Black Garden : Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War

gait Tragedy, ed. Shakhmuradian. 
9.  Two of the rioters put on trial later for murder, Zakir Rzaev and Azer 
Turabiev, both came from the Gukark region in northwest Armenia, according 
to V. Sarkisian, “Nastal li chas rasplaty?” [Has the hour of reckoning arrived?], 

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302 
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Kommunist  30 October 1988, reprinted in Glazami nezavisimykh nablyudatelei: 
[Through the eyes of independent observers], 68. 
10.  Konstantin Pkhakadze in The Sumgait Tragedy, 77. 
11.  This information comes from Grigory Kharchenko. 
12.  “USSR Deputy Prosecutor General: Two Inhabitants of Azerbaijan ‘Fell 
Victim to Murder,’” Baku Radio 1545GMT (1845 GMT in Baku), 27 February 
1988, as transcribed by BBC Monitoring. There has been much speculation as to 
why Katusev made a point of mentioning the two dead men. Possibly he was 
trying to intimidate the Armenians into curtailing their protests. Katusev com­
mitted suicide on 21 August 2000. According to the Interfax news agency, he 
was depressed after the death of his wife and son. 
13.  Zinaida Akopian in The Sumgait Tragedy, 191. 
14.  Konstantin Pkhakazde in The Sumgait Tragedy, 77. 
15.  Interview with Tagieva, 24 November 2000. 
16.  The book, edited by Samvel Shakhmuradian, was published in Russian 
(the language of the initial interviews) as Sumgaitskaya Tragediya in Yerevan in 
1989, and in English as The Sumgait Tragedy in 1990. 
17.  Samvel Shakhmuradian and his researchers were preparing a second 
volume of eyewitness accounts telling tales of resistance, but it was never 
published. 
18.  One explanation for the decision not to touch the television sets was 
that they were valuable and therefore good looting material. Another is that 
Soviet sets had a reputation for exploding. 
19.  The Sumgait Tragedy, 127. 
20.  This information comes from Famil Ismailov, who was a member of the 
Sumgait Komsomol at the time. He noted that the head of the Komsomol, Eldar 
Mamedov, was nonetheless expelled from the Party along with other officials. 
21.  Ignatieff, Blood and Belonging, 14. 
22.  Interview with Kharchenko, 4 December 2000. 
23.  From the Politburo session of 29 February 1988, as cited. 
24.  The leading Politburo conservative, Yegor Ligachev, says that the fact 
that restraint had led to mass bloodshed in Sumgait was used to justify the use 
of force during the crisis in the Georgian capital Tbilisi in April 1989. On that oc­
casion, troops were used earlier and killed twenty unarmed demonstrators. 
“The leitmotif of all the speeches [in the Politburo], which were received with 
approval, was to prevent ethnic conflict and more victims,” wrote Ligachev. 
“We had to learn a lesson from Sumgait—not to be late again.” Ligachev, Inside 
Gorbachev’s Kremlin, 154. 
25.  Angus Roxburgh, “Gorbachev in Desperate Dash to Resolve Armenian 
Crisis,” The Sunday Times, 6 March 1988. 
26.  The Caucasian Knot, 150. 
27. “Teper’ ya znayu chto chuvstvovali evrei Germanii v 1938 godu” 

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303 
[Now I know what the Jews of Germany felt in 1938], Krug, Tel Aviv, 23 July 
1989, reprinted in Glazami Nezavisimikh Nablyudatelei [Through the eyes of in-
dependent observers], 93–96. An Armenian source quotes Baku Radio from 27 
February 1993 as saying that a commission on the Sumgait events had posthu­
mously exonerated Akhmedov and called him a “hero”; Harutiunian, Sobytiya 
[Events], V, 30. 
28.  These versions come from, in order, Lyudmila Harutiunian, Isa Gam­
bar, and Alexander Yakovlev. Yakovlev, who as a member of the Politburo could 
be expected to be well informed, said he had no firm evidence and proceeded 
to talk about how the KGB had organized the Vilnius events of 1991. It seemed 
as though he was telescoping the two events and retrospectively interpreting 
the events of 1988 in the light of what happened in 1991. 
29.  From  Elm, the weekly of Azerbaijani Academy of Sciences, 13 May 
1989, reprinted in The Caucasian Knot, 188–189. It should be pointed out that 
this article was so odious that the Armenians have reprinted it for their own 
purposes. 
30.  I visited Imanov and saw his films in Baku in June 2000, in the mistaken 
belief that they were objective documentaries. Imanov virtually accused me of 
being a spy. I therefore decided not to use any material from his films. 
31.  The figures come from a report by the Secretariat of the Central Com­
mittee on 11 June 1988. Russian Archives Project, Fond 89, Reel 1.003, 89/33/11. 
32.  Muslimzade is now a successful businessman. He declined to give an 
interview, saying he did not want to “return to the past.” 
33.  On 10 May 1988, the Sumgait Town Party Committee condemned the 
leadership and employees of the Azerbaijan Pipe-Rolling Plant for the fact that 
“during the days of the complex situation, production of axes, knives and other 
objects which could be used by hooligan elements took place in the shops of the 
plant.” As reported in the local newspaper, Kommunist Sumgaita, 13 May 1988.