Nationalists Supplant Communists, Recruit Troops, Aid Border Villages : Armenia: As it tries to maintain order, the new movement commands respect--far more than for the regime or the party.

The violent conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan has galvanized Armenian opposition groups, who have virtually supplanted the Communist Party leadership and taken the defense of their embattled republic into their own hands.

Under the leadership of the militant Karabakh Committee, the Armenia All-National Movement is recruiting a volunteer army. It is deploying militia units along the frontier with Azerbaijan and sending medicines and other relief supplies to besieged Armenian villages near the frontier.

The Karabakh Committee was formed two years ago, when ethnic violence erupted in Nagorno-Karabakh, the disputed enclave of Christian Armenians in largely Muslim Azerbaijan. The All-National Movement, which came into being in November, represents several nationalist groups opposed to the government in Moscow.

In Yerevan, the Armenian capital, it is the movement, rather than the government, that is coordinating emergency housing for thousands of Armenian refugees arriving daily from Azerbaijan. Through daily rallies and radio broadcasts, the movement is trying to maintain order in a city overflowing with armed and angry men. Clearly, its voice commands respect, greater respect than for the government or Communist Party.

At the rallies, many Armenians accuse the government of being slow to react to the growing danger to Armenians in Azerbaijan, and the government now seems almost quiescent compared to what the Karabakh Committee is doing. Leaders of the nationalist movement say they are ready to assume full political power in Armenia if the authorities fail to defend the republic.

The longer the crisis continues, it appears, the more likely it is that the Karabakh Committee, most of whose members were in jail a year ago, will assume a greater role in Armenia’s political leadership.

Significant Change

This is a significant change for a movement that, while promoting the political and economic transformation of Armenia, had not sought political power for itself or even a role in the government beyond winning more legislative seats in the elections planned for this spring.

“If the government does not protect us from this pressing danger, it is quite possible that the movement will take power into its own hands,” Avedik Ishkanian, a leader of the Armenian All-National Movement, said in an interview. “We have begun thinking about that possibility seriously. If it is necessary, it will have to be done.”

Only a week ago, however, leaders of the nationalist opposition, as elected members of the Armenian legislature, were talking conciliation. At the podium in the legislative chamber, they discussed Armenia’s economic problems, and they worked with Communist Party officials to reshape the republic’s constitution on more democratic lines.

For two years, the Karabakh Committee’s political program left the question of taking power from the Communist Party to the future, preferring first to promote the fundamental political and economic changes they believe are needed before tackling the issue of power and the question of Armenian independence.

Now, in the movement’s busy headquarters, those measured political discussions have disappeared, replaced by anger at Armenia’s Communist leadership and the Soviet central government over the anti-Armenian violence in Azerbaijan and by the conviction that the volunteer militia is the only force they can trust to defend the republic.

“We do not believe that the Soviet army will come in to help us,” Hambartsum Galstyan, a member of the Karabakh Committee, said in an interview. “On the contrary, we expect that the army will hinder us, will empty all the Armenians from the villages where they were born. That is why we don’t believe in the army. We want them to just leave Armenia alone.”

Clearly Against Law

The formation of a militia, such as that of the Armenian All-National Movement, is clearly against Soviet law, but the popular support the movement commands is such that its activities have gone unhindered.

But the opposition leaders believe that a military crackdown is possible here and that it would end virtually all the movement’s activities. Yet they have no intention of letting up.

“We just believe we can achieve our aims,” said Ashot Manucharyan, another Karabakh Committee leader. “We believe deep in our hearts that we will overcome. We have already made our decision, and there is nothing that can change it.”

The movement continues to work with the government to solve problems where it has the will and the government has the means, such as transport and supplies. Several Karabakh Committee leaders sit on the official emergency commission with government and Communist Party officials to deal with the crisis. This has allowed them to use military helicopters to send medical supplies to Armenian villages in Azerbaijan and to take in a portable radio station to reopen communications with Armenia.

But opposition leaders are adamant in denouncing governmental authorities for not doing enough for the Armenians in Azerbaijan--and doing what it did only at the insistence of the nationalist movement.