Soviet Policy Challenged by Armenia Strike

In a dramatic popular challenge to Soviet authorities, a two-day general strike involving millions of workers began Monday in the southern Soviet republic of Armenia to demand the transfer of a largely Armenian district from neighboring Azerbaijan.

The strike paralyzed Yerevan, the Armenian capital, and most other major cities and towns in the republic, according to government spokesmen here and in Yerevan. Massive political demonstrations, involving hundreds of thousands of people, accompanied the strike in most places.

The protests brought the Communist Party’s new leader in Armenia into the streets, where he promised demonstrators that the Armenian Supreme Soviet, the republic’s legislature, will seek the transfer of the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh from Azerbaijan, which has a population of 6.8 million, to Armenia--its population is 3.4 million--when it meets this week.

‘Positive Solution’ Assured

Suren Arutunyan, elected last month as the party’s first secretary in Armenia, assured the protesters as he went from group to group that there would be “a positive solution” to the problem, the republic’s official news agency Armanpress reported from Yerevan.

Until now, Soviet leaders have insisted that the country’s internal borders were “sealed by the Soviet constitution” and that ethnic grievances would have to be resolved in some way other than by means of territorial transfer--by local autonomy, for example, or increased economic development and special educational and cultural facilities.

Most of the demonstrators dispersed quietly after Arutunyan’s appearance, Armanpress said, although a sit-in, begun last month, continues in Yerevan’s Opera Square, with some of the participants vowing to remain until the republic’s legislature acts on the dispute.

In Baku, the Azerbaijani capital, a police sergeant was fatally wounded over the weekend, authorities said, by a ricocheting bullet fired from a hunting rifle during a protest demanding the transfer of Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia. A 56-year-old Armenian has been arrested, officials said. They denied reports that two Armenians were killed.

On Monday evening, the new party leader in Azerbaijan, Abdul-Rakhman Vezirov, also elected last month, spoke to a crowd of 10,000 in the capital, according to editors at Radio Baku, and apparently succeeded in calming tensions there.

Vezirov had just returned from consultations with the top Soviet leadership in Moscow, but local officials declined to disclose what he told the crowd, if anything, about the Moscow consultations.

If Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous region of about 160,000 people, three-quarters of whom are Armenian, is to be transferred to the Armenian republic, the Azerbaijani legislature will have to agree, and the move will have to be approved by the national parliament in Moscow.

Up to now, Azerbaijani officials have insisted that there was overwhelming support there to retain the region, which has been part of the Azerbaijan republic for 65 years.

General Strike Continues

In Nagorno-Karabakh, the general strike by Armenians that began more than three weeks ago was continuing--in the principal town of Stepanakert and other district centers.

The Communist Party newspaper Pravda reported from Stepanakert last week that local party and government officials had lost control of the situation there, that groups of Armenian and Azerbaijan vigilantes had clashed repeatedly and that virtually every factory, office and store in the region was closed.

Smaller protests occurred in Moscow, where Armenians organized several rallies over the weekend and marched on the offices of Tass, the official news agency, to demand fuller accounts of developments in the two republics, which lie beyond the Caucasus Mountains on the Soviet Union’s borders with Turkey and Iran.

The increased ethnic tension coincides with conservative opposition to the radical reforms proposed by Mikhail S. Gorbachev, the Communist Party general secretary, who is seeking a mandate from a crucial party meeting later this month to broaden and accelerate political, economic and social changes here.

Armenians have used Gorbachev’s calls for greater democracy and political openness to support their demand that Nagorno-Karabakh be transferred to Armenia, as the majority of the people there wish. But conservatives have warned that the ethnic tensions are evidence that the reforms are going too far, too fast and must be slowed.

Ethnic Conflict Was Ignored

Chief government spokesman Gennady I. Gerasimov said in confirming the latest developments that the Soviet leadership has no quick fix for the unrest, which he says stems from ignoring the country’s ethnic conflict for many years.

“This is not the result of glasnost (political openness),” he said, “but of years of stagnation, when we did not go deeply enough into our nationality problems.”

More than 500,000 people gathered in Yerevan’s main square Sunday, according to local journalists, to call the general strike in support of their demand that the Armenian legislature propose a constitutional amendment to the central government in Moscow transferring Nagorno-Karabakh.

“Most Yerevan enterprises are not working, most offices and stores are closed, public transport has halted, schools are empty,” an editor at the Armenian Communist Party newspaper said by telephone from Yerevan on Monday. “Much the same is true of other cities and towns. . . .

“But the streets are full of people continuing their demonstrations and protests and rallies. They say that if our Supreme Soviet (the republic’s legislature) does not adopt a resolution on this issue when it meets Wednesday, then the strike will continue, perhaps indefinitely.”

‘Illegal Demands’ Protested

The policeman was killed in Baku, officials there said, when demonstrators protesting the “illegal demands” for the transfer of Nagorno-Karabakh fanned out through the streets after a rally Saturday and shots were fired, apparently at random.

In mid-February, the regional government in Nagorno-Karabakh called on the legislatures in the two republics to redraw their borders in order to unite the area with Armenia, complaining that the residents’ interests have been greatly neglected under the present arrangement.

Although that decision led to nearly four months of serious civil strife in Armenia and Azerbaijan, the roots of the conflict go back for centuries.

The Azerbaijanis are Muslims of Turkic origin, so the Armenians, who are Christian, associate them with the 1915 massacre of Armenians in Turkey. Azerbaijanis, on the other hand, recall past wars in which the Armenians sided with the Russians, as fellow Christians, against them and other Muslims.

With the death of the police sergeant, a 36-year-old Azerbaijani, 33 people have now died, according to government figures. Most have been Armenians killed in what Soviet officials describe as a “pogrom” in the Azerbaijan city of Sumgait in late February and early March. Foreign journalists have been barred from both Armenia and Azerbaijan since February.

“A historical part of Armenia once again has found itself under the domination of Muslims,” said Zori Balyan, one of the delegates Armenians sent to negotiate the issue with the central government. “Sumgait showed that in this region, relations between Christian and Muslims have not changed--except perhaps for the worst.”