Soviet Army soldiers on the streets of Baku
Posted: Thu Jan 23, 2025 6:31 am
According to local residents, the most violent clashes on ethnic grounds have spread to Baku from the suburbs or remote villages of the republic, where it is easier to incite residents to revolt.
"Beastly, inhuman cruelty"
One of the bloodiest episodes of 1988 was the Armenian pogroms in Sumgait, located 30 km from Baku. The industrial city was not considered the most prosperous - poor ecology and crime, high unemployment.
There were few Armenians here, about 7%, but it was they home owner database were the target of a torrent of hatred on February 27. Crowds of people came out to rallies, which immediately turned into attacks on apartments, brutal beatings and murders.
"The guys pulled a man of about fifty out of the entrance. About 15-20 people surrounded him and started beating him with an axe, knives, wooden sticks. Then one of the guys pulled out a burning mattress and covered the man with it, and threw various things on top," a witness to those events testified in court.
The bloodshed lasted for three days, after which detachments of the USSR internal troops entered the city.
“There, for the first time after Afghanistan <...> I saw burnt trucks and buses, burnt houses, people’s naturally black hair, but whitened by the horror they had experienced, and their eyes, eyes... Then there was a whiff of medieval sadism, bestial, inhuman cruelty, thickly mixed with stupidity,” wrote the commander of the airborne division of the USSR Armed Forces, General Alexander Lebed, in his book “It’s a shame for the country...”
"Beastly, inhuman cruelty"
One of the bloodiest episodes of 1988 was the Armenian pogroms in Sumgait, located 30 km from Baku. The industrial city was not considered the most prosperous - poor ecology and crime, high unemployment.
There were few Armenians here, about 7%, but it was they home owner database were the target of a torrent of hatred on February 27. Crowds of people came out to rallies, which immediately turned into attacks on apartments, brutal beatings and murders.
"The guys pulled a man of about fifty out of the entrance. About 15-20 people surrounded him and started beating him with an axe, knives, wooden sticks. Then one of the guys pulled out a burning mattress and covered the man with it, and threw various things on top," a witness to those events testified in court.
The bloodshed lasted for three days, after which detachments of the USSR internal troops entered the city.
“There, for the first time after Afghanistan <...> I saw burnt trucks and buses, burnt houses, people’s naturally black hair, but whitened by the horror they had experienced, and their eyes, eyes... Then there was a whiff of medieval sadism, bestial, inhuman cruelty, thickly mixed with stupidity,” wrote the commander of the airborne division of the USSR Armed Forces, General Alexander Lebed, in his book “It’s a shame for the country...”