Soviet army in Baku on January 19, which left dozens, possibly hundreds dead, was much more than an attempt to restore law and order.
The massive force of army, navy and KGB troops dispatched by the Kremlin to Azerbaijan was certainly intended to stop the brutal and senseless ethnic slaughter being waged between extremist groups of Azeris and Armenians: but it was also intended to beat down the rising Azerbaijan national movement, upholding the power of the Kremlin and its local agents, the largely discredited and corrupt Azerbaijan Communist Party.
The official Kremlin appeal for support from the peoples of Armenia and Azerbaijan referred to the 'tragic events" in Baku and other towns, in which "blood has been shed, and outrages and pogroms claimed human victims'. But it also significantly emphasised Moscow's fear that Groups of militants in both republics are being formed. The Holy of Holies - the state border of the USSR - is being violated'.
President Gorbachev himself, explaining on television the decision to send such a large army effectively to invade Azerbaijan, declared that Events took a particularly tragic turn in Baku. There were growing calls for the seizure of power by force. In this Gorbacher was echoing the demands of Central Committee hardliners and army political chief Lizicher, who had called for "tough measures'.
But while the old guard, echoing the traditional Brezhnevite and Stalinist attitude, reject any notion of a right of national minorities to self-determination - least of all the right to secede from the USSR - and regard the defence of Soviet borders (the "Holy of Holies') as a task to be accomplished by force wherever it is challenged, Gorbachev had until recently embraced a more progressive point of view. Only days earlier he had conceded to the mass Lithuanian Popular Front that the USSR would take steps to provide a legal mechanism for secession. It is not yet clear whether the intervention in Azerbaijan represents an isolated, bureaucratic response to the particular problems faced by the Kremlin, or a major retreat by Gorbachev from the more enlightened policy towards the nationalities issue which is an essential cornerstone of glasnost.
What is certain is that the attempt to solve this problem simply through military force will fail either to crush the Azeri nationalist movement or to ensure the long-term stability of the Soviet borders. Gone are the days when the Kremlin by Stalin's sheer terror and brute force could enforce its rule on a prisonhouse of nations. Unless a political solution is found, the Azerbaijan military adventure could prove many times more costly and politically destructive than even the invasion of Afghanistan: the nationalist backlash against Moscow's armed forces is already plain to see, as was the instant hostile response from women in Russia opposing the sending of troops under the slogan 'no more Afghanistans'. Any long-term occupation of Azerbaijan would require not only the call-up of reservists, but also the repression of opposition throughout the USSR: it would be the end of glasnost.
Since the latest flare-up in the centuries-old anatagonisms beSOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 21, February 1990
occupation! tween the Azeri and Armenian peoples of the region began in 1988, the Azerbaijan nationalists have formed their owa Popular Front, with a huge mass base of support clearly embracing most of the population. Mass rallies of up to 1 million at a time have been held each weekend for six months. Despite attempts by the Communist Party to sidetrack this movement by adopting some of the nationalists' demands and some of the methods of the worst and most reactionary elements (the Communist Party itself led the first anti-Armenian pogrom over the disputed enclave of NgornyKarabakh in 1988, before the Popular Front had even been formed), the movement is clearly out of their control: in the elections due to be held shortly, the nationalists seemed certain to sweep the Communist Party aside: this is a grave concern to Moscow.
There is no doubt that the case for self-determination, up to and including the right to secede if a majority wish it, applies equally strongly to the Azeri people as to the Lithuanians, though we can see why the oil-rich and strategically much more sensitive Azerbaijan should be even more alarming a possible loss for Moscow than Lithuania. What is also essential to insist upon, however, is that the interpretation of 'self-determination' which appears to animate the most extreme nationalist elements of the Azeri Popular Front is racist and chauvinist, designed to justify them riding roughshod over the legitimate rights of the beleagured Armenian minority in the enclave of Ngoray-Karabakh.
The Armenians, who called on Moscow to Intervene in their defence, also have rights - to live without fear of pogroms, and to national self-determination: indeed a political settlement in the region is only possible through the free association and mutual respect of self-governing and independent socialist republics.
While marxists argue that the Soviet state has a responsibility to defend the safety of endangered national minorities like the Armenians of Ngorny-Karabakh (and the Azeris of Nakhichevan), this must be with the involvement and consent of these minorities, and in the context of working towards a political settlement. This is impossible while a full-scale army of occupation is polarising opinion and strengthening the more extreme nationalist forces in Azerbaijan.
That is why we call for an end to the military occupation, while maintaining sufficient state forces to prevent further pogroms: and for immediate elections and a referendum on the issue of national self-determination to be held in Armenia, Azerbaijan and the two enclaves - whose populations should also have the right to decide which socialist republic they wish to relate to.
Many Azeri people know from bitter historical experience that there is little to be gained in seeking links with capitalist Iran, where their kith and kin have long been oppressed. As socialists, we believe that the best solution for the masses of Transcaucasia, as for the other oppressed nationalities in the USSR is a new free federation of independent socialist republics. Only this solution offers an antidote to the deadly poison of nationalism and clerical reaction, and an alternative to the brute, bureaucratic violence that has been the stock in trade of the Kremlin and helped create the crisis Gorbachev now faces.
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Teachers must get ready to
The rebellion in the Tory ranks against the poll tax was certainly smaller than many had predicted: however it points up the delicate path Thatcher is