Fariz Ismailzade

Director of Advanced Foreign Service Program

Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy 

Editorial Note:  January 20, 1990, was a turning point in the history of Azerbaijan and indeed in the fate of the entire USSR.  On that date, Mikhail Gorbachev ordered 26,000 Soviet troops into Baku in order to try to save the communist order there.  This attack, which left more than a hundred dead and many hundred more wounded had exactly the opposite effect.  It destroyed whatever emotional links Azerbaijanis had to the Soviet system and paved the way for the restoration of their independence.

 

In its report on Black January, Human Rights Watch noted that the violence used by the Soviet Army on the night of January 19-20 was so out of proportion to the resistance offered by Azerbaijanis as to constitute an exercise in collective punishment.  Since Soviet officials have stated publicly that the purpose of the intervention of Soviet troops was to prevent the ouster of the Communist-dominated opposition, the punishment inflicted on Baku by Soviet soldiers may have been intended as a warning to nationalists, not only in Azerbaijan, but in the other republics of the Soviet Union.

 

Some of the Azerbaijanis who died on that terrible night are buried in the Alley of Martyrs on a high hill overlooking Baku.  Every year, Azerbaijani leaders and ordinary Azerbaijanis mark this date by putting flowers on their graves and recalling the contribution they made to the independence the Azerbaijani people now enjoy.  Below is a reflection on what such commemorations mean by Fariz Ismailzade of the Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy.

  

January 20th, the anniversary of the Soviet effort to block Azerbaijan’s drive for independence, is one of the most significant days in the year for its people.  This year, when I walked through the memorial to that event with 26 new recruits to Azerbaijan’s diplomatic service, I experienced a strange mix of feelings.  

 

On the one hand, the government’s renovation of the Alley of Martyrs reinforced my conviction that my country is on the right course.  But on the other, looking at the faces of those young people accompanying me and then at the faces on the memorials to those who died, I was struck that these two groups have a lot in common, but if the latter sacrificed their lives for the cause of independence, the former are in a remarkable position to take full advantage of what those who gave so much would want them to do.

For me, as for most of us, it is very difficult to understand the circumstances under which one might sacrifice his or her life.  But it is clear to me now that the cause must lie in something bigger than one’s own life.  That is what the young people whose faces stare out at passers by from the plinths on the Alley of Martyrs possessed.

 

On January 20, 1990, Soviet troops sought to destroy the Popular Front and to terrify ordinary Azerbaijanis.  They wanted a return to the repression of the past rather than allowing people to move forward toward freedom.  And they killed at least 160 Azerbaijani men and women, people of all nationalities, races and religions.  Hundreds more were wounded, including all too many children, women and the elderly who were unable to run from the guns quickly enough.  The hospitals were full of victims, and the republic was descending into chaos.      

In looking back now, we can see that January 20th was not only a political disaster for the Soviet regime but also a pathetic attempt to preserve the life of a collapsing empire, one that echoed earlier efforts by Moscow in Hungary in 1956, Prague in 1968, and so many other places.  But on January 20th, this happened to my republic, destroying any hope that the Soviet regime could or would address the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict or provide Azerbaijanis with the freedom they now have.

Nineteen years have now passed since that day, a day universally condemned by people of good will around the world.  The Soviet Union is no more.  Its tanks have left.  And Azerbaijan is independent.  

 

Every year Azerbaijanis pause on this date to remember, but like my experience at the Alley of Martyrs this year, more and more of them have come to view that date not only as a national tragedy and thus day of mourning but also as a day of heroism on the part of the Azerbaijani people in the face of state terrorism.  That is how it should be, I think.  Americans found their heroes quickly after September 11, 2001.  It has taken Azerbaijanis longer.  But we have gotten then and now we too have found out heroes, the people who gave up their lives and those like my young colleagues who are living the dream those who sacrificed their own lives made possible.