A joint session of the Nagorno-Karabakh regional and the Shaumyan district councils took place in the Karabakh capital of Stepanakert twenty years ago – on September 2, 1991. It proclaimed the independence of the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic (NKR) in the borders of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region (NGAR), the Shaumyan District and part of the Khanlar district. Stepan Grigoryan, an active participant in the Karabakh national-liberation movement, member of the Karabakh Committee at the Yerevan Physics Institute, deputy of the Armenian Supreme Soviet in 1990-1995, one of Armenia’s most prominent political scientists and head of the Analytical Centre on Globalisation and Regional Cooperation relayed these events to Novosti correspondent Gamlet Matevosyan.
Question: Why was the independence of the NKR proclaimed in September 1991?
Answer: To answer this question we should recall what happened in the late 1980s. Perestroika intensified democratic attitudes in major Soviet cities and evoked hopes for the restoration of justice regarding the many national minorities in the country’s outskirts. Thus, Armenians who were in the majority in the NGAR demanded its return to the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR) and the restoration of usurped political, economic, and social rights.
These demands were strong enough in Armenia to produce a powerful Armenian national movement in February 1988. This political force broke the Armenian Communist Party’s long-standing monopoly on power. Since its birth, the Karabakh movement carried a powerful democratic impetus. Armenia was the first Soviet republic to adopt a new law on elections in the middle of 1989. It allowed every Armenian citizen to run for the elections to the Armenian Supreme Soviet by collecting signatures of other citizens (before, the monopoly to nominate candidates belonged to the Armenian communists) and have their own elected representatives at all constituencies.
In May 1990, Armenia held free democratic elections to its Supreme Soviet (now the National Assembly of Armenia) that allowed it to form a multi-party parliament. It was this parliament that adopted laws on the freedom of the media, on parties and public organizations, and freedom of religion. It also endorsed a package of laws for the transition to the market economy.
Regrettably, the communist Kremlin reacted negatively to all initiatives set forth by Armenia and Nagorny Karabakh. The Kremlin fully controlled the media and used it to flare up ethnic hate in the South Caucasus. Many remember reports on the Karabakh conflict in the Vremya TV program and articles in the newspapers Pravda and Izvestia. It was impossible to understand anything from them except that “extremists are staging rallies and marches” and that “people of different nationalities were killed” during clashes. This was reported at the time when peaceful rallies of several hundred thousand people gathered on Freedom Square in Yerevan in 1988-1990. Apart from the Nagorny Karabakh issue, they discussed the democratization of Armenian society, freedom of speech, human rights, and fair and free elections.
According to the established Soviet, or rather imperial tradition, the Kremlin decided to control the situation by turning different ethnic, religious, and social groups against each other. When the extraordinary session of the NGAR Soviet of People’s Deputies made a political decision on February 20, 1988 to request the region’s withdrawal from the Azerbaijan SSR and inclusion into the Armenian SSR, it was the Kremlin personified by the CPSU Central Committee Politburo rather than Azerbaijan that had a sore reaction to it and later resorted to force. It is enough to recall Operation Ring that special units of the Soviet Interior Ministry forces held with the use of armor under the pretext of fighting illegal armed formations in May-August 1991 in Armenian villages in the north of Nagorny Karabakh, the Shaumyan district and the Getashen sub-region of Azerbaijan. This operation led to the deportation of Armenians from these villages.
These actions consolidated the positions of the forces in Armenia and Nagorny Karabakh that did not believe in the communist government’s ability to resolve the Karabakh issue in a peaceful and fair way or to reform the political system. Therefore, the Supreme Soviet of Armenia adopted a declaration of independence on August 23, 1990, a year before the State Committee on the State of Emergency (GKChP) staged a coup. Its neighbors in the Caucasus passed similar documents a year later.
The GKChP coup could not change anything in the position of the new Armenian political elite with modern democratic views. Moreover, the events around the Nagorny Karabakh issue led to the exodus of Armenians from Azerbaijan after 1988. They showed the Kremlin’s inability and likely reluctance to resolve the extremely serious issues facing the nation.
There was a demonstrative difference in the approach of Armenia and Nagorny Karabakh. Stepanakert linked more hopes with the central power but after the Operation Ring and the end of the coup spearheaded by the Karabakh leaders with hopes that Moscow will resolve the Nagorny Karabakh issue.
Nagorny Karabakh decided to secede from the Azerbaijan SSR in full conformity with the Soviet Constitution. I’d like to mention one important fact that Baku wants to keep silent about. On August 30, 1991, the Azerbaijan Supreme Soviet adopted a resolution on restoring the political independence of the Azerbaijan Republic based on the proclamation of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (ADR), on May 28, 1918. The resolution makes modern Azerbaijan the legal successor of the ADR. But at that time Nagorny Karabakh was not part of the ADR. I think it wold be logical to assume that having proclaimed itself the legal successor of the ADR, Azerbaijan thereby agreed to Karabakh’s cessation. It’s important to also take into account the fact that the League of Nations declared Nagorny Karabakh a disputed territory in 1918.
Armenia was the only Soviet republic to gain its independence according to Soviet laws (a republic wishing to secede had to make notice about the start of the procedure a year in advance). During the coup, the new leaders of Armenia had their concerns but they were bent on holding a referendum on independence. It took place as planned on September 21, 1991, and 94% of Armenia’s population voted for its independence.
On December 10, 1991, in two months and a half and just a few days before the Soviet Union’s official disintegration, the overwhelming majority of the population in Nagorny Karabakh – 99.89% -- voted at a referendum for its complete independence from Azerbaijan. This event was followed by large-scale military actions, which, as a result, paved the way for Nagorny Karabakh’s independence, but this is a whole different story.
