Reading the novel Stone Dreams on the 100th anniversary of the “Great Catastrophe”

Abstract

The article analyzes the Stone Dreams novel by the famous Azeri writer Akram Aylisli. Published in the Russian literary journal Druzhba Narodov (Friendship of the People) in December 2012, it condemned anti-Armenian pogroms in the republic and in the cities of Baku and Sumgait in particular at the end of the 1980s. The novel also refers to the massacre committed by Turkish troops on Christmas of 1919 in the midst of the Armenian Genocide, 1915–1923. At that time, Turkish commander Adif-bey ordered the mass execution of the Armenian population in the author’s home village Aylis (Agulis in Armenian). Almost all Armenians were killed, with the exception of a few young girls who by the late 1980s had turned into gray-haired women. The writer knew them when he was a young man, and the whole of his narrative was based on the stories that were told by the older people in the village. The novel caused mass outrage in Azerbaijan, for allegedly being one-sided. This included mass demonstrations in front of the author’s house and the public burning of his books.

Keywords:

• “Armenian Genocide”
• Armenia
• Azerbaijan
• Turkey
• “Akram Aylisli”
• “Stone Dreams”

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. He later withdrew this pledge due to international pressure (McGuinness 2013; “Situatsiia vokrug … ” 2013).

2. The Karabakh conflict began in February 1988, after the Regional Council of the Nagorno Karabakh Autonomous Oblast announced its decision to secede from the Azerbaijan SSR and join the Armenian SSR. The decision led to violence on both sides. In 1991, the War broke out between the two former Soviet republics, which would both become mono-ethnic states. In his novel, Aylisli described anti-Armenian pogroms that occurred in Baku at the end of the 1980s and the violence against the Armenian people that followed the Genocide of 1915 in Aylis, his home village. For the history and analyses of the conflict see de Waal 2013.

3. Stone Dreams still is not available in English. It is available in Russian (author’s own translation), Armenian, German, Italian and Czech. Also, Hungarian and Slovak translations are under way.

4. Safarov killed the sleeping Margarian with an axe while both officers were attending a NATO English language school in the Hungarian capital. In 2006, a Hungarian court sentenced Safarov to life in prison. In August 2012, he was transferred to Azerbaijan in order to serve out his sentence in his home country, but upon his return to Baku he was given a hero’s welcome and an official pardon by Azeri President Ilham Aliyev. There were also rumors of a secret oil deal between Azerbaijan and Hungary (BBC 2012; Kendzior 2012).

5. Earlier Aylisli printed 40 copies of his book (comprising the whole trilogy) and sent them to his close friends and colleagues. Later on, only Stone Dreams was published.

6. The number of Armenians who lived in Baku on the eve of the conflict is not quite clear. According to the late Irina Mosesova, an expert on the Karabakh crises and ethnic cleansing in Baku at the end of the 1980s and the early 1990s, a majority of the people in Baku were Armenian. She claimed that 250,000–400,000 people in the Azeri capital were ethnic Armenians. According to the last Soviet census in 1979, the city had 530,000 Azeris, almost 230,000 Russians, 167,000 Armenians, around 23,000 Jews, and nearly 63,000 people of other nationalities. (Goskomstat SSSR 1989, 39). It is clear that by January 1990, the city’s large Armenian population had been cleansed – murdered or forced to leave – and many members of other ethnic groups followed in their wake. By 1994, according to the UNHCR, Armenia had around 294,000 refugees; the rest had moved to other countries in the Commonwealth of Independent States (UNHCR 1994). Today, almost the entire Armenian population in Azerbaijan, with the exception of those in Karabakh, has disappeared, and many other ethnicities followed in their footsteps. The first census conducted in independent Azerbaijan in 1999 revealed that only 378 Armenians remained in the city after the waves of violence, murder, and pogroms (Ethnic Composition of Azerbaijan 1999) (see also Mamedov 2014a).

7. The 2001 census showed that only 30 Azeris had stayed in Armenia, and Armenia’s Muslim Kurd population also left (Republic of Armenia 2004).

8. Again, according to the last Soviet census of 1979, Baku had 530,000 Azeris, almost 230,000 Russians, 167,000 Armenians, around 23,000 Jews, and nearly 63,000 people of other nationalities (Goskomsat SSSR 1989, IV, Part 1, Book 3, 39) By the end of the 1980s, prior to the conflict, according to Mosesova, 250,000 of the 400,000 Armenians living in the republic resided in Baku. It is clear that by January 1990, the city’s large Armenian population was cleansed, murdered or forced to leave and many members of the other ethnic groups followed in their wake. The first census conducted in independent Azerbaijan revealed the following situation: Azeris in Baku – 1,574,000, the number of Russians had dropped to 108,000, the number of Jews also dropped to a bit more than 5,000 and just 378 Armenians remained in the city after the waves of violence, murder, and pogroms (Ethnic Composition of Azerbaijan 1999). Nor did the calamity spare Azeri people living in Armenia, who were also forced out of their homes as a result of the growing hostility between the two nations in light of the conflict. According to the 1979 Soviet census, 170,000 Azeris were living in Soviet Armenia; however, by 1992 Azerbaijan reported to the UNHCR that around 217,000 refugees had fled there from Armenia and Karabakh (Ethnic Composition of Azerbaijan 1999). Thousands of Azeris left Azeri territory in the wake of the Karabakh war.

9. Vaux (2008). The origins of the Zok dialect are not quite clear. Because it is so different from other varieties of Eastern Armenian, there are many theories about its origin. The most commonly held opinion is that Zok is half Armenian and half Hebrew. Some scholars claim that Zoks were ethnic Jews assimilated into Armenian culture (Akchyan 2003, 83). Vaux does not believe this; according to Vaux, Zok is an indigenous dialect of the Armenian communities of Nakhichevan who had apparently lived there since the classical period (Vaux 2008, 283–285).

10. The Nakhichevanskii brothers were dissidents of the last khan (prince) of the Nakhichevan khanate. “One Tatar, Itkarn, village was afterwards attacked by Armenians out of revenge, and thirty six persons killed” (Villari 1906, 274). Some historians tend to put the blame on the Armenian side. Tadeusz Swietochowski wrote that an estimated 128 Armenian and 158 “Tatar” villages were pillaged or destroyed at that time. The estimates of lives lost vary widely, ranging from 3,100 to 10,000. Yet he suggests that “the number of the Tatars killed was still greater, but we have no statistics because the Muhammedans according to some strange custom conceal everything pertaining to the numbers of killed and other such information” (Swietochowski 1985, 41). Since the author admits that “we have no statistics,” this is simply his hypothesis. There is no doubt, however, that ethnic cleansing was mutual.

11. Mozalan means gadfly in Azeri.

12. We should keep in mind that some Armenian authors try to present the history of Armenian–Azeri relations as a perpetual story of hate and hostility (see, e.g. Balaian 1984).

13. Journal of Zak’aria of Agulis, in George Bournoutian’s translated text, says: “There was a weak earthquake in Agulis. The same earthquake of 4 January was so strong in Shamakhi that it killed 6,000–7,000 people. Many buildings, forts and walls were toppled. All of this because of our sins” (Bournoutian 2003, 81).

14. “February 26 1117 (1668). West of Agulis there appeared a comet (star with tail), which disappeared on that first evening. It foreshadowed much evil. May God save us from calamity” (Bournoutian 2003, 81).

15. The English translation says “22 July 1118 (1669), Agulis. It rained for two days. After that it snowed on the top of the mountains. It was because of our sins” (Bournoutian 2003, 91).

16. Vang (Vank Monastery in Aguslis, according to legend, was founded by Apostle Bartholomew in the first-century A.D.).

17. Catholicos, Head of the Armenian Apostolic Church.

18. Even today some historians tend to agree with this line of argument. The victor of this battle, Russian General Nikolai Yudenich, owed a lot to two of his Armenian comrades, Arshak Gafavian and Hamazasp Srvandaztian. To a certain extent, some role in the defeat of the Ottoman Army was played, as Edward J. Ericson emphasized, by the Armenian druzhiny (volunteers’ units). “ … But their location and mission prevented meaningful participation at the culminating point of the battle.” Yet, Enver Pasha, Ottoman Commander in Chief, needed scapegoats (Armenians) to blame for the defeat (Ericson 2013, 154–155).

19. Some historians question this thesis. In his last monograph, Ronald Suny argues that even though the Ottoman Empire was evolving into a more homogeneous Turkic-Muslim state in 1915, “it still remained multinational imperial state with large Arab, Kurdish, Jewish and Christian communities … ” The Young Turks were Empire preservers (Suny 2015, xiv–xv).

20. Similarly, Michael Reynolds notes:

The most immediate threat to Muslim sovereignty to Anatolia came from Armenians in the East and Greeks in the West. The two states sent their armies to claim a large chunk of Anatolia. Mustafa Kemal focused first on securing his rear. (Reynolds 2011, 256)

Yet, unlike Akcam, Reynolds claims that the Armenians represented a real threat to the New Turkish Republic. “Armenian forces drove out Muslim from Armenian Republic’s new heartland and fought Azeri formation for control of the provinces of Nagorno Karabakh, Zangezur and Nakhichevan” (Reynolds 2011, 256). I have some doubts, however, that a country which suffered genocide could threaten another one.

21. Some Turkish historians remain very skeptical of the tragedy in Agulis (Aylis) and often express different if not opposing, views of what happened. Thus, İbrahim Ethem Atnur blames the inhabitants of Agulis and its military leaders for the tragedy. He emphasizes that all surrounding towns acknowledged the Turkish and Azeri governments, but only Agulis resisted after 1918. This contradicts what Hovannisian wrote about the events in Agulis, though Atnur often refers to Hovannisian’s book. The Azeri government wanted to make peace with the Armenians, but they resisted and rebelled. In fact, this historian follows the “insurgency theory.” Edward J. Ericson expressed similar ideas in Ottoman and Armenian: Ericson sees the so-called, Armenian “insurgency” as the main reason for the violence. “The Armenian insurrection was a genuine security imperative requiring an immediate action, and it was an existential threat to the survival of the empire’s armies” (Ericson 2013, 162).

Ottomans believed that what happened in Van was about to be repeated elsewhere. The location of the Armenian population and the areas of insurgency are critical for understanding the nature of existential threat that posed to national security of the Ottoman state. The Ottomans were fighting Russians on the Caucasus frontier, and the British in Mesopotamia and Palestine. (Ericson 2013, 161)

This argument has been challenged by Dadrian as Ottoman propaganda (see Dadrian 2003, 219–234).

22. Stone Dreams might also bring to mind The Forty Days of Musa Dagh by Jewish–Austrian writer Franz Werfel. That novel was based on real historical events that took place in 1915 and at the beginning of the Armenian Genocide. It focuses on the self-defense of a small Armenian community living near Musa Dagh, a mountain in Hatay Province on the southern coast of the Mediterranean Sea (south of modern Turkey), as well the events in Istanbul, where the Young Turks organized the deportations and massacres of the empire’s Armenian population.

23. According to Muslim tradition, the Quran comes directly from God, while the Sunna is a collection of personal judgments of Mohammed. In Islam, circumcision is instituted in the Sunna, not the Quran.