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. We showed that the zeal directed at us would not go unpunished, and that a lot more than money would be lost in the fight. I once read this phrase somewhere: "A bullet changes a lot in your head, even if it hits you in your rear end."

The second most hated person in Karabakh after Polyanichko was General Safonov. No one could stand him – even his fellow Soviet Commandants. Military men don't mince words; their mildest descriptions of Safonov were "scum" and "corrupt jackass." It was a miracle that he made it out of Karabakh alive. I don't know what happened to him afterwards or how he could have lived with himself after the things he had done. Luckily, there weren't many men like Safonov in the military.

When Safonov served his tour of duty and left, he was replaced by Kosolapov – a commandant whom I recall only by his last name. However, I remember General Nikolay Zhinkin (who replaced Kosolapov) very well. He turned out to be an interesting, charming, and likable person. We established a warm and trusting relationship with him. He was horrified by what was happening around him. He had a highly negative opinion of Polyanichko. He called him an "absolutely immoral character" and ignored the Organizational Committee's orders as much as he could.

* * *

I was asked once whether I had ever met Polyanichko. "I've never seen him, not even through a riflescope," I joked. The head of the Organizational Committee always had his office window curtains shut. We were after him for a long time. He survived several assassination attempts only because something would go wrong each time.

The third attempt was the boldest. Polyanichko was having a meeting at his office on the third floor, discussing "Operation Ring."⁵² The operation had recently been suspended, and the meeting participants discussed the way forward. Everyone responsible for the operation was there – the heads of all the security agencies were gathered at Polyanichko's office.

As the building was behind a barbed wire fence, guarded by Soviet Special Forces, the participants felt perfectly safe and engaged in a leisurely discussion sitting around the conference table. Then, right in the middle of that, they heard a loud rumble – a projectile flew into the room, shattering the window and exploding right above Polyanichko's head! It was a powerful blast. Plaster crumbled down, dust filled the room, and smoke engulfed it. Everyone in the office was left deafened, and many were shell-shocked.

Thanks to precise calculations, the grenade launcher had been fired right under the nose of the guards – about 15 yards away from the building's checkpoint. Karen, who made the shot, took advantage of the landscape: the Oblast Communist Party Committee building was at an elevation, and he sat on the low ground. The steep slope in front of the building hid him from the checkpoint, and he wasn't noticed until the very moment he fired. However, the choice of weapons and ammunition was limited in Karabakh, so we used what we had – a high-explosive anti-tank (HEAT) shell. These are effective against tanks and armored vehicles as their high-heat shaped charges cut through armor, but they don't produce a lot of shrapnel. The participants in the meeting lucked out – the shell had cut a hole in the ceiling immediately above Polyanichko's chair, and the rest of it dispersed without hitting anyone. Everyone was terrified, however. What if another shell was about to hit? No one knew what was going on. People crawled out of the room blind, unable to see anything in all the dust and smoke.

Soldiers rushed out of the checkpoint in total confusion: "What happened? Who fired the shot? From where?!" By then, Karen – who was physically fit – had already run down to his getaway car. No one pursued him – the Soviet soldiers hadn't really planned on risking their lives in a foreign war.

Two participants of that meeting, Kontsevenko and Kovalev, later described to me what had happened inside the room. They made jokes and chuckled, so even if they were upset with us at first, that quickly changed.

Polyanichko left us unscathed, but he made enemies wherever he went due to his excessive zeal and complete lack of moral character. After Karabakh, he went to the North Caucasus on a similar mission, where the locals finally got him.

Incidentally, not too long ago, I was reading a book about those years and came across summaries of Polyanichko's reports to Baku. I was amazed that, in one of his briefs, he proudly stated our willingness to make concessions – allegedly, we had made such a decision during the session of the Oblast Council of People's Deputies. It was a blatant lie – there had been no such decision, and there could not have been one. I guess, sitting behind the barbed wire, the head of the Organizational Committee simply lied to his superiors to demonstrate that he worked hard and even produced results.

Operation Ring

This operation, which was unprecedented in Soviet history, commenced at the end of April 1991. Essentially, it was the Azerbaijan Special Purpose Police Units' campaign to forcibly deport the Armenian population from Karabakh. Soviet troops aided in the campaign, and Soviet military hardware was used. Azerbaijan had decided that, by doing this, it could solve the "Armenian issue" once and for all. Judging by the subsequent developments and its scale, the operation had been implemented with the approval of Moscow, which had completely lost the ability to protect Armenian enclaves within Azerbaijan. Officially, of course, no one spoke of the deportations; the plan that Ayaz Mutallibov⁵³ presented to Moscow outlined "a large-scale operation to confiscate illegal firearms from the Armenian population of the NKAO and the adjacent regions." On April 27, he spoke on Azerbaijan's state television and urged them to "immediately solve Azerbaijan's Armenian population issue," and said that if Moscow was unable to do it, "the republic had enough capabilities and resources of its own."

The operation began in Northern Karabakh. Its first victims were the villages of Getashen and Martunashen. The aggressors used the following tactic: first, the Soviet troops would be withdrawn from the village so that they would not interfere with the punitive measures, and then Azerbaijan's special police attacked. Along with the military raids, electricity and phone service were cut to the targeted village to make life unbearable. The local self-defense unit repulsed the first attack on Getashen. After that, Azerbaijan began massively shelling the village with heavy artillery. The army entered the village on the following day and began deporting its population without any resistance. People were captured, thrown into buses, and taken to the Armenian border, where no one expected them. They were not allowed to take anything with them, not even clothes. Young males were treated differently – since every one of them was seen as a potential guerilla fighter, they were arrested and thrown into jail.

Several villages in Northern Karabakh – Manashid, Erkej, Buzlukh, the south of Hadrut – were ethnically cleansed in this way. In total, the populations of 26 Armenian villages and towns were deported, and their villages were pillaged by looters from nearby Azeri villages. Ten thousand Armenians were left homeless, more than 600 men were kept hostage, and more than 100 people lost their lives in the operation. I think that if the Soviet Union hadn't fallen, Azerbaijan would have been able to fully implement its plan, step by step.

We tried to stop the deportations in the region south of Hadrut, but failed. We weren't ready to engage in a direct confrontation with the army yet. In Northern Karabakh, the defense units of the Shahumian region took the full brunt of the attacks, but the forces were too unequal. The Soviet military units deployed in NKAO were not used in Operation Ring, so our contacts inside the military didn't help either.

Armenians tried to draw the maximum amount of attention to these events. In every issue of Literaturnaya Gazeta (a prominent Russian newspaper, published in Moscow and circulated nationally), Zori Balayan wrote of the genocide that was taking place in Karabakh. All of our journalist friends who supported us published articles. The People's Deputies, especially the democratic faction, tried to influence the situation through their channels. The Russian intelligentsia in Moscow – writers, journalists, scientists, and economists, who came together to help us – formed the Karabakh Committee of Russian Intelligentsia (KRIK – which also means "shout" in Russian). KRIK's main goal was to break the information blockade around Artsakh.

In mid-May, at Manezhnaya Square, the heart of Moscow, the Karabakh Committee organized a public rally protesting the violation of the rights of Armenians in Azerbaijan. In the end, we caused quite a stir, with foreign press and international organizations joining in, and the operation was halted. I think that Baku took a break to try to somehow justify the mayhem. Alternatively, they might have simply achieved their pre-coordinated goal with Moscow – to deport Armenians around the NKAO perimeter – and stopped.