Black Garden : Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War

February 1988 
An Armenian Revolt 
A SOVIET REBELS 
The crisis began in February 1988 in the depths of the Soviet Union. The 
central square of Stepanakert, a small but beautifully situated town in 
the mountains of the southern Caucasus, was a large open space, per­
fectly suited for public meetings. A large statue of Lenin (now removed) 
dominated the square with the neoclassical Regional Soviet building 
and a steep hill raking up behind it. A long flight of steps fell down to 
the plain of Azerbaijan below. 
On 20 February 1988, the local Soviet of the Nagorny Karabakh 
Autonomous Region of Azerbaijan—essentially a small regional par­
liament—sitting inside a concrete-and-glass building on the square, 
resolved as follows: 
Welcoming the wishes of the workers of the Nagorny Karabakh Au­
tonomous Region to request the Supreme Soviets of the Azerbaijani 
SSR and the Armenian SSR to display a feeling of deep understanding 
of the aspirations of the Armenian population of Nagorny Karabakh 
and to resolve the question of transferring the Nagorny Karabakh Au­
tonomous Region from the Azerbaijani SSR to the Armenian SSR, at 
the same time to intercede with the Supreme Soviet of the USSR to 
reach a positive resolution on the issue of transferring the region from 
the Azerbaijani SSR to the Armenian SSR.
1 
The dreary language of the resolution hid something truly revolution­
ary. Since 1921, Nagorny Karabakh had been an island of territory dom­
inated by Armenians inside the Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan. Essen­
tially, the local Armenian parliamentary deputies wanted the map of 
the Soviet Union redrawn and to see their region leave Soviet Azerbai-
10 

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F E B RUA RY   1 9 8 8 :  A N  A R M E N I A N   R E VO LT 
11 
jan and join Soviet Armenia. The USSR was already in the third year of 
rule by Mikhail Gorbachev, but it was still a frigid and orderly state. 
Gorbachev had proclaimed the doctrines of glasnost and perestroika, but 
they were still policies that the Communist Party regulated from above. 
The resolution by the Soviet in Nagorny Karabakh altered all this. By 
calling on Moscow to change the country’s internal borders, the Kara­
bakh Armenians were, in effect, making politics from below for the first 
time in the Soviet Union since the 1920s. 
A week before the Regional Soviet’s resolution, on Saturday, 13 Feb­
ruary, a group of Karabakh Armenians had staged another unprece­
dented event in Lenin Square: an unsanctioned political rally. Several 
hundred people gathered and made speeches calling for the unification 
of Karabakh with Armenia. Two or three rows of policemen surrounded 
the demonstrators, but they were local Armenians who had been tipped 
off in advance and allowed the protest to go ahead. The rally was timed 
to coincide with the return of a delegation of Karabakh Armenian artists 
and writers who had taken a petition to Moscow. The head of the re-
turning delegation, the local Armenian actress Zhanna Galstian, made 
the first speech to the assembled crowd. She spoke very briefly, saying 
that she felt happy “because by coming out here, the Karabakhi has 
killed the slave in himself.”
2 
The crowd chanted back the Armenian 
word “Miatsum!” or “Unity!” the one-word slogan that came to sym­
bolize their campaign. 
The organizers of the rally had every reason to be afraid. No one 
had organized political demonstrations in the Soviet Union in living 
memory. At least two of the activists later admitted that they had fully 
expected to be arrested.
3 
To ward off arrest, they had devised slogans 
that proclaimed that they were Soviet loyal citizens acting within the 
spirit of glasnost. Banners carried the slogan “Lenin, Party, Gorbachev!” 
In the course of these days in February 1988, many Soviet officials 
found that the ground under their feet was not as firm as they had be­
lieved. Members of the Communist Party hierarchy were openly dis­
agreeing with one another, and the leadership in Moscow quickly con­
cluded that it could not simply crush the dissenters by force. Practicing 
Gorbachev’s new spirit of tolerance, the Politburo told the Azerbaijani