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Abstract
Natural disasters can sometimes have a tremendous impact on societies and can even contribute to the outbreak of violent conflicts. The onset of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is usually attributed to the lack of Soviet control over the periphery and the consequent ‘resurgence of ethnicity’. Based on an analysis of how the main political actors in Moscow and the Caucasus framed the 1988 earthquake in Armenia in opposition to each other, this essay shifts the focus from political history to environmental history to argue that the disaster, and the narratives revolving around its origin and meaning, can further explain the exacerbation of the conflict.
The research for this essay was conducted while the author was at the Karls-Eberhard University Tuebingen, Germany, Department for the History of Eastern Europe.
Notes
1 See his project website, available at: https://lsa.umich.edu/humanities/people/2017-18-fellows/douglas-northrop.html, accessed 31 May 2018.
2 For numbers on Armenians who fled Azerbaijan in 1988–1989 see, ‘Chronology for Armenians in Azerbaijan’, Minorities at Risk Project, 2004, available at: http://www.refworld.org/docid/469f3866c.html, accessed 23 May 2018. However, the numbers of Armenians who lived in Baku prior to the conflict is not clear and estimates vary between 167,000 and 250,000 (Mamedov Citation2014, p. 44).
3 Expression coined by Schencking (Citation2006) in relation to the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake in Japan.
4 Pravda, 9 December 1988, p. 1.
5 Izvestiya, 11 December 1988, p. 1.
6 Pravda, 11 December 1988, p. 1.
7 Komsomolskaya Pravda, 9 December 1988, p. 4.
8 Because of the chaotic structure of Glavlit, the Soviet censorship agency, during the perestroika years, there are no archival documents on the decision-making process with regard to censorship on the Armenian earthquake. I thank Pekka Roisko for sharing his expertise on Glavlit.
9 Argumenty i fakty, 428, 1988, pp. 4, 7. According to official numbers, the 1948 earthquake in Ashgabat killed between 75,000 and 110,000 people and destroyed almost all of the Turkmen capital (Nikonov Citation1998, p. 791). At the time, in 1948, there were only a total of nine newspaper articles covering the incident (Strand Citation1991, p. 40). By the end of the 1980s, it was no longer mentioned in public discourse. In the immediate aftermath of the Tashkent earthquake in 1966, no mention was made of the comparable quake in Ashgabat.
10 See, for example, letters in Argumenty i fakty, 430, 1989, p. 7.
11 Izvestiya, 8 December, 1988, p. 1; Komsomolskaya Pravda, 11 December 1988, p. 1; Kommunist, 28 December 1988, p. 4.
12 Izvestiya, 8 December 1988 (evening issue), p. 6.
13 Komsomolskaya Pravda, 9 December 1988, p. 1.
14 Interview with K. Verghine, Gyumri, 10 October 2013.
15 ‘Vremya’, 7 December 1988; HU OSA 300–81-9–68-5, Records of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Research Institute: Monitoring Unit: Video Recordings of Soviet and Russian Television Programmes; Open Society Archives at Central European University, Budapest.
16 Izvestiya, 348, 12 December 1988, p. 1.
17 Komsomolskaya Pravda, 9 December 1988, p. 1.
18 Komsomolskaya Pravda, 9 December 1988, p. 1.
19 Izvestiya, 9 December 1988, p. 1.
20 Pravda (German issue), 10 December 1988, p. 7.
21 Izvestiya, 12 December 1988, p. 1. ‘Capitalist blood’ here refers to the aid, not blood, coming in from several Western countries.
22 Letter to the editor by G. Tadadov in Novoe Vremya, 52, 1988, p. 2; poems in Hayastani Azgayin Arkhiv (hereafter HAA), f. 1, op. 127, d. 604, ll. 75–6; HAA, f. 1, op. 127, d. 621, l. 194; HAA, f. 1, op. 127, d. 605, l. 32; HAA, f. 1, op. 127, d. 757, l. 116; letter from editor of Pravda to the Central Committee of the Armenian Communist Party, HAA, f. 1, op. 127, d. 604, l. 95.
23 Sovetakan Aiastan, 14 December 1988, p. 3.
24 The Karakbakh Committee was originally formed in February 1988, a few days prior to the pogroms in Sumgait. It advocated the integration of Nagorno-Karabakh to Soviet Armenia and included the intellectuals Sil’va Kaputikyan, Zory Balayan, Igor Muradyan as well as Viktor Hambardzumyan. The committee attracted a large following in the wake of the Sumgait pogroms and very soon broadened its aims to overall system change, which saw a replacement of its leadership. Starting from May 1988 the committee was led by the rather unknown intellectuals Levon Ter-Petrosyan, Vazgen Manowkyan and Ašot Manowčaryan and in July 1988 it called itself the Armenian National Movement. After the elections for the Armenian Supreme Soviet in August 1990, Levon Ter-Petrosyan was elected as the chair and thus became the head of the Armenian government (de Waal Citation2003, pp. 56–7).
25 Pamphlet Sootechestvenniki, 8 December 1988, from the private archive of Aram Manukyan (former member of the Karabakh Committee).
26 Pamphlet Sootechestvenniki, 8 December 1988, from the private archive of Aram Manukyan (former member of the Karabakh Committee).
27 Pamphlet Sootechestvenniki, 8 December 1988, from the private archive of Aram Manukyan (former member of the Karabakh Committee).
28 HAA, f. 113, op. 161, d. 372, l. 8, Master plan for Leninakan, 4 August 1989.
29 Interview with Spartak Petrosyan, former chief of police in Spitak (the epicentre of the earthquake) at the time the catastrophe occurred, Spitak, 3 October 2013; copy of unpublished manuscript by Petrosyan, provided to the author in which he lists 28 ‘proofs’ for why this earthquake was artificial.
30 Robert Sahakyants, Sedmakochak/Knopka (mul’tfilm dlya vzroslykh) (Armenfilm, Yerevan, 1989).
31 The term ‘katastroika’ was coined by the Soviet dissident Aleksandr Sinovev in 1988 to describe perestroika and to express the chaotic and dangerous accumulation of risks that surfaced during the reform period (Gestwa Citation2013, p. 58).
32 Rossiisky gosudarstvennyi arkhiv noveishei istorii (hereafter RGANI), f. 5, op. 102, d. 402, ll. 20–1.
33 Komsomolskaya Pravda, 9 December 1988, p. 1; Izvestiya, 12 December 1988, p. 1.
34 Komsomolskaya Pravda, 13 December 1988, p. 2; Ogonek 6, 1989, pp. 4–5; Argumenty i fakty, 430, 1989, p. 7.
35 For jokes see Agbabian (Citation2002, p. 214) and Fischer and Grigorian (Citation1993, p. 122); for Samizdat text see HU OSA 300–85-9 AS 6333, Records of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty Research Institute: Published Samizdat, 1968–1992; Open Society Archives at Central European University, Budapest; for film material see, Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv kino i fotodokumentov (hereafter RGAKFD) film 23997, ‘Zemletryasenie v Armenii. Otstatki ot fil’ma “Zemletryasenie”, CSDF, Moskau 1988’.
36 Sotsialisticheskaya Industriya, 12 January 1989, p. 4.
37 Komsomolskaya Pravda, 23 December 1988, p. 4; Stroitel’naya Gazeta, 17 December 1988, p. 4; Argumenty i fakty, 50, 427, 10–16 December 1988, p. 8.
38 Pravda, 12 December 1988, pp. 1–2; see other articles relating to the issue in Komsomolskaya Pravda, 13 December 1988, p. 2 and Kommunist (Yerevan), 13 December 1988, p. 4.
39 Spravki ob obstanovke v respublike Zakavkaz’ya, 8 December 1988–1 September 1989, Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (hereafter GARF), f. r-9654, op. 6, d. 95, l. 2. AFP press release, 8–9 December 1988, quotes from an AFP interview with a Ukrainian student in Baku, DEU118 3 vm 268/AFP-XL57.
40 Interview with Emanuel Dolbakyan, Moscow, 11 June 2013.
41 See also Novoe Vremya, 23 December 1988, p. 2.
42 Izvestiya, 15 December 1988, p. 1.
43 Press report of the German Press Agency (DPA), 19 December 1988.
44 GARF, f. r-5446, op. 162, d. 262, ll. 33–5; Kommunist (Yerevan), 4 August 1988, p. 4.
45 GARF, f. r-5446, op. 162, d. 262, l. 11.
46 GARF, f. r-5446, op. 162, d. 262, l. 39.
47 GARF, f. r-5446, op. 162, d. 262, l. 39.
48 GARF, f. r-5446, op. 150, d. 277, l. 191.
49 Kommunist (Yerevan), 15 October 1989, p. 4.
50 HAA, f. 1, op. 84, d. 40, l. 47.
51 HAA, f. 1, op. 127, d. 699, ll. 10–1.
52 HAA, f. 1159, op. 3, d. 30, l. 7.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Katja Doose
Katja Doose, School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK. Email: [email protected]