Black January: Soviet Massacre in Azerbaijan

0:00 The end of the communist regimes in central and eastern Europe has been

0:04 widely acclaimed for the generally peaceful nature

0:06 by which those regimes were taken apart.

0:09 With the exception of Romania,

0:10 there [music] was little violence as new democracies were established.

0:14 Even the dismantling of the Soviet Union

0:17 has been hailed for its largely peaceful nature.

0:20 But what if I told you that as the Soviet

0:23 Union was collapsing in the late 1980s,

0:25 the growing movement for democracy was so threatening to the state that it

0:30 provoked one of the most extreme crackdowns in the Soviet government's history.

0:35 The Black January massacre in the Azerbaian Soviet

0:38 Socialist Republic claimed the lives of around 150 people

0:42 and set the blueprint for the better known

0:45 controversies that would follow in the USSR's Baltic Republics.

0:49 So, where did the movement ideals come from and what happened in January 1990?

0:54 I'm your host, David,

0:55 and today we will explore the Black January massacre in Azerba.

1:00 This is [music] the Cold War.

1:08 So, this story begins in 1846 when oil was industrially

1:13 drilled for the first time in history in Baku Azeran's capital.

1:17 Over the decades that followed, companies from the United States and Europe,

1:21 including the Nobel Brothers Company

1:23 and the Rothschild Caspian Black Sea Company,

1:26 flocked to Baku, seeking to make a fortune from black gold.

1:30 By the turn of the century, Baku was supplying half the world's oil.

1:34 Despite this, the local population ostensibly did

1:37 not benefit that much from the boom.

1:39 Of the 54 oil firms working in [music] Baku in 1888,

1:43 just two were Azerbaijani owned.

1:47 [music] This being said, oil changed the city in a way

1:49 that would have lasting impacts on national culture

1:52 at a time when what Benedict Anderson called imagined

1:56 communities were being created across Europe and the world.

2:00 This is the idea of a community or group forming around a shared identity,

2:04 a birth of nationalism.

2:05 Indeed, the historian Audrey Alstat explains that quote,

2:09 "The rapid expansion of the oil industry was primarily responsible for Baku's

2:14 apparently well-deserved reputation as a wild

2:17 boom town replete with [music] grand hotels,

2:20 telephones, casinos, gas lit streets, prostitutes, and a frontier lawlessness.

2:26 Think proper wild west stuff.

2:28 Wild East, but also not miles away from being

2:32 a 19th century Caspian Las Vegas." The point is, of course,

2:36 that the oil boom brought with it

2:37 an unusually high influx of foreigners from the west,

2:41 huge sums of money, and sparked incredibly fast industrialization.

2:46 This was unusual in the Russian Empire and even more unusual in the caucuses.

2:50 And of course, it resulted in the [music]

2:52 frequent transfer of knowledge from outsiders to locals,

2:55 which naturally began to influence the burgeoning Azerbaijani cultural,

2:59 intellectual, and political elite of the late 19th century.

3:03 Indeed, as in the west, rapid industrialization and other such

3:07 changes were accompanied by Fendiskla ideas,

3:10 particularly regarding secularism, political representation and workers rights.

3:16 Allstat agrees with this view,

3:18 stating that the many wealthy industrialists and merchants form the core

3:22 of the Azerbaijani Turkish business community

3:24 and an important part of the political stratum.

3:27 Besides their economic and political clout,

3:30 this elite was instrumental in creating a cultural enlightenment movement.

3:34 Another historian Wayne Vousenich explains that in parallel,

3:38 the Azerbaijani elitees views of the nation

3:40 was developed by the experience of Russian colonization.

3:44 The Azerbaijanis viewed the Russians as foreign oppressors,

3:47 people of another language and religion.

3:50 In the eyes of the Azerbaijanis,

3:52 Russia's Caucasian policy was anti-Muslim and an outright colonial conquest.

3:57 By the end of the 19th century, Azerbaijan had its own small but dynamic

4:02 intelligencia which included literati artists and political thinkers.

4:06 Baku became a flourishing center of secular

4:09 culture and a burgeoning Azerbaijani nationalism.

4:12 So all this being established we can conclude

4:14 that by the dawn of the first world war

4:16 azerbaanis in Baku were pretty open about their disdain

4:20 for Russian colonizers and quite enthusiastic about democratic ideals.

4:26 All of these developments plus the Russian

4:28 revolution and the collapse of the Russian

4:30 Empire culminated in the creation of the Azerbaijan

4:33 Democratic Republic on May 28th, 1918.

4:37 Led by members of Azerbaian's elite,

4:39 its [music] declaration of independence stated

4:41 that sovereign rights belong to the Azerbaijani people.

4:45 Independent Azerbaijan is a democratic republic.

4:48 All citizens are guaranteed full civil

4:50 and political rights regardless of their nationality,

4:52 religion, social position, or sex.

4:56 This was remarkable for a principally Islamic state at this time.

4:59 [music] And even more remarkably,

5:01 its leaders also used the opportunity to further integrate communities

5:04 outside of Baku into their conception of the democratic Azerbaijan nation.

5:10 But the state was not to be.

5:12 In 1920, the Red Army invaded Azerbaian and put an end to the experiment.

5:17 The Azerbaijan Democratic Republic lasted just 23 months.

5:20 [music] But in the short time it did exist, it produced a homegrown experiment

5:25 in parliamentary democracy and secularism which

5:28 had [music] a lasting impact on the views of future Azerbaijani reformers.

5:33 Anyway, with this the Azerbaian SSR was created and all

5:36 of its institutions were given the appropriate Soviet titles and structures.

5:41 What happened in terms of nationalities policy was broadly

5:44 similar to what we've already covered in previous videos.

5:47 The Azerbaijani language for example retained its official

5:50 status but the alphabet was changed twice in fact

5:54 first from Arabic to Latin in 1924 [music]

5:57 and then from Latin to cerillic in 1940.

6:00 The teaching of the Russian language was expanded in schools.

6:04 When Stalin came to power,

6:05 purges against artists and intellectuals eventually followed.

6:09 The native Azerbaijani ruling elite were slowly but surely Russified.

6:13 [music] You get the picture.

6:15 Now perhaps the most interesting

6:17 and consequential development for the Azerbaijan

6:20 SSR was the creation of the Negorno Carabach Autonomous Ablast.

6:24 On July 7th, 1923, Moscow decided

6:28 to incorporate the region as an autonomous part

6:30 of Azerbaijan despite the fact that at the time of the 1926 Soviet census,

6:36 89.2 of its population was Armenian.

6:39 To be clear, a significant population of Azerbaijanis also lived

6:43 there during this period and had done so for centuries.

6:46 The populations of both nationalities was [music] in constant

6:50 flux with the changing of empires over the years.

6:53 Azerbaijani and Armenian forces had also fought

6:56 over the region after the first world war.

6:58 But this video is not about Negrono Carbach.

7:01 And while we will cover the topic properly in future episodes,

7:05 and we know the comment section is going to be full of partisan hate speech,

7:09 what you need to know for today is that neither the Azerbaijanis

7:12 nor the Armenians were ever really satisfied with the setup imposed by Moscow.

7:18 Despite this though, there was a tacid understanding that the majority of people

7:21 were Armenian while the land was Azerbaijani, broadly speaking.

7:26 Okay, so moving forward to the post 1945 period.

7:30 For much of the cold war, Azerbaijani nationalism simmered rather than erupted.

7:34 State ideology demanded that national identity be expressed culturally.

7:39 It was okay to be Azarbaijani through music,

7:42 literature, or folklore, but never politically.

7:45 As elsewhere in the USSR, poets could talk about mountains and shepherds

7:49 and the eternal soul of the nation.

7:51 But this did not change the fact that sovereignty could not be discussed.

7:56 And so the contradiction that was embedded

7:58 in the foundations of the USSR itself continued for decades.

8:02 Republics were granted a theoretical right to self-determination,

8:06 but it was ensured that they never got

8:07 anywhere close to actually exercising [music] that right.

8:11 Indeed, in 1972, Brev thought things were going so smoothly that he declared

8:16 that the national question as we inherited

8:19 it from the past [music] has been fully, definitely, and irreversibly resolved.

8:25 But Brev despite [music] an immense eyebrow

8:27 game was wrong about a lot of things.

8:30 As Alstat highlights in Azerbaijan,

8:32 it was precisely this aperture of freedom that created problems.

8:36 [music] The origins of descent, initially moderate,

8:39 sporadic and exclusively inerviani language journals and literature

8:44 went back to the Brev era when writers and scholars had begun to [music] examine

8:48 topics that were forbidden by the Soviet regime.

8:51 Thus by the time Mikuel Gorbachof came to power

8:54 in 1985 [music] and began appining about transparency that is

8:58 Glasnost a shared sense of national identity was probably

9:02 stronger [music] than it would have been without KMatsia.

9:06 So with Glasnost it was suddenly possible to openly criticize Moscow's rule

9:10 and perceive a future where Moscow wasn't [music] involved in governing at all.

9:16 The corrupt and stagnant,

9:17 some would say more abundant economy [music] most Soviet citizens were

9:20 living in by this point only added to the sense of opportunity.

9:25 Okay, so let's come back to the issue at hand.

9:27 As we explored in our recent video

9:29 on the Armenian secret army for the liberation of Armenia,

9:32 in the Armenian SSR, Soviet [music] Armenians,

9:35 unlike in almost every other Soviet Republic,

9:38 had typically directed their nationalist resentments at Turks

9:42 rather than Russians because of the [music] Armenian genocide.

9:46 As a result, the central authorities saw

9:48 national expression in Armenia as a sort

9:50 of release valve for other [music] discontents and was somewhat more lax.

9:55 But Negrono Carabach was an issue that the Soviets could not really plate.

10:00 [music] Armenia had lost a huge chunk

10:02 of its territory during the early 20th century.

10:05 [music] So the idea that Negrono Carabach,

10:07 a land that Armenians considered historically Armenian,

10:10 was officially part of an ethnically Turk Republic

10:13 in the form of the Azerbaian SSR [music] enraged many Armenians.

10:18 Thus, for 70 years, Armenians in Negrono Carbach petitioned

10:22 Moscow to be transferred [music] to the Armenian SSR.

10:25 And for 70 years, Moscow responded [music] with a no.

10:30 But in February 1988,

10:32 massive protests broke out in Yedavan demanding unification.

10:36 The same month, the Negron Cararabach Supreme Soviet [music] held a referendum

10:40 on the issue with the result showing 99.89% in favor of the transfer.

10:46 This overwhelming number was largely the result

10:48 of local Azerbaijani populations [music] boycotting the vote.

10:52 The Gorno Carabas unilateral attempt to unify

10:55 with Armenia represented a huge challenge [music] to Moscow's

10:58 authority and the Soviet leadership reacted by deploying

11:01 interior ministry troops to manage the situation.

11:05 They would not leave for another 17 months.

11:09 But even if Moscow had acted to try and calm the situation,

11:13 Armenia's ambition to incorporate Negron Karabach [music] at Azerbaijan's

11:17 expense did not go unnoticed by those across the border.

11:21 Indeed, expecting violence and [music] unrest,

11:23 local officials put Baku on lockdown almost immediately.

11:28 But in doing so, they largely forgot about the town

11:31 [music] of Sunungit on the outskirts of the capital.

11:34 Known mainly for its huge population of former convicts,

11:38 about [music] one in five of its residents had a criminal record.

11:40 Sunid had a reputation for roughness with many Azerbaijanis who had [music]

11:45 been forced to leave Armenia due to violence there settling in the city.

11:49 Many Armenian migrant workers from the hills of Karabach had

11:53 also relocated there living side by side with the Azerbaijani population.

11:57 [music] In the circumstances, it could not have been more of a powder keg.

12:02 On the 26th of February,

12:03 then just 6 days after the referendum in Negrono Carabah,

12:07 a small group of 40 to 50 people gathered in the square outside

12:10 local party headquarters and protested about

12:13 the authorities lack of action in Negro Carabach.

12:16 By the 27th, the crowd had reached several

12:19 hundred and there were reports of looting and rioting,

12:22 but the police did not intervene.

12:25 The following day, the local party boss, Jihener Muslim Zade,

12:28 tried to reassure the crowd that Nakarno Karabach

12:31 would never be Armenian, but it was no use.

12:34 In the following days, at least 32 Armenians living in Sunit would

12:38 be murdered as tensions spilled over into a procam.

12:42 And for the record, Armenians committed atrocities against the Azarbaijanis.

12:46 Also, [music] the events in Sunit set the tone

12:49 for relations between the two nations for decades to come.

12:53 A few months later on May 15th,

12:55 Baku saw [music] its first large-scale protests as approximately 15,000 people

13:00 demanded measures against what they

13:02 called further actions by Karabaki separatists.

13:06 3 days later, the number of protesters had doubled,

13:10 placing [music] Communist Party leader Cameron Bagiraov under so

13:14 much pressure that he made the decision to resign.

13:17 The May 1988 protests were largely orchestrated by a group called

13:21 the Varlique Organization led by a highly

13:23 radical figure [music] named Neimat Panov.

13:26 And Varlik was not the only such political group.

13:29 By far the most influential was a mly crew of democratic reformers,

13:33 intellectuals [music] and academics from the Azerbaijan

13:36 National Academy of Sciences and Baku State University.

13:40 Panicked by the protests,

13:41 the new first secretary of the Communist Party, Abdul Rahman Vizerov,

13:45 invited these reform-minded individuals to his offices

13:48 to try and understand what [music] they wanted.

13:51 Seeking collaboration with the local Communist

13:53 Party to quell tensions and unrest,

13:55 they told Vizerv that he should consider reforming the party

13:59 and its institutions to make [music] it more inclusive,

14:02 which he unsurprisingly refused.

14:05 This was a critical juncture in Azerbaian's

14:08 late Soviet history because alternative forces

14:11 in Azerbaian [music] ultimately couldn't find

14:13 a way to collaborate with the ruling communists.

14:16 Thus, a few months later in October 1988,

14:19 major pro-independence movements [music] began forming.

14:22 The overall movement initially lacked a big tent party seen as necessary

14:27 if a meaningful challenge to the communist party's hegman was to be made.

14:31 By July 1989, the Azerbaian Popular Front

14:34 or APF was established as that big 10 party.

14:38 But this meant merging with more radical groups like Varlig.

14:42 [music] With the burgeoning APF gaining traction across Azerbaijan by late 1988,

14:47 [music] in November,

14:48 the masses were asking why the Soviet authorities had failed to stop the exodus

14:52 of [music] tens of thousands of Azerbaianis

14:54 from Armenia amid tensions and violence over the border.

14:58 As many [music] as 500,000 people gathered in Lenin Square to protest,

15:03 but after 18 days of resistance,

15:05 [music] Soviet police aggressively cleared away protesters on December 5th.

15:09 A 10-month curfew was then imposed.

15:12 While certainly a setback,

15:13 the APF used the curfew to create a more formal structure,

15:17 electing the charismatic Abdul Fez Ali as leader

15:20 at its first congress in July 1989.

15:23 better known by his moniker Elchibbe.

15:26 He was a lecturer at the Baku State University who

15:29 had been arrested in the 1970s [music] for counterrevolutionary activities.

15:33 His objectives as summarized by historian Jalan Toku were the political,

15:38 economic and cultural independence of Azerbaian and the establishment of a state

15:43 based on law and a society based on citizenship irrespective of ethnic,

15:48 linguistic or religious background.

15:51 These were ultimately the ideals of the original

15:53 Azerbaian Democratic Republic that we mentioned earlier.

15:56 And it was this democratic secular version of Azerbaijan

16:00 around which the APF hoped to build the republic's future.

16:04 With the APF organized behind a clear vision with a firm

16:07 leader and with the 10-month curfew coming to an end,

16:11 the APF was ready to make its next move.

16:14 This would come in late 1989 when

16:17 hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis once again

16:19 took to the streets demanding that the Azerbaijani

16:22 Communist Party act decisively on Nakono Karabach.

16:26 But there was a rather sinister undertone to all

16:28 of this despite the flowery messaging coming from Ilchibbe and the APF.

16:34 Since the APF had become so large because it was such a big tent,

16:37 this made it very difficult to control all of the key

16:40 figures within it and maintain a unified party line.

16:44 Thus, figures like Panahov,

16:46 the leader of the radical vari group we mentioned earlier,

16:49 were becoming increasingly powerful.

16:51 A year [music] earlier,

16:52 Panahov was amongst those who had stirred up anti-Armenian sentiment in Baku.

16:57 By late 1989, [music] he was calling for a blockade against

17:01 Armenia in order to create huge gas and [music] food shortages.

17:05 Caucus' expert Thomas Dwal summarizes the situation at the end of 1989.

17:11 Azerbaian's black January of 1990 was ushered in with all

17:15 the disturbing portraits of mass violence already visible.

17:19 A defenseless Armenian population whom [music] none

17:22 of the security structures seem ready to defend.

17:24 A popular front where radical elements had squeezed out the moderates.

17:28 A local party leadership losing power [music]

17:30 and looking for ways of hanging on to it.

17:33 and the Soviet leadership in Moscow which was prepared to take any

17:36 steps it thought necessary to [music]

17:38 prevent Azerbaijan's breaking away from the union.

17:41 It was a volatile situation and on January 13th 1990 it all boiled [music] over.

17:47 Days earlier the Armenian SSR had announced that it would consider Nagorno

17:51 Carabach its own territory and give

17:54 [music] citizenship to residents of the region.

17:56 Back in Baku, men broke away from a huge rally

17:59 in the main square and headed towards the Armenian quarter.

18:03 There were reports of Armenians being beaten to death,

18:06 and there were rumors that Armenians

18:08 were even thrown from high-rise apartment buildings.

18:11 It's unknown precisely how many people were killed,

18:13 [music] although estimates say at least 90.

18:16 But what is for sure is that the number would have been much higher

18:20 had Soviet interior ministry troops in Baku

18:23 [music] not provided the Armenians with safe passage.

18:27 To say they stopped the program would be untrue.

18:30 Most stood idly by and watched it unfold.

18:33 And by this point, the local authorities were almost powerless.

18:37 But those who managed to find refuge [music] were soon put

18:39 on fairies and transported across the Caspian Sea to Turk Menistan.

18:45 Others were taken to the airport and boarded

18:47 planes [music] to Yedan to again quote Dewal.

18:50 With this terrible flourish, Armenia and Eservjan completed their ethnic

18:55 cleansing of each other's populations.

18:58 To give an idea of scale,

18:59 the number of Armenians in Baku in 1988 was as high as 250,000.

19:04 And yet by [music] the end of 1990, it was zero.

19:07 The situation in Baku would continue to escalate over the coming days.

19:11 And by January 15th, it had [music] gained Moscow's full

19:14 attention as Azerbaijani activists began actively

19:17 blockading military barracks and the main routes in and out of Baku.

19:21 The pilot bureau dispatched Yagenei Primikov,

19:24 a member of Gorbachov's presidential council to Baku to announce

19:28 that 11,000 Interior Ministry troops would soon arrive to restore [music] order.

19:33 3 days later on the 18th he spoke again

19:36 this time in front of a huge crowd to assure

19:38 protesters that troops were arriving to protect people but he

19:42 was met with fury and even booed off stage.

19:46 Then on January 19th, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR issued

19:50 a decree placing Baku under a state of emergency

19:53 effective from midnight due to a dramatic

19:56 escalation of the situation in the city [music]

19:58 of Baku and attempts of criminal extremist forces

20:01 to remove from power by organizing mass unrest

20:04 against legally acting state authorities and in the interests

20:07 of the protection of the security of citizens.

20:10 Behind all the Soviet wording,

20:12 this meant that Moscow was sending proper troops in.

20:15 That same day, Azerbaijani state radio

20:17 and television transmission center was blown up,

20:20 likely by Soviet special forces,

20:22 cutting [music] off all national broadcasting and leaving no way to announce

20:26 the curfew or state of emergency for people [music] to seek safety indoors.

20:31 At almost exactly midnight,

20:33 26,000 [music] Soviet troops crossed the city limits into Baku

20:37 and began opening fire on anybody they could see.

20:41 The troops claimed that they were returning fire,

20:43 but independent investigations [music] have concluded that there was no

20:46 evidence that anyone in Baku except Soviet troops were even armed.

20:51 Their first target was also the [music] headquarters of the popular front.

20:55 It later emerged that the Soviet defense minister,

20:57 Dimmitri Yazov, had personally given this open fire order.

21:03 All told, over the course of 2 days,

21:05 at least 150 Azerbaijanis were killed by Soviet troops.

21:09 But all this violence raises two very [music] important questions.

21:12 First, why did Soviet troops feel the need to enter Azarbaian at all?

21:16 The obvious [music] answer is to stop

21:18 the violence against Armenians even though Mikuel

21:20 Gorbachoff said the invasion of Baku [music]

21:22 was necessary to fight extremists and radicals.

21:26 He also told the foreign press that troops

21:29 were sent to root out Islamic extremists.

21:32 The truth is [music] all of these explanations are nonsense.

21:35 Astred Tumz instead considers that the Soviet

21:38 government's eventual use [music] of force

21:40 in Baku in January 1990 was ostensively intended to stop interthnic fighting,

21:45 but in reality it was designed to crush [music] the Azerbaijani popular front.

21:50 The invasion of Azerbaian marked the apex of the central

21:53 government's resolve to use force to hold the union together,

21:56 [music] a view that both Tom Dewal and Audrey Alstad share.

22:01 The second question is then who was to blame for the programs?

22:05 On one hand, as implied earlier, the local authorities were certainly culpable,

22:09 even if they had [music] perhaps lost their monopoly on violence.

22:12 Dewal is unequivocal in his criticism.

22:14 [music] The failure to declare a state

22:17 of emergency to halt the Armenian programs only

22:20 to do so when the Armenians had left

22:22 suggested deep [music] cynicism or incompetence or both.

22:26 On the other hand, though many of the moderate leaders

22:28 of the popular [music] front principally

22:30 blamed the radical elements of the party,

22:32 these radical elements were still a minority.

22:35 It's widely [music] believed that shortly before the programs,

22:38 some of these minority popular front leaders were

22:41 shouting slogans like [music] long live Baku without Armenians.

22:45 So, they could have done much more to stop things from going as far as they did.

22:49 We should also note here that there is evidence that many of the more

22:53 moderate popular [music] front activists were involved

22:56 in helping Armenians evade the violence in Baku.

22:59 Whatever the underlying causes, in the immediate aftermath of these events,

23:02 [music] the Soviet authorities placed Baku under martial law

23:05 and quickly restored the authority of the Communist Party.

23:08 They sacked the existing party leader and installed Ayaz

23:11 Mutilibbof [music] as the first secretary of the Anzubaijani

23:14 Communist Party on January 23rd who slowly agreed to some

23:18 reforms in the coming months to stabilize the situation.

23:22 Several key members of the popular [music] front at least those who

23:25 had not been shot were thrown in jail while others fled their homes.

23:29 But make no mistake,

23:31 Black January was the point at which the Soviet authorities lost Azerbaijan.

23:36 The APF would form this point on advocate

23:39 not for the reform of the Soviet system

23:42 but for Azerbaijan's complete independence from it which

23:45 it would eventually declare on August 30th 1991.

23:50 The APF and Elchibet would go on to lead Azerbaian into [music]

23:53 its first years as an independent democratic state before Hadar Ali,

23:59 the former first secretary of Azerbaian's Communist Party,

24:02 returned to power in 1993 and restored authoritarian control.

24:07 With the rise of Ali,

24:08 any lingering sense that Azerbaijanis were united by their democratic history

24:12 was eclipsed [music] by more extreme nationalism and the Negorno Carabach issue.

24:17 Though these seeds had of course been sewn much earlier,

24:21 Black January remains one of the most defining [music] moments in modern

24:25 Azerbaijani history with the 20th of January marked every year as Martyr's day.

24:31 As for Black January's impacts on the wider Soviet Union,

24:35 it is now seen by many historians as perhaps [music]

24:38 the clearest indicator that it was nationalism which brought down the empire.

24:42 Whatever your view, the fact that the authorities clearly [snorts]

24:46 learned nothing from Black January did matter in the long term.

24:50 Indeed, a Human Rights Watch report from the early 1990s said, quote,

24:54 "The [music] violence used by the Soviet army

24:56 on the night of January 19th 20th was so out

24:59 of proportion [music] to the resistance offered by Azerbaijanis

25:02 as to constitute an exercise in collective [music] punishment.

25:06 The subsequent events in the Baltic republics where

25:09 in a remarkable parallel to the events in Baku,

25:12 the alleged civil disorder was cited [music]

25:14 as justification for violent intervention by Soviet troops,

25:19 further confirms that the Soviet government [music] has

25:21 demonstrated that it will deal harshly with nationalist movements.

25:25 Black January was thus important because it set

25:27 the precedent [music] for the Soviet authorities textbook

25:30 reaction to nationalism which probably accelerated [music]

25:33 the collapse as much as the actual nationalism itself.

25:37 Thus, if there had been opportunities to quell

25:39 nationalist discontents [music] and save the union,

25:42 it was Gorbachov's own decisions that meant [music] these were missed.

25:47 And finally, what became of Negorno Carabach?

25:49 Well, with a view to covering this in the future,

25:51 we will end with a quote from Tuminesz.

25:53 [music] The Gordo Carabach had the makings of an intractable

25:57 conflict and proved to be one in the postsviet period.

26:00 However, as is true of most [music] conflicts,

26:03 action taken at an earlier stage to prevent

26:05 escalation could have made the task conflict management easier.

26:09 In 1988, when the conflict turned violent and Armenian and NKAO

26:14 officials [music] formally announced that the region

26:16 had been incorporated into Armenia,

26:18 Soviet leaders could have diffused or at least [music] contained

26:21 the dispute by decisively settling the status of Negorno Carabach.

26:26 Far from being decisive, however,

26:28 the Soviet government's response to Negrono Carbach was slow and irresolute,

26:32 reflecting [music] naive and a partial abdication of central responsibility.

26:37 Indeed, it is precisely evidence of this naive [music]

26:41 and abdication of responsibility that we have seen today.

26:44 Black January was but one consequence.

26:47 We hope you've enjoyed today's episode.

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