Armenian Protests Paralyze Soviet City : Party Press Ignored Outbreaks, Pravda Says; Loss at $41 Million

Tens of thousands of Armenians have been marching daily through a southern city and have shut down most businesses and public transportation, Pravda said today in an update on the country’s severest ethnic dispute.

The Communist Party newspaper said the unrest in Nagorno-Karabakh, an autonomous region of the republic of Azerbaijan, has cost the government $41.1 million since it began in February.

Pravda said a general strike in the area has lasted three weeks.

The Soviets used to say strikes are a purely Western phenomenon that are anathema to their socialist system of rule by the working class. But strikes have become a frequent way for Armenians to press their demand that Nagorno-Karabakh be taken away from Azerbaijan and made part of the neighboring Armenian republic.

Pravda admitted that the central Soviet press had been ignoring the story in Nagorno-Karabakh since February, when the unrest began, but that in the meantime “tension in the region did not subside.”

It said it was providing an update because readers had written letters asking whether the situation had improved.

Residents of the area and Moscow-based dissidents have been reporting the latest wave of unrest to Western journalists, but the Soviet press carried nothing on the situation until today.

Pravda said strikes that began May 23 have shut down the majority of industrial enterprises and mass transit in Stepanakert, the main city of Nagorno-Karabakh, whose population of 160,000 is mostly Armenian.

Also affected were three regional centers within Nagorno-Karabakh: Martunin, Mardakert and Askeran. Nearly all cafeterias and stores are also closed, according to Pravda.

“Every morning, tens of thousands of people move side by side in columns along streets toward the center of the city with banners and signs, conducting meetings,” the newspaper reported.

Armenians have set up “self-defense posts” around the clock to prevent attacks by Azeris, the main national group in Azerbaijan, Pravda said. Such measures are unnecessary because there haven’t been any attacks, it said.

Azeris went on a rampage at the end of February in Sumgait, and 32 people, mostly Armenians, were killed.

Pravda disclosed that Azeris staged counterdemonstrations rejecting the territorial demand May 14-15 in the republic’s capital, Baku, and other Azerbaijani cities.