ANALYSIS : With Reforms Periled by Armenian Protests, Gorbachev Got Tough

With his ambitious reforms endangered by the prolonged conflict over the Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh in the remote mountains of the southern Soviet Union, Mikhail S. Gorbachev has personally taken over management of the crisis in a demonstration of the new, more open political system he envisions for the country and the vigorous leadership he believes it must have.

The Soviet leader’s rationale was clear as he moved over the past week to restore order in the troubled region: If this crisis could not be resolved through the new political system he is building with his reforms, more serious conflicts could not be resolved in the future. But successful action now would probably strengthen that embryonic system.

After waiting for nearly six months for subordinates to resolve the ever-deepening crisis, Gorbachev forced a hard compromise on the Armenians who have been demanding the region’s transfer from the Soviet republic of Azerbaijan to neighboring Armenia: Nagorno-Karabakh is to get greater political autonomy, more funds for development and more cultural contacts with Armenia, but it will remain part of Azerbaijan.

The decision, adopted last week by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, the Soviet Parliament, did not please Armenians, either in Nagorno-Karabakh or in Armenia itself. But because of Gorbachev’s immense political strength, normalcy now appears to be returning to both areas after weeks of angry protests, strikes and anti-government demonstrations.

Authorities in Stepanakert, the principal town in Nagorno-Karabakh, reported Tuesday that the two-month general strike, the longest such protest in Soviet history, was over. Officials in Yerevan, the Armenian capital, said that the massive protests, which sometimes brought out as many as half a million people in a direct challenge to the Communist Party leadership, had also ended.

The return to normalcy “gives one confidence that there will not be any further disruptions,” a special correspondent for the Communist Party newspaper Pravda reported Tuesday from Yerevan, “but the psychology of the people, their mood, is nevertheless changing quite slowly.”

For Gorbachev, who is battling powerful party conservatives skeptical of his broad liberalization, even this is a significant victory, one that his supporters hope will protect his reform program but will also show the ability of a new political system to resolve crises.

Critics of the reforms, particularly Gorbachev’s insistence on democratsiya and glasnost , or increased political participation and openness, were citing the Armenian protests as the result of the reforms. They warned that the country was heading for even greater disorder.

“For Gorbachev, the main issue was not Nagorno-Karabakh or even the protests in Armenia, as serious as they were as a challenge to the state’s authority,” a veteran Soviet political analyst commented this week.

“For him and the party leadership, the central question is the future of perestroika , of the reform program as a whole. . . . This was what was at stake, because if such problems, whatever their cause, could not be solved through the new ways advocated by Gorbachev, then certainly we would return to the old ways preferred by conservatives.”

The compromise, in the view of Soviet political analysts, demonstrated the tough realism--not yielding to Armenian demands but requiring major concessions from Azerbaijan--that the country has come to expect of Gorbachev during his three years in power.

“He does not go for the old formulas, he does not accept easy solutions, he does not buy attractive but empty packages,” a senior Soviet editor remarked, also asking not to be quoted by name. “He settled on the compromise he did because, after everything was weighed, it offered the best chance of resolving the fundamental problem without creating new ones.”

And the way the compromise was put together demonstrated aspects of the political system Gorbachev envisions for the future.

The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, long a rubber stamp for the party leadership, actively debated the issue, with each side arguing its case strongly.

Amazingly, more than two hours of excerpts, including the hottest, most emotional moments, were shown on national television as a lesson in democracy. Soviet television had earlier showed a lengthy documentary that shocked many viewers with its candor about the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia and Azerbaijan.

Under constitutional reforms endorsed by a special Communist Party conference a month ago, the Supreme Soviet would become the forum for all such major government debates, which for more than 50 years have been conducted within the party in virtual secrecy.

Gorbachev, already boldly acting as if he had the presidential powers envisioned in the proposed constitutional changes, intervened frequently with questions and comments, shaping the compromise.

Earlier, he had ordered firm but measured strength to end the violence in Azerbaijan and Armenia, where at least 36 people had been killed in the communal strife.

The first duty of a government, Gorbachev said without apology, is to ensure peace and security for its citizens. And once the decision was made, he let Armenians know that unrest would not be tolerated.

Number of Arrests

A number of protest leaders have been arrested, one has been stripped of his citizenship and ordered deported and party members and government officials who sympathized with the protests are facing the loss of their positions.

“We can see that the democratic rights and new conditions created by perestroika are being clearly misused for anti-democratic purposes,” Gorbachev said. “This is unacceptable.”

Describing the debate as “a historic moment,” one that would set important precedents both for the issues involved and the way the crisis was handled, Gorbachev acknowledged that much more was involved than the future of little Nagorno-Karabakh, whose population totals only 180,000 in a country of more than 285 million.

Issues of minority rights were involved, he said, as well as broader questions of democratizing the political system and the future of perestroika , as the broad reform effort is called.

“We are passing through--I will put it bluntly--a series of trials,” he said,” and the question is whether perestroika is up to them.”

That the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh grew into such a crisis and became a test for perestroika is ironic, resulting largely from the failure of party and government leaders to resolve it earlier.

Even after the first clashes in February, the region’s problems were left to local officials and allowed to fester, party leaders now acknowledge.

Gorbachev’s own focus was on the broader reform program, which was under attack by conservatives, and there was no method for conflict resolution in the Soviet political system other than the attention of the top leadership.

“Although many people were killed in Sumgait (Azerbaijan’s second city, where Azerbaijanis attacked scores of Armenian residents, killing at least 24), we paid little attention,” a well-placed Soviet official commented. “We always assume that the party can put things right, that it will act in time and that problems are really abnormalities that will disappear. We also tend to regard the problems of the outlying republics as if they were somewhere else, maybe in Africa.

“And so this all grew into a very serious crisis that put perestroika in jeopardy. That is a lesson for us, but it is a lesson we cannot be sure we have learned until things are truly quiet in Nagorno-Karabakh.”