Sumgait Pogrom - Pogroms

Pogroms

Warnings by Azerbaijanis sympathetic to their Armenian neighbors instructed them to leave their lights on the night of the 27th; those who shut it off were assumed to be Armenian. According to several Armenian witnesses and, later on, Soviet military personnel, alcohol and anasha, an Azeri term referring to narcotics, were also reported to have been brought in trucks and distributed to the Azeri crowds, although such accounts went unreported in the media.

The anti-Armenian pogrom and violence started on the evening of February 27, one week after the appeal of the Council of People's Deputies to unify Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia and according to many sources was a direct response to the Council's decision. The perpetrators were targeting the victims based solely on the ethnicity factor-being Armenian was the only criterion.

The apartments of Armenians (which were marked in advance) were attacked and the residents were indiscriminately murdered, raped, and mutilated by the Azerbaijani rioters. Rodina (Motherland) magazine (# 4, 1994, pp. 82–90) gave the following description of the events:

In peacetime, the Soviet Union had never experienced what happened then. Gangs of about ten to fifty or more people strolled through the city, broke windows, burned cars, but the main thing was that they were looking for Armenians.

A number of sources testify that the pogrom was organized in advance instead of being a spontaneous action. Prior to the start of the violence there were cobbles brought into the city to block its access and exit, the perpetrators had previously obtained the list of addresses of the Armenian residents of the city; many of the perpetrators were armed with metal rods, axes, hammers and other such tools obtained from metal factories in advance, as well as rifles and guns.

Quoting De Waal,

Many of the rioters, however, were carrying improvised weapons—sharpened pieces of metal casing and pipes from the factories, which would have taken time to prepare. This is one of many details that suggest that the violence was planned in at least a rudimentary fashion.

Further investigation also revealed that the roads to and from Sumgait were in advance blocked by groups of armed pogrom-makers who were stopping the transport and looking for Armenians in there. According to several Armenian witnesses and, later on, Soviet military personnel, alcohol and anasha (an Azeri term referring to narcotics) were also reported to have been brought in trucks and distributed to the Azeri crowds, although such accounts went unreported in the media. Viktor Loshak in his article "Sumgait. Epilogue of the Tragedy" published in Moscow News wrote: “It still needs to be identified, how it happened that on February 28 and 29 many phone lines in the city were cut off. Who is to be held responsible for those calming answers: “Stay at home”, whereas the people needed urgent evacuation?”