Unrest Won’t Change Borders, Pravda Indicates

The Communist Party newspaper Pravda indicated Monday that the Kremlin leadership is not likely to accept any change in the borders of the troubled Transcaucasian republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan, where bitter ethnic strife has flared over the last month.

In a lengthy article, the first detailed discussion of the trouble to appear in the Moscow press, Pravda suggested that “to break the established mechanism” would open the door to still other unresolved ethnic issues in the country.

“What if other peoples demand satisfaction of their narrow nationalist interests at the expense of others?” the article asked. “What would happen to our union of peoples? What would happen to the economy?”

The disturbances in the Soviet republics of Armenia and neighboring Azerbaijan began last month after demonstrations by thousands of Armenians in the autonomous region of Nagorno-Karabakh, which lies within the borders of Azerbaijan. The demonstrators demanded that the region be made a part of Armenia.

The demonstrations culminated in a 2-day rampage Feb. 28 and 29 in the Azerbaijani city of Sumgait. The Soviet prosecutor’s office, in a report on Monday by the Tass news agency, provided the most detailed account of the toll to date.

32 Killed, 197 Injured

It said that 32 people “of various nationalities” were killed and 197 others, including about 100 policemen, were injured.

Tass said 12 case of rape were reported, and there were thefts from more than 100 apartments. Twenty-six stores and more than 20 motor vehicles were damaged.

“Most of those who took part in the murders, rape, assaults and theft have been identified by now,” the report said. “Some of the 42 people who have been arrested have a criminal record.”

Another 400 people have been brought to administrative account for violations of public order under laws that give police the right to impose fines and short jail terms for minor offenses without recourse to the courts.

The article recounted the long history of strife in the region and criticized the area’s leaders, particularly the Armenian leaders, who have “found it profitable to distract the attention of the public from the mass of unresolved social problems.”

“It is not as simple as it might look at a casual glance,” the article said. “It has roots going back many centuries. . . . In the past, it has led to many tragic conflicts, aggravated by religious differences.”

Pravda said that “a fifth of the population” was killed in a “fratricidal war” in the region between 1918 and 1920.

Every time the Armenians have raised the question of changing the borders, the article said, the Azerbaijanis have countered with proposals to change other borders--of Armenia, Georgia and the semi-autonomous Georgian region of Dagestan--so as to include ethnic Azerbaijanis within their province.

Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev has said that the next plenary meeting of the party’s Central Committee will take up the question of the nationalities, which he has described as one of the most pressing in the Soviet Union.

Leaders ‘Totally Discredited’

Pravda noted that the Armenian leaders had taken advantage of the spirit of openness and democracy, a central theme of Gorbachev’s leadership, to press demands that had “a clear anti-socialist spirit.”

The article noted that the leaders of the Armenian demonstrations were men “who have spent years agitating” in connection with the issue. It said that “impressive financial resources” were at the disposal of the marchers and asserted that the Armenian leadership in Stepanakert, the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh, had lost touch with the people and had “totally discredited itself.”

“Thousands of threads have tied the Nagorno-Karabakh autonomous region to the republic of Azerbaijan over the past decades,” Pravda said. “So what to do--tear them apart, break the established mechanism?”

Such a sundering, the article concluded, would have a negative effect not only in Nagorno-Karabakh and Azerbaijan “but across the whole country.”