Exhortations and Appeals for Calm : Cemetery a Rallying Point for Moscow’s Armenians

The Armenian church in Moscow is one of only six in the entire Russian Republic of the Soviet Union, and it is set in the middle of the city’s Armenian Cemetery. It is a small church, of pink-painted brick, trimmed in white. A plaque on its wall describes it as a historical building, protected by writ of a government commission.

The walled cemetery that comprises the grounds of Redemption Church is impeccably tended, each plot neatly fenced in the Russian way, with the granite and marble gravestones bearing pictures of the deceased, its walkways beneath arches of branches of linden and birch, bare now against a silver winter sky. Normally, it is a quiet place.

For the last three Sundays, however, the cemetery has been the scene of unusual and noisy activity, as hundreds of Moscow Armenians have gathered to listen to exhortations and arguments, expressions of outrage and appeals for calm over recent events in the faraway republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Beginning in mid-February, those republics have been the scene of a nationalist conflict whose scale and ferocity, some say, are unprecedented in the Soviet Union since the 1920s. At the height of the conflict, which came about two weeks ago, at least 32 people, most of them apparently Armenians, were killed in the Azerbaijani city of Sumgait.

The number of 32 dead is the official Soviet government count, but it is safe to say that no one in a crowd of about 1,000 gathered in the cemetery here Sunday believed that figure to be anywhere near the truth. Witnesses say peace is now being kept in Sumgait by a massive force of Soviet troops, equipped with riot gear, tanks and armored personnel carriers. Thousands of Armenians, they say, have been protectively sealed off behind lines of soldiers and then evacuated from the city by the busload.

The exact Armenian population of Moscow is uncertain, listed in a 1979 government census at 34,000 and estimated as high as 200,000 by members of the Armenian community here who acknowledge that they really don’t know how many they are.

In any case, most of them have relatives in Soviet Armenia and are deeply concerned by what goes on there. With virtually no information available in Soviet news media, and the area sealed off to foreign journalists, the weekly gatherings at the Armenian Cemetery have become a kind of information exchange with overtones of an official protest.

The scene itself was remarkable, since before Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s assumption of power in 1985, it would not have been possible at all. At noon Sunday, the Armenians pressed against the steps of the church, ready to hear what some of them clearly hoped would be a message of fire and brimstone.

A Mantle of White

A fine snow fell steadily, adding to the mantle of white already covering the gravestones and walkways. Young men climbed on a low rooftop adjoining the church, perched on fence railings and clung to slippery hillocks to get a view of the speakers.

One of those waiting was Arsham Avakian, freshly arrived in Moscow from the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan, whose status is the central issue in the conflict. The Armenians want Nagorno-Karabakh to be unified with Armenia.

For Avakian, a 50-year-old farmer with a bristling mustache and a gray stubble of beard, the dispute involves the very salvation of Armenian culture in Karabakh.

“Our population is declining,” he said. “Twenty years ago, Armenians were 94% of the population of Karabakh. Now we are 75%. Armenian monuments and churches are desecrated. We are discriminated against. Our local people rebuilt their church, but they were prevented from putting a cross on top of it. All the television channels are Azerbaijan. We can see television programs of (Ayatollah Ruhollah) Khomeini and the Iranians, but we cannot see television from Yerevan (the Armenian capital).”

The Armenians have tried to play down the factor of religion in the conflict, but it unavoidably surfaces in discussions with those close to the situation. The Azerbaijanis are Shia Muslims, naturally sympathetic to Iran. The Christian Armenians say they are subjected to a steady barrage of Muslim propaganda and subjected to Muslim discrimination. It is their belief that the Azerbaijanis are bent on driving Armenians from the rich agricultural land of Nagorno-Karabakh and taking it for themselves. In this sense, they argue, the dispute is not really religious, but a fight for territory.

“I live now in Samarkand,” said Shaliko Valarian, “but I am from Kirovabad (in Azerbaijan). I was born in 1950. After my army service, I could not get a job. I was trained as a mechanic and a driver. Men I went to school with, Azerbaijanis, all had jobs, even though they were not as qualified as me. My father went to these Azerbaijanis and asked for a job for me. They told him it would cost 5,000 rubles for me to get a job. Of course, I could not get this money. So I left and went to Samarkand. There are many Armenians from Kirovabad now living in Samarkand. We are a colony there.”

“What we want is justice,” said Avakian. “We want public recognition of this. We are not extremists. It was in the spirit of popular activism and restructuring and public openness that we spoke out about Karabakh.”

Avakian’s careful reference to the central themes of the Gorbachev reform movement was an appeal to what the Armenians believe to be their hope for success as well as a defense for mounting their campaign in the first place. It is far from certain whether the appeal will be successful. Fears abound that glasnost-- openness -- may have reached its limit on this issue.

An Armenian from Moscow, Ruben Plekhanian, said he was one of the doubters.

“I think the government finds it easier,” he said, “to put down violence and hooligans than it does to deal with peaceful marches and expressions of public will.”

His comment, however, quickly drew more hopeful comments.

“We just want him (Gorbachev) to know the truth,” said one.

“If he hears the truth,” said another, “he will make the changes.”

Would any of this have happened without Gorbachev, the group was asked. The answer, from several voices at once, was an emphatic “No.”

On a hillock just behind the group of men, a banner was raised as a knot of speakers took their place on the church steps. In white letters on a red cloth, it read, “Let’s Leave Restructuring in the National Policy.”

The speeches that followed over the next three hours were now and then punctuated by cheers and applause, and sometimes by shouts of derision. (“Our children are dying in Sumgait, and you’re talking about committee meetings,” was one protest from the crowd.)

Sound of Falling Snow

Some of the speakers, indeed, droned on at tedious length. The story of one man from Sumgait, telling of his Odyssey to find and bury his daughter’s body, left a hush over the crowd so complete that the fine snow could be heard falling on a nylon parka. Some spoke movingly of the protection Armenians received from Russians in Armenia and their belief that the violence in Sumgait was not the work of their Azerbaijani neighbors in the city, but of violent “elements” who came from outside, and who passed the signal for the assault by lighting fires on the hills surrounding the city.

The general theme, though, was expressed as caution and calm, by men who seemed not quite used to leadership roles in a situation that was, after all, unprecedented, and who were aware that the policemen patrolling the edges of the cemetery might just as easily, given another mood of the leadership, close it off altogether.

“The campaign for Nagorno-Karabakh,” said one speaker, who seemed to sum it up, “is at a critical stage. We must proceed carefully and calmly.”