Black Garden : Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War

Nablyudatelei  [Through the eyes of independent observers], 45–46. Grigory 
Kharchenko said that the policeman fired his gun after slipping against a car 
door. The deputy head of the KGB, Filip Bobkov, says that Hajiev worked in the 
Agdam vineyards; Vasilievsky says he worked in a machine-tool plant. Bobkov 
blames the death of Bakhtiar Uliev on a shot fired by an Armenian. Filip Bob­
kov, KGB i Vlast’ [The KGB and power] (Moscow: Veteran MP, 1995), 295–296. 
12.  Rost, Armenian Tragedy, 16–18; Bobkov, op. cit., 296. The Russian poet 
Yevgeny Yevtushenko wrote a poem in praise of Abasova. 
13.  From a transcript of the all-day Politburo session devoted to Nagorny 
Karabakh on 3 March 1988, published in Soyuz Mozhno Bylo Sokhranit’ [It was 
possible to preserve the union], 22. 
14.  Interview with Muradian, 5 May 2000. Muradian’s high-up connec­
tions have stimulated speculation that he was working for the KGB. He of 
course denies it, although he does concede that one of his contacts was the Ar­
menian KGB chief Yuzbashian. It does seem unlikely that the KGB would have 
recruited someone who did such sustained damage to the Party, the Soviet 
Union—and ultimately to the KGB as well. 
15. Interview with Pashayeva, 14 December 2000. This is not her real 
name. She asked to be referred to by a pseudonym. 
16.  Interview with Babayan, 29 September 2000. 
17.  The letter at the head of the petition, written by the geologist Suren 
Aivazian, called on Gorbachev to attach not only Nagorny Karabakh but also 
the Azerbaijani region of Nakhichevan to Soviet Armenia. 
18.  The Caucasian Knot, 148, quoting the Armenian newspaper Haratch, 19 
November 1987. 
19.  A commonly repeated story in the region has it that Zhanna Galstian 
received a message of encouragement in Moscow by the Central Committee ex-
pert Vyacheslav Mikhailov. In interviews, Galstian and Mikhailov confirmed 
that they did meet, but neither said that any positive message was given. 
20. Interview with Balayan, 23 May 2000. Ironically, in 2000, both the 
Nairit plant and the nuclear power station were working again in Armenia, for 
environmental concerns had been entirely supplanted by economic ones. 
21.  Forgotten February, Yerevan Film Studios, 2000. 
22.  Interview with Manucharian, 4 May 2000. 

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301 
23.  Interview with Shugarian, 14 October 2000. 
24.  Interview with Gazarian, 22 October 2000. 
25.  Interview with Voskanian, 28 September 2000. 
26.  Quoted in The Karabagh File, 98. 
27.  The transcript of the Politburo session of 29 February 1988 is in the 
Russian Archives Project, State Archive Service of Russia/Hoover Institution 
(hereafter Russian Archives Project), Fond 89, Reel 1.003, 89/42/18. 
28.  Shakhnazarov, Tsena Svobody [The price of freedom], 206. Shakhnaza­
rov died in May 2001, aged seventy-six. 
29.  Interview with Kaputikian, 26 September 2000. 
30.  Kaputikian told the American reporter Robert Cullen that Gorbachev 
had mentioned a poem she had written in the 1950s called “Secret Ballot.” She 
said that she had written the poem during the Khrushchev thaw, “when there 
was a little renaissance.” Later in the meeting, Gorbachev had repeated the 
phrase when he promised reforms for Karabakh. Cullen, “Roots,” 65. 
NOTES TO CHAPTER 2 
1.  Russian Archives Project, Fond 89, Reel 1.003, 89/42/18. Bagirov died in 
October 2000 at the age of sixty-eight. 
2.  The English translation is by Audrey Alstadt, from the Journal of the In­
stitute of Muslim Minority Affairs 9, 2 (July 1988): 429–434. 
3.  The official was Grigory Kharchenko. 
4.  Interview with Musayev, 14 November 2000. 
5.  In July and December 1988, according to Musayev and Zardusht Ali­
zade. Two interviewees in Moscow, Vyacheslav Mikhailov and Grigory Khar­
chenko, also gave credit to Musayev. 
6.  The first two statistics were cited by the Soviet interior minister Viktor 
Vlasov in the Politburo session of 29 February 1988; the third comes from Gasan 
Sadykhov and Ramazan Mamedov, Armyane v Sumgaite [Armenians in Sum-
gait] (Baku: Shur, 1994), 31–32 
7.  This story was compiled from three conversations with past and present 
Sumgait residents: Eldar Zeynalov in Baku on 9 November 2000; Eiruz Mame­
dov in Sumgait on 24 November 2000; and Rafik Khacharian in Armenia on 15 
December 2000. 
8.  Unless specified otherwise, the account that follows is based on three 
sources: conversations in Sumgait itself on 24 November 2000; conversations in 
Kasakh, Armenia, with Sumgait Armenians on 15 December 2000; and The Sum-