The night of January 19-20, often refered to as Black January, is the bitter experience of every Azerbaijani.
That frost bitten night, many awoke from the sounds of the tank caterpillars, many more awoke from continuous gunfire, many more would wake up from the sounds of breaking free.
The Black January massacre perceived as the gateway event to independence of Azerbaijan traces its roots to Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. If we look back at how Azerbaijan was brutally integrated into the Soviet empire, we would come to find out that the history, often forgotten by Azerbaijanis, does repeat itself. After the dissolution of the Transcaucasian Sejm and subsequent birth of the first Azerbaijani Democratic Republic in May 1918, the country entangled in territorial disputes with Armenian Dashnaks, saw an influx of external pressure from the Russian Bolsheviks, who eventually made their way into Azerbaijan.
The bitter truth about the 11th Red Army marching through the northern regions of ADR and perpetuating atrocities in its capital upon occupation of Baku in April 1920, was soon forgotten. Or was it? During the next two decades, outspoken Azerbaijani critics of the Soviet system were systematically silenced, most were completely removed from Azerbaijan during the Great Purge in 1937. Once the immediate threat to Soviet rule was tamed, mistreatment of Azerbaijani Turks was re-executed on a more massive scale. Although the mountainous part of Karabakh had already been carved out to form the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast within Azerbaijan SSR in 1921, and Zangezur uyezd was awarded to Armenian SSR earlier in 1920, at the behest of Armenian nationalists, the territorial claims to Azerbaijani lands did not stop.
Shortly after the World War II, Stalin signed two decrees initiating forced relocation of up to hundred thousand Azerbaijanis from Armenia to southeastern Azerbaijan, with the objective of creating living space for Armenians who were subsequently moved there from Lebanon, Iran and Syria. In late 1960’s several villages of Nakhchivan and Gazakh were transferred to Armenian SSR. Silent enough, Azerbaijani leadership succumbed to unjust Moscow’s territorial policies. Although Armenians did instigate protests in Armenia demanding transfer of Nagorno-Karabakh itself to Armenian SSR, their efforts did not fall through.
A more organized agenda was put forth after a row of Armenian terrorist attacks on Turkish diplomatic missions and civilian targets in Europe and the United States in 1975-1982, which provided for assertive ultra-nationalist awakening among Armenians. Many of those terrorists would later be glorified by the Republic of Armenia after it gained its independence in 1991.
Fast forward to February 1988, when ongoing three months of brutal expulsion of thousands of Azerbaijanis from Armenia which had originated in its Masis and Gugark regions in November 1987, back to back with loud outcries in central squares of Yerevan and Khankendi, prompted Sumgait events, ironically led by three ethnic Armenians. Within the next twenty months, Azerbaijan was forced to restraint and the illadvised ideology of “friendship of peoples”, all the while the country was being terrorized by mass exodus of Azerbaijanis from their homes, attacks on buses, trains and other civilian targets. Repeated calls to prevent atrocities and burning of Azerbaijani villages in Karabakh went in vain.
The national awakening movement, literary refering to awakening of Azerbaijani people from the 70 year-old nightmare of unjust territorial transfers and population migrations, mishandling of Nagorno-Karabakh issue by the Soviet regime, was in acceleration mode.
The meticulous plan of invasion of Baku foresaw instilling terror into the republic intending to break the momentum of popular movement. From the point when the information blockade was enforced on Azerbaijan by blowing up the central television transmission block and main telephone network of Baku at 19:00 hours on January 19 to the early morning of January 20, as many as 137 civilians laid dead, many in sporadic fires on the crowds, others by gunfires to the buildings as the tanks rolled through the streets of the city, some by individual beatings and point blank executions in various locations of the town. Selective shoot-outs resulting in more deaths would continue through January 22. The autopsies identified the main utilized arsenal of the special forces as the infamous 5.45 mm caliber with the shifted center of gravity, which upon entering a body, unlike conventional bullets, travels in sporadic movements spiralling through the organs causing excessive pain and internal bleeding, thus increasing chances of death.
As the reports of the massacre leaked to international press and the world wondered how and why the bullets with the shifted center of gravity were used, Azerbaijanis had questions of their own: what caused the center of Soviet leadership’s gravity shift to massacre innocent civilians? Fables about glorious Soviet army fighting to the greater good of the Soviet man were suddenly gone and the true nature of the Red Army was revealed. The Bolshevik regime was established in Azerbaijan with brutal invasion of the 11th Red Army in Baku on April 28, 1920. Ironically on January 19-20, 1990, as the monument to the Bolshevik invaders depicting three Red Army soldiers overlooked the 11th Red Army Square, the Soviet army opened fire on Azerbaijani civilians at the same Baku entrance and with the same brutality as 70 years ago. The former event would make us celebrate the Soviets’ arrival, the latter would lead to its eventual departure.
As a sign of protest on the dawn of January 20, plants and factories of Sumgayit, ships and vessels in the Baku Bay simultaneously blew their horns for hours, so loud that the sounds could be heard beyond the Absheron peninsula. But their noise couldn’t have been louder than the cries of mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers whose mourning could be heard farther away. Black January would become a tacit realization that the republic did not belong to the Soviet Union and serve as a springboard for independence of fifteen republics. It was the occurrence which wobbled the Soviet regime, the event that would eventually cause its collapse.
* Yusif Babanly is the co-founder and secretary of the US Azeris Network (USAN) and a member of the board of directors of Azerbaijani American Council.
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