It should be mentioned here that throughout my conscious life I have never driven a bus of any kind and, additionally, that during my hitch in the Soviet Army, a construction battalion it was, our team of bricklayers reported to Lance-Corporal Alik Aliev (an Azerbaijani) and, synchronously, I had a buddy plasterer Robert Zakarian, an Armenian from Third Company, because of my reckless not giving a fuck about racial differences and the wholesome negation of prejudices on the grounds of national affinity. Another of my distinguishing constants.
Life itself made me peek deeper into the historical aspect of the question and find out that Mountainous Karabakh (the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region during the Soviet rule) from the times immemorial was populated by Armenians whose huchkars (stone crosses) as well as churches being erected (also of stone) before and after the 10-th century AD prove it to the hilt.
Yet, in early 20’s of the 20th century, when the 11th Red Army brought the Soviet rule to the Southern Caucasus, Mountainous Karabakh was handed over into the configuration of the Soviet Azerbaijan because of evidently empire-prone and, possibly, personal reasons adhered to by the then General Secretary Jugashvily, handled Stalin.
By the moment of my immigration, lots of Armenian had left Mountainous Karabakh and numerous Azerbaijanis moved into. Two of whom, for instance, had settled in the village of Seidishen where I was provided with the job of a village teacher by the Stepanakert Regional Department of People Education.
They were Biashir, the forester, and his son Eldar, engaged in delivering gas in 40-liter tanks to kitchens in the villages of the Askeran District by a truck rigged for the purpose.
There had even appeared purely Azerbaijani villages, about ten of them, in Mountainous Karabakh.
Being unaware of these minutiae at the mentioned meeting, I still responded to the Grisha’s question in the affirmative as long as it concerned the right of peoples for their self-determination. The right which is as fundamental as the freedom of assembly (hmm!), as inalienable as the freedom of speech (hmm-hmm!), as sacred as the freedom of thought and religion (someone shut me up please!)…
So naive and stupid idiot was I at that moment and scratched my signature among the uncountable other autographs collected in the region.
Four years later I confirmed the accord by taking part in the referendum on the Declaration of the Republic of Mountainous Karabakh.
That day Stepanakert was being bombarded without even the lunch break, nonetheless, I ventured to the town theater and ticked “for” in my voter ballot. And even today, with my status plunged down to that of a refugee, I’ve got no regrets because up till now that right seems irresistibly attractive to my simple mind.
However, back to "in order of appearance"…
A month later there was another surprise meeting to collect donations for the victims of the Spitak earthquake in Armenia (the seismic magnitude at the epicenter in the range of 10 to 12, 25 000 dead, 514 000 homeless, 140 000 crippled).
I donated 2 rubles and 50 kopecks, all I could contribute without losing a chance of surviving up to the following payday.
The Biology teacher, Rafic Shakarian, a ready-made Roman senator by his looks, began to carp: “No need for kopecks!” I had to curb his patrician pride by reminding that he, personally, was not the target of my offering, and 50 kopecks were equivalent to 2 bread loaves… The discussion dried up, the kopecks were accepted.
In February, Lenin Square in Stepanakert saw the outset of mass rallies in the support of exit from under the Azerbaijani jurisdiction and unification of Mountainous Karabakh with Armenia. The Regional Council of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region sent petitions on this account to Moscow, Baku and Yerevan…
From the jokes of that period:
“They clear up the heaps of debris in place of the houses tumbled by the Spitak earthquake. The derrick pulls up a huge piece of concrete flooring, reveals a man still alive, miraculously.
‘Is Karabakh given back to us?’, asks the survivor.
‘No, man! No!’
‘Drop the fucking slab back then!’"
Some stuff to perk you up, huh? Still, I heard then folks laughing at it…
Laughing even after the beastly carnage of Armenian population in the city of Sumgait, 27 – 29 February 1988.
I cannot write on that. Physiological stoppage. Hands hang, spasmodic clutch at the throat to keep back senseless whine of a small kid. Looks like senility has its say already. Maybe…
The troops of the Soviet Empire did not interfere, kept on stand-by for three days and nights. When they entered the city to disperse the ferocious mobs, 276 soldiers got bruised.
There followed a bubble of hush for a couple of months, when multi-thousand streams of evacuees filled the highways between Armenia and Azerbaijan: Armenians from Baku to Armenia and Karabakh, Azerbaijanis from Armenia to Azerbaijan. Counter-directed migration of peoples…
The leadership of the USSR responded to the situation by sending special troops to Stepanakert, by means of the curfew imposed there, and by visits of high officials to dissuade the people from their urge to unite with the rest of Armenia. They made speeches in the Lenin Square, the visitors did.
"What's the fuss? How can't you, 2 brotherly Muslim peoples, Azerbaijani and Armenians, peacefully live together?"
Was he drunk, that official? Counting them to Muslim peoples when Armenians pride themselves on being the 2nd people who took up the Christianity? (Forgetting the Ethiopians that, just for the record, became Christians a sliver of a period earlier.)
"2 Muslim peoples…"
That's who we were ruled by… Later he became the first President of the Russian Federation (before told to step down for a younger operative selected by the invisible decision-making body of the MIC) and his hang-over turned a staple byword by the stand-up comics…
A year later, influenced by the mutual spirit of turbulent times, I married and migrated to Stepanakert to weave the family nest atop of the stirred up volcano.
The job of an isolation-tape man at the construction of gas pipelines to far-off parts of Karabakh was an extensively outdoors and far-off employment so the son was born in my absence.
About a half-year later, in August, they attempted at the SCES putsch in Moscow. The Central TV news program Vremya presented a dozen of bureaucratic pans in a consolidated row behind the wide desk of the State Committee for the Emergency Situation (SCES) reading up to the population their orders – the democracy announced null and void, we were to live as before, as we had always been trained, and follow the five-year plans approved by them at the Congresses of their Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU).
In the morning, to demonstrate my discontent, disgust, and disagreement, I did not board the truck starting off to carry my co-workers to remote villages but handed in my resignation letter to the personnel department of the Building-Montage Management (BMM) #8:
“…because this here organization is a state firm, and I have no desire to work for the state of SCES, please fire me of my own accord”.
The BMM-8 Chief, Samvel Hakopian, amusedly chortled and signed his approval to satisfy my plea.
Next morning that SCES putsch went kaput and I, having lost the job along with their lost cause, concentrated on building up our family house in the lot allocated by the Stepanakert City Council on the ravine slope behind the Maternity Hospital…
When the walls were raised 1 meter tall, there started bombardments of Stepanakert City with Alazans from Sushi City and the Village of Khodjalu,