‘When at the end of October 1919 I arrived in Moscow to discuss the national question in the Central Committee of the Party, I learnt that Stalin had also passed through the bureau Narimanov’s proposal, according to which Hummet (Muslim Social Democratic Party) was being created in Azerbaijan to include communists of Azerbaijani ethnic origin only. Furthermore, this decision was not made after consulting Baku Bolsheviks and those communists of different ethnic background who had been working in Azerbaijan, but rather at the request of those émigrés who had left Azerbaijan for Moscow: Musabekov, Narimanov, Efendiyev, Sultanov. Thus, it was declared that all non-Azerbaijani communists in the Republic (Russians, Armenians and others) were to join the Russian Communist Party directly, while ethnic Azerbaijanis would become members of Hummet, connected with the Central Committee of the Bolshevik party. The incongruity and anti-Bolshevism of these organisational practices appalled me.’
Anastas Mikoyan
Soviet Armenia kicked off as one of the poorest and most distressed republics. Two wars with Turkey (in 1918 and 1920), famine and disease, by various estimates, claimed the lives of more than 250,000 Armenians in the areas of historical Eastern Armenia. The state of infrastructure and agriculture was devastating. The restoration of industries, agriculture, and science can be referred to as the undisputed benefits of the Soviet period. Additionally, the empire instilled a culture of multilayered bureaucracy into its periphery and nurtured a reasonably skilled class of middle- and junior-level managerial bureaucrats. The Cold War, in which the the States and the Soviets competed for minds and hearts around the world, also fostered the resuscitation of the Armenian factor. Armenians were well integrated into the social, political, economic, scientific, technical, and cultural spheres in their countries of residence. The geography of the concentration was more than impressive, spreading from the American continent to Australia and Oceania. In other words, the intellectual and intelligence potential was mind-blowing.
The States formed the Armenian Atlantic camp while the Soviets built an Armenian social-communist alliance. Both were taking steps to recruit Armenians. In this confrontation, Moscow made the first decisive move. On the 50th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire/Turkey (in 1965), it granted permission to build a memorial complex ‘Tsitsernakaberd’ in Yerevan.
Washington responded swiftly and symmetrically: in the 70s, an active process of discussing the matter of recognising the Armenian Genocide began within the walls of Congress. For the States and the Soviets, Turkey played a very special strategic role, so they tried not to cross the red lines drawn by Ankara. Remarkably, both superpowers at different times virtually saved the Turks from geopolitical death: the Soviets helped Ataturk keep the country from defeat and disintegration in the post-Ottoman period, whereas President Harry Truman rescued them from a potential Soviet threat in 1952 by accepting Ankara into NATO.
‘The future of Turkey as an independent and economically sound state is clearly no less important to the freedom-loving peoples of the world than the future of Greece. The circumstances in which Turkey finds itself today are considerably different from those of Greece. Turkey has been spared the disasters that have beset Greece. And during the war, the United States and Great Britain furnished Turkey with material aid. Nevertheless, Turkey now needs our support. Since the war Turkey has sought additional financial assistance from Great Britain and the United States for the purpose of effecting that modernization necessary for the maintenance of its national integrity. The British Government has informed us that, owing to its own difficulties, it can no longer extend financial or economic aid to Turkey. As in the case of Greece, if Turkey is to have the assistance it needs, the United States must supply it. We are the only country able to provide that help.’
Harry Truman
The occupation of Northern Cyprus by the Turkish armed forces in 1974 was a wake-up call to the White House and the Kremlin. The American side appeared displeased with the blatant unilateral moves by a member of the Alliance, while Moscow was looking on the one hand at an Atlantic club player with a ‘dissenting opinion’ on international affairs and on the other at an organised war machine that posed a threat to Soviet interests in the region. In this context, the role of the Armenian factor has increased exponentially. In 1975, with the tacit consent of the Administration of President Gerald Ford, a bipartisan resolution was adopted that declared 24 April as ‘National Remembrance of Man’s Inhumanity To Man Day’ and obliged the President of the USA to ‘call on the people of the United States to mark this day as a day of remembrance for all victims of genocide, especially persons of Armenian origin who were victims of the genocide in 1915’. For the first time, Americans crossed the red line. They qualified the 1915–1923 events as a genocide. The Turkish side got the gist and tempered its ambitions, and thus the genocide resolution was shelved before ever becoming a full-fledged bill signed into law by the president.
In the same year of 1975, the Armenian Secret Liberation Army of Armenia (ASALA) began operating, declaring its goal the restoration of historical justice: recognition of the Genocide 1915–1923 by Turkey followed by payment of reparations and the return of territories to historical Armenia. Like most of the national liberation organisations of that time, ASALA professed Marxist-Leninist views. The origins of this organisation have been widely debated. The theories varied: the ASALA has been deemed as a Mukhabarat project (intelligence service of Syria and Iraq) to inject an Armenian component into the Palestinian movement, as a Soviet creature against Turkey, or as an American tool for the recruitment of radical Armenians. It even amounted to something as outlandish as a joint Soviet-American project to contain Turkey. Among the plethora of conspiracies, there was only one lacking, the one that allowed for the possibility that ASALA constituted a combat wing established by the Armenian national aristocracy. Over time, due to internal disagreements, the organisation split into two parts and by the end of the 1980s it ceased to exist.
At the same stage, Bob Avakian, an ethnic Armenian with a strong record of involvement in major American left-wing organisations, including the Free Speech Movement and the Black Panthers, became chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party of the United States. In turn, the United States began actively deploying diplomats of Armenian origin to the countries of the Eastern Bloc (the Soviet sphere of influence) and the Middle East. Representatives of the local Armenian communities were widely represented in political, military intelligence, diplomatic, scientific, and economic leadership of many countries, especially in Romania, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Persia (Iran under Shah), Syria, and Lebanon. The importance of the Armenian factor is also evidenced by the appointment of Marius Yuzbashyan as head of the 3rd Department (illegal intelligence) of the Office of the Commissioner of the State Security Committee (KGB) for Coordination and Liaison with the Ministry of State Security of the German Democratic Republic (MGB of GDR) in 1967–1970. The MGB of GDR was one of the key structures responsible for the security of the Eastern European socialist bloc. He also headed the ‘S’ Department (illegal intelligence) of the First Chief Directorate (PGU) of the KGB in 1970–1972 and became the director of the KGB of the Armenian SSR in 1978.
The deputy head of the PGU KGB (foreign intelligence) was also an ethnic Armenian, Ivan Aghayants, who built up the Soviet residency in Iran. His disciple, Gevork Vartanian, a Hero of the Soviet Union and PGU KGB employee, operated in the Middle East and Europe for a long time. The United States kept pace: Edward Djerejian, an Armenian-American who graduated from Georgetown University, was made a special assistant to Deputy Secretary of State George Ball in 1962–1964, then served as a political officer in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1965–1969, and in 1972–1975 was an executive assistant to Deputy Secretary of State Joseph Sisco, who came to the State Department from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He had been an officer in the Bureau of European Affairs for a year and was assigned to Moscow to lead the Political Department of the American Embassy in 1979. During the Reagan and Bush Sr. presidencies, he served as U.S. ambassador to Syria (1988–1991), and during the Clinton administration, he went on to work as the ambassador to Israel (1993–1994).
In the era of the politics of glasnost (transparency) and perestroika (restructuring) announced by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Washington closely monitored the centrifugal processes in national republics. For a number of reasons, the Armenian SSR held a special position in the priority list of the American Republican elite. Firstly, by that time there was an influential Armenian group in the States, well integrated into the Republican Party, with a special position held by the former US Navy Minister Paul Ignatius, California Governor George Deukmejian, political strategist Kenneth Khachigian, Congressman Charles Pashayan, Pentagon advisor Colonel John Kizirian, and others. Politicians of Armenian descent were closely associated with the three main Republicans of the time — President Reagan, Senior Bush, and the party leader in the Senate, Bob Dole. For American statesmen, this was a ready-made strategic bridge that could link Armenia with the Atlantic world led by the United States. No other nation in the former Soviet Union had such an organised and influential group of influence within America. Secondly, the American deep state, aware of the potential of Armenian communities around the world, regarded Armenia as a focal point around which a global transnational network of influence could be built.
Appreciating the Armenians’ protest potential and aspirations, the United States supported the Armenian demand for the return of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO) to the Armenian SSR at the highest level (by bipartisan consensus). Senior senators such as Claiborne Pell, Edward Kennedy, Joseph Biden and John Kerry on the Democratic side alongside Bob Dole and Pete Wilson on behalf of Republicans openly urged Gorbachev to meet the Karabakh Committee’s demand and implement harsh measures to stop the massacres of Armenians within the Azerbaijani SSR (Sumgait, Baku, etc.). The White House was the first to formally recognise Armenia’s independence, assigning it a special position in the list of countries to be provided with financial support (Freedom Support Act).
‘We commend your efforts to prevent both the further loss of life and the continued violations of the Armenian minority’s human rights in this region. Beyond the restoration of civil peace, we also believe that the most important goals for Soviet authorities include the guarantee of safe passage for Armenians in Azerbaijan who wish to leave for their homeland, and the breaking of the Azeri-imposed economic blockade of Nagorno-Karabagh and Armenia, where Americans and other foreign nationals still work on earthquake relief projects. The horrifying upsurge of violence in Azerbaijan only dramatizes the need for the Soviet government to insure that the 160,000 residents of the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh can exercise their autonomy by reuniting with Soviet Armenia. For nearly 70 years, Azerbaijani rulers have succeeded only in imposing cultural persecution and economic discrimination on the Armenian people of Nagorno-Karabakh, who account for 80 percent of the territory’s population.’.
US Senators Letter to Mikhail Gorbachev
The Republic of Artsakh, which had no de jure recognition by the States, was also included in the list. Under the separately enacted Section 907, Congress forbade the President’s Administration from providing any support to Azerbaijan over its aggression against the Armenians of Artsakh and its blockade of the border with Armenia.
