Soviets Expel Armenian for Role in Ethnic Dispute

The government today expelled a prominent Armenian activist and stripped him of his Soviet citizenship as punishment for stirring up nationalist sentiment in an ethnic dispute, Tass press agency said.

Tass did not say where the activist, Paruyr Ayrikyan, 39, was headed or whether he had yet left the Soviet Union.

The expulsion came two days after the Soviet leadership gave a final ruling in the heated and sometimes violent struggle between Armenians and Azerbaijanis over control of the small Nagorno-Karabakh region in the Caucasus Mountains.

The decision by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet to reject Armenia’s bid to annex the region appeared today on the front pages of national newspapers.

Tass also said that Ayrikyan was “pardoned,” but it did not say what he was pardoned for. He was arrested last March on charges of defaming the Soviet state, but it is not known whether he was convicted.

Susana Avakyan, 39, his girlfriend and fellow member of the underground group Alliance for National Self-Determination, said in a telephone interview that authorities have been trying for months to get Ayrikyan to agree to expulsion, but that he refused.

“He said that ‘if you hear that I agreed, it’s a provocation. I won’t agree,’ ” Avakyan said.

Ayrikyan relayed the message to two of his sisters, who visited him in prison in late June, Avakyan said.