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Ismail Aliyevich, today is January 20.
Today once again Azerbaijan commemorates the very sad event which took place in Baku.
Time passes, flies, but people still remember.
Unfortunately, history is a type of thing when you cannot always hear the truth about the events
which took place in the city.
Tell us please how it all evolved, whether there was a back story.
Ismail Agakishiev, Head of the Center for the Study of Caucasus at the RSUH
In fact, it is a day of mourning.
Certainly I would like it to be commemorated not only by the peoples or population of Azerbaijan.
Undoubtedly, Baku residents were the ones who witnessed this tragedy.
And indeed it was a tragedy which involved everyone, regardless of nationality,
all Baku residents, all the population not only of Azerbaijan, at this time it was Soviet Union.
Unfortunately at that time there was a very strong information blockade in Azerbaijan.
It was the explosive demolition of the republic's television center building
which became the starting point of the crime which took place on the night of January 19.
This fact alone shows that it was a crime.
Since criminals do not want the law to know about their deeds,
they blew up the television center and later armed people attacked the city with its peaceful population.
In order to understand what Baku is and why this tragedy is still not forgotten,
I would like to say that you need to know what Baku is.
The intervention of troops in this city marked a great misfortune,
not only the shooting of the peaceful population.
It did not only result in the deaths of hundreds of people.
It hammered the first nail into Baku as the city which it used to be.
It was famous, it was a city where there was no question of nationality,
regardless of their nationality its residents were welcoming, open and attentive.
It was a city populated by the Azerbaijani, Armenian, Russian and Jewish elites.
The synthesis of these cultures produced the astounding culture of Baku,
which brought to the world such peoples as Rostropovich, Atlantov, Landau, Rustam Ibragimbekov
and many other people.
This city treated a Soviet soldier as the world's liberator from fascism.
Suddenly this city was invaded by the so-called Soviet forces, which played the role of a hit squad.
This hit squad killed children, women and elderly people.
The bullets did not ask about nationality.
Certainly it was possible to stay at home, but they fired even at the windows.
What was the reason for the intervention of troops in Baku?
Were there any prerequisites?
Before talking about January 19 and 20 I would like to talk about one fact which is being concealed.
Its concealment leads to wrong conclusions and opinions.
I am referring to the events which prefaced the event of January 19-20
– the pogroms which took place in Baku.
Some people suddenly appeared from nowhere and started to batter and kill people in the city center.
In this situation the law enforcement bodies – the police and the KGB – stayed silent.
What was the reason for this outrage?
Or was it staged on purpose?
Or could the local authorities not do anything without having discussed this problem with Moscow?
In this case why had Moscow not undertaken any action?
Why was this squad allowed to act in such a way?
Where did this squad come from?
And it was in this situation that the residents of Baku mobilized and stood in defense of their neighbors,
when special groups of people were formed in order to stand in front of houses
and defend the peaceful population from the armed squads.
This once again tells us about the traditions of the Azerbaijani people and Baku residents
to help their neighbors and never being able to raise a hand against them.
I personally believe that, by creating these pogroms,
Moscow wanted to create a false pretext in order to send troops to the city.
From January 14-16 Moscow was silent.
When the people managed to overcome this tragedy, save people and establish peace and order in the city,
the troops were introduced into the city in order to save Baku residents from themselves:
the peaceful population against the peaceful population.
The question is why was it necessary?
Who could benefit from it?
What was the reason for the intervention?
Why did these agitated armed people fire at the peaceful population as if in defense of the Soviet regime?
If we look at how it all ended, we will understand why it was done.
People started to give up their party membership cards,
people started to think about the separation of Azerbaijan from the Soviet Union.
They did not want to live in a country where armed forces which were meant to defend the peaceful population,
but fired at this population.
I believe that it was organized in order to shatter and collapse the Soviet Union.
Whatever the reason, there were people killed.
The death of these people and their blood is on the hands of the then-head of the communist party
Mikhail Gorbachev and the group of people who handled the events in Baku and pushed him to certain actions.
137 people died and 744 people were severely wounded.
Certainly it was the result of this tragic event.
First of all, it was not possible to return these people to life.
Second, there was already no trust in the system and the people
who fired at people instead of protecting them.
It marked the start of the collapse of the state.
I believe that the real collapse of the Soviet Union took place not in December 1991
but during preceding events in Tbilisi and the Baltic states.
The events in Baku became the apogee of this process.
I would like to say that the information blockade was so strong, that it was not covered in Moscow.
Where were you at that time?
At that time I was a PhD student at Moscow State University.
On the morning of January 20 we were supposed to,
we received information that there was going to be screening at the Baku cinema.
It was supposed to be a very interesting movie; I don't remember the title or the director.
We were supposed to go see this movie.
However, for a rather natural reason there was no embassy of Azerbaijan at that time,
since it was a common country, but there was a regional office in place of today's embassy building.
All the Azerbaijanis went there.
In front of everyone who came, Heydar Aliyev gave a speech.
He said that what had happened was a crime and that Gorbachev was to be held responsible for it,
and expressed his condolences.
Right there we spontaneously gathered and couple of thousand people ended up marching towards Ostankino.
We demanded, at that time there was a TV program called "Seven Days",
to report these tragic events in the multi-national city of Baku,
so that the whole country would know about them.
Where did the information come from?
Only scarce information appeared on the radio.
It was reported that troops entered there, they were met by crowds under the effect of drugs.
Apparently, the population which stood by the fire
– women, children, ordinary people working at oil plants, at research institutes,
there were Baku residents, they were all presented as drug abusers.
The ones who stood by the fire were presented as drug abusers, while the ones standing against them,
crushed them with tanks and fired at them, were not under the effect of drugs.
Probably they were under the effect of the propaganda which was conducted with them in Moscow.
It was in the traditions of those information channels.
Very lapidary information was reported: troops entered and that was it.
We advanced our demands, the head of Ostankino met with us
and promised us that the "Seven Days" program would report this tragedy.
And the report was made.
There are still documentaries left from these times.
As far as I understand, the people standing next to the fires on squares were not only Azerbaijanis?
In order to see that there were not only Azerbaijanis standing next to the fires,
there is a very tragic place, the Alley of Martyrs.
Once you are there, you should read the surnames of the victims.
You would find there not only Azerbaijani surnames.
You would also find there Russian and Jewish surnames.
All the people were against that outrage.
It was an outrage in respect of the whole nation, of the whole country.
They wanted only one thing – a constitutional order.
Instead of that, they received what happened.
Did the Azerbaijani Diaspora in Moscow help the population?
The population of Baku helped.
These were organized pogroms, and I am 100 percent sure they were organized.
The time will come when the archives will be made public and the truth will be revealed.
During these pogroms, Baku residents defended the people of Baku.
We welcomed people leaving the city here and helped them in any ways we could.
It was a tragedy of the Baku residents.
They have preserved neighborly relationships until today.
I believe that finally these relationships will put an end to the evil which was unveiled in 1988
and is still haunting the people of the South Caucasus.