Testing Moscow

The Soviet government has run out of both tolerance and maneuvering room in its efforts to pacify Armenian dissidents who are demanding the return to their homeland of Nagorno-Karabakh, the largely Armenian and Christian enclave that 65 years ago was made a part of Muslim Azerbaijan. General Secretary Mikhail S. Gorbachev and his colleagues flatly reject any notion of redrawing boundaries or transfering authority, fearing that to give the Armenians what they want would provoke an explosive reaction from the Azerbaijanis, but knowing also that capitulation on Nagorno-Karabakh would encourage other ethnic groups in the diverse Soviet empire to assert their own troubling territorial and political claims.

A decade ago, maybe even three years ago, the strikes and demonstrations that since May have disrupted industry in Nagorno-Karabakh would have brought swift and brutal retaliation from the central government. Gorbachev clearly would prefer to avoid using force to put down the nationalist challenge, knowing that a recourse to this last resort would make a mockery of his promises to liberalize Soviet life. But Gorbachev also understands that his own political interests--maybe even his political survival--and those of the Communist Party require that the regime not lose control. If authority can be maintained only by applying the full weight of state repression, then repression there will be.

Before that, though, less crude means will be tried. Paruir A. Airikyan, the most prominent Armenian dissident, has been stripped of his citizenship and expelled from the country, a warning to other activists to toe the line or face exile or worse. More troops have been sent to the area in a show of force, party ranks in Armenia have been purged, criminal prosecutions and economic sanctions have been threatened if the strikes are not called off. The reaction in Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh isn’t clear. No Western correspondents have been allowed in the area, telephone connections with Moscow are frequently cut, the reliability of Soviet reporters on the scene is open to question.

In the end, of course, Moscow has the power to impose its will and the incentive to use that power. But the end, when it comes, won’t really be the end. Ethnic tensions and political grievances seem certain to continue, in Armenia and elsewhere. The political restructuring that Gorbachev wants is aimed in part at damping down those grievances. The irony is that it may have been the very promise of better things to come that brought trouble to the surface now.