Black January in Baku

“Myth that Gorbachev did not use force”

Hundreds of thousands of people in Baku protest against the brutal violence of the communist government on January 20, 1990.

(Bild: Botschaft Aserbaidschan)

On January 20, 1990, the Soviet army marched into Baku to crush the Azerbaijani Popular Front. It was a bloody invasion: almost 150 civilians died and more than 800 were wounded.

Pogroms against ethnic Armenians had been raging in Baku for days, with around 90 people losing their lives, some of them in the most brutal manner. The murders were carried out with blows and stabbings, and there were also break-ins and assaults. The attacks were then used as a pretext for the invasion by the Soviet army.

"In reality, however," US historian Mark Kramer from Harvard University told krone.at, "the operation was primarily aimed at destroying the Azerbaijani Popular Front, which was seeking independence for Azerbaijan."

Mark Kramer is Director of the Cold War Studies Project at the Davis Center at Harvard.

(Bild: zVg)

Soviet Defense Minister Marshal Dmitry Yazov also admitted this. Gorbachev hoped to re-establish control over Azerbaijan and thus make other Soviet republics, especially the Baltic states, aware of the potential costs of disintegration, according to Kramer.

Tip

To mark the 35th anniversary of "Black January", the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Research on the Consequences of War is organizing a scientific symposium at the University of Graz on Monday, 20 January. You can find out more here.

"The violent action on January 20, 1990 was followed by two years of mutual attacks and reprisals between Armenians and Azerbaijanis," Kramer told krone.at. The intervention of the Soviet army in Baku caused further bloodshed, but did nothing to alleviate the conflict, which increasingly turned into an open war between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Book tip: Mark Kramer - Aryo Makko - Peter Ruggenthaler (eds.), The Soviet Union and Cold War Neutrality and Nonalignment in Europe. Harvard Cold War Studies Book Series. Lanham et al. 2021.

(Bild: ZVg.)

Gorbachev allowed peaceful upheavals to take place
"It is a myth that Gorbachev did not use violence," explains Peter Ruggenthaler, Deputy Director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Research on the Consequences of War. In Tbilisi, too, army units bloodily crushed demonstrations in April 1989 - but without having received orders from Moscow.

Peter Ruggenthaler is the author and co-editor of numerous publications on the history of the Cold War.

(Bild: BIK)

The situation was different in Central Eastern Europe, which was still under Soviet control at the time. At the beginning of 1989, the Politburo in Moscow had taken a preventive decision at Gorbachev's behest that Soviet troops would not come to the aid of the communist allied regimes should they request it. The fact that Gorbachev allowed the peaceful upheavals is undoubtedly to Gorbachev's historical credit, according to Ruggenthaler.

Putin: The greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century
However, Gorbachev, who even received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1990, was by no means prepared to call into question the very existence of the Soviet Union. However, his actions in Baku did not put an end to the separatist tendencies, but only accelerated them. By the end of 1991, the Soviet Union was history. For Putin, as is well known, this was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.