A BAKU POGROM EYEWITNESS RECOUNTS THE ORDEAL 25 YEARS LATER
Tuesday, January 13th, 2015
Suren Grigoryan was one of many victims of the Baku pogrom (Photo baku.am)
EDITOR’S NOTE: Anna Astvatsaturian Turcotte has spent the better
part of her adult life speaking about the horrors of Azerbaijani
state-sponsored pogroms against the Armenian population in Baku, which
commenced on January 13, 1990–25 years ago today–and saw the forced
deportation and gruesome murder of Armenians who had called Baku home
for generations. What makes her qualified is that she and her family
escaped the atrocities and she lived to tell the world. She has spoken
about this tragic incident in recent Armenian history at State Houses,
as well as Congress. In September, 2014, Astvatsaturian Turcotte
accompanied her father, Norik,to his first-ever visit to Armenia
and Artsakh since the Baku pogroms. On the 25th anniversary of the
tragic events in Baku, Astvatsaturian Turcotte has allowed Asbarez
the exclusive right to publish below an excerpt of her book, “Nowhere,
a Story of Exile – a childhood diary of Anna Astvatsaturian Turcotte.”
Vilya Garden: The author (far left) and Vilya in Baku, with cousins,
1988, a year and a half before pogroms
BY ANNA ASTVATSATURIAN TURCOTTE
“One evening, she said, during the [Baku] riots and demonstrations, a
group of five to seven young men came into the patio and directly went
up to Vilya’s apartment on the second floor. They had batons in their
hands. These batons were infamous for instantly breaking a bone. Some
of the men carried other dangerous objects, like knives and clubs.
The men broke into Vilya’s apartment and beat Vilya’s grandmother in
their hallway. This happened during evening hours and Vilya was there
to witness the violence. Grandma couldn’t tell us if he himself was
hurt. They didn’t touch his mother, Zhanna, who was the daughter of
an Azeri father, making her an Azeri. But they did beat her sixty five
year-old mother in front of her. No one had ever heard such horrifying
screams like the ones that came from Zhanna’s throat when she pleaded
for them to stop beating her already unconscious, old mother. Zhanna
screamed and tore off her long hair, and the men were holding her
back as their friends beat an old woman. But they didn’t stop.
The thugs left very suddenly – when Zhanna died. Her death was
surprising and instant. A heart attack killed her. Her heart literally
broke. Her mother, Lilya, was injured but alive. Zhanna, an eccentric,
yet beautiful woman in her mid 30s, with long black hair and big
passionate dark eyes, was dead.
The author, standing front left, with her parents Norik and Irina
Astvatsaturov, grandmother Ludmila Adamyan and her brother, Mikhailan
The apartment was left the way it was when Zhanna died; the shock
of her death was astonishing to even the thugs. They ran off without
touching a thing. There were valuable objects in her apartment, more
expensive than anyone’s in our building. Rahiba and a Russian neighbor,
Katya, said that they’ll look after it. Instead, over several nights,
they robbed the place clean of everything Zhanna possessed.
We didn’t doubt for a second that Rahiba had informed on Zhanna and her
family just for the expensive things in their comfortable apartment. It
wasn’t only about religion, or nationality or a piece of good real
estate called Karabakh. It wasn’t about the pride and honor of the
country, or a sense of national supremacy. This tornado of events
brought up the dirt and the slime of humanity to the surface, and at
the end we didn’t suffer just for being Armenian. We suffered equally
for having the best apartments, the most beautiful Czechoslovakian
crystal, gold jewelry, precious gems, china, hand-blown German New
Year Tree decorations, valuable furniture and silver forks and knives.”
The author, her mother, Irina Astvatsaturov, and her borther, Misha
during or shortly after Kirovabad massacres. We were terrified,
watching TV for any news. Russian tanks were surrounding their house
Excerpt from Nowhere, a Story of Exile – a childhood diary of Anna
Astvatsaturian Turcotte.
Rereading these words I wrote as a child brings a nauseating, dark
feeling of imminent danger. This familiar feeling, triggered by
memories, comes and goes in forms of health problems, flashbacks,
bouts of sobbing or nightmares over the last 25 years. This sick
feeling is a lifelong companion to many survivors of the Armenian
pogroms in Azerbaijan, close to 400,000 of us. Every autumn, with
every first snow I am instantly taken back in time to my first few
months in Yerevan as an Armenian refugee from Baku. The smell of the
autumn air or of new notebooks bring back the feeling of safety, away
from my turbulent home city. But it also brings back the anticipation
of a human catastrophe and helplessness over the memories that keep
flooding back.
My family made a sudden move out of Baku on September 18, 1989. After
months of resisting my father’s persuasions to leave our home,
my mother had a sharp, intuitive need to leave immediately. We
had no plans apart from our trust in a handful of relatives in
Yerevan to house us until the violence in Baku subsided. This street
aggression was erupting in surges over the last year and half since
Nagorno-Karabakh voted for its right to self-determination. The
movement to rid Azerbaijan of its Armenian population was gaining
momentum after the Sumgait and Kirovabad massacres, taking on a more
organized and precise form. Something suddenly scared my mother and
we were gone.
The day before we left my home forever, my mother begged her friend and
our next door neighbor Zhanna to leave as well. Her son Vilya was one
of my best friends. Zhanna believed that because she was Azerbaijani
through her father’s side, despite her mother being Armenian, that
she, her son and mother would be spared. But she wasn’t. She died
of a heart attack at the age of 37. Her Armenian mother died of
debilitating injuries after being smuggled into Russia.
Her son was hidden in Baku like a precious gem for over a month and
then also smuggled into Russia to live in coldness and poverty for
the remainder of his childhood.
The author and her younger brother, Mikhait (Misha)
My parents still beat themselves up for not pushing Zhanna harder to
leave, but they also understand how difficult it was during Soviet
times to make the sudden move into nowhere without permission to work
or live outside of Baku, away from the comforts of our apartment and
our life. It was even harder for a single parent like her. Such was
the fate of many Baku Armenians who believed for months that they
would never be slaughtered the way they were. “The Soviet government
would never allow such Azerbaijani disobedience,” all of us thought.
And many Armenians simply had nowhere to go.
It was incomprehensible for my family to imagine what would have
happened if we had stayed. Would they break through our door? Would
Papa be stabbed or beaten to death? Would Mama be raped or burnt alive
as many Armenian victims were in Baku, Sumgait and Kirovabad? Would
I survive like Vilya did? Those were the thoughts of an 11 year old
child imagining the fate of her family at the hands of Azerbaijani
government’s tools of Armenian destruction.
Between February 1988 and September 1989 we came across many instances
where death was around the corner, while we hid in the dark, waiting
out the storms of violence outside our dining room windows. My father
was always armed with knives. At the time, my Grandmother was the only
person who knew that I escaped near rape by our Azerbaijani neighbor.
We didn’t tell my father in fear of what he might do or what might be
done to him. But Baku of January 13–19, 1990 was a different animal.
It was executed with surgical precision; with mass numbers. Only the
addresses of Armenian families were targeted. People were slaughtered;
then the survivors were shipped out of Baku by the military, across
the Caspian Sea just like my ancestors were in 1918.
Azerbaijanis rid themselves of Armenians again, and with them, they
rid the country of intellectual capital. We built Baku. Our history,
along with our people, was erased. It remains only in the minds of the
many who still remember the old Baku; those same silent ones that long
for the past when Armenians and Greeks and Russians brought diversity,
culture, beauty and prosperity to the Capital city. These same people
tell me how everything Armenian is being destroyed and demolished,
to be replaced with gaudy shiny skyscrapers; that the Azerbaijanis
suffer from fear of being targeted by the despotic dictator; that
they suffer from unemployment and poverty in the shadows of those
ostentatious towers.
It is inconceivable for me to go through life without this cross we
bear as Baku refugees. Once in a while I try to imagine what it would
feel like if none of this happened; who I would be like had I grown
up in peace and security. But I snap out of my introspection when I
remember just how lucky we are as a family, with few cuts and bruises.
I recently found Vilya. My best friend grew up as an orphan without a
mother, a father, or grandmother. My other close Baku friend left her
house without one single picture of herself as a child. Many families
lost children, sisters, brothers, parents and grandparents. I cannot
comprehend how they move on and grow and thrive and succeed. And
they do.
We remember the beauty that made Baku our home and we are aware it no
longer exists there. We bring this beauty with us to the thousands of
communities across the world where Baku Armenians make their homes,
from the United States to Germany, Norway to Australia. Armenian Nation
will never let this happen to us or our descendants again. I am sure
of it. And no matter how long it has been, 25 years or 100 years,
we are here and we resist, each in our own meaningful way, the Aliyev
government’s efforts to change history. This is the least we can do
to honor the innocent victims of the heinous crimes by Azerbaijan.
From: Baghdasarian