Problem of Empire, Not Hotheads : Caucasus: Moscow’s policies have driven the rival republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan to bloodshed. Now it should negotiate a new relationship.

Why are they killing each other in the Soviet republics of Azerbaijan and Armenia?

Here is what passes for an explanation in the West: There has always been animosity between the Muslim Azeris and the Christian Armenians. Until recently, however, they have been kept from each other’s throats by the strong arm of Moscow. Now, as Mikhail Gorbachev allows greater freedom, the old ethnic and religious tensions break into the open. Hence the bloodshed, a tragic consequence of perestroika proceeding too fast and maybe too far.

The implications of this view are obvious. Nationalism is an evil genie from the past that can wreck reform in the present. Perestroika cannot fall prey to such an atavistic passion.

Unfortunately, this explanation is far from the mark. It reduces both Azeris and Armenians to the level of irrational hotheads. It ignores the fact that each party to the dispute has urgent and legitimate complaints--not just against each other, but against Moscow.

And it treats Gorbachev and perestroika as innocent victims, whereas in reality they are the immediate cause of the strife. Finally, it recasts what is actually a crisis of imperial policy into a more local problem of inter-ethnic relations.

What are the Armenians’ complaints against Moscow? They are quick to remind anyone who will listen that Gorbachev at first jailed members of the Armenian committee formed to raise the Nagorno-Karabakh issue. Communists in Yerevan point out that Gorbachev then did a flip-flop, freeing the Nagorno-Karabakh Committee and proceeding to negotiate with it over the head of their party. Even then Moscow refused to accede to the will of the Armenian majority in Nagorno-Karabakh, placing the region instead under the control of a special committee from Moscow. In yet another volte-face, Gorbachev then abolished this committee and returned the region to the control of Azerbaijan, thus tilting toward the Muslims. This caused hundreds of thousands of Armenians to flee their Azerbaijan homes. Meanwhile, every Armenian knows that Gorbachev took a week to get to Armenia after the devastating earthquake there, and that his lieutenants have still failed to deliver much of the emergency relief aid Moscow promised. And even before this, actions by Moscow ministries had inflicted grave damage on Armenia’s ancient treasures and its environment.

What are the Azeris’ complaints? The Caspian coast was once rich in oil. In recent years these fields have been depleted, throwing hundreds of thousands of Azeris out of work. Short of labor elsewhere in the Soviet Union, Moscow commandeered thousands of unemployed Azeris to work in the new oil fields of Western Siberia. There, they were exposed to a hostile climate and attacks from Russian bigots. Meanwhile, unemployment continued to soar back home. Peasants trudged into Baku in search of food and work but found neither. Huddled into vast slum districts, these immigrants finally exploded in anger. Nor could local leaders have prevented this. They had little voice in the Kremlin since Gorbachev sacked the last Azeri politician prominent in Moscow.

This, then, is the background to the tragic blood bath of recent weeks. Call the Armenians and Azeris ethnic hotheads if you will. But both have been driven to this state, not merely by the others’ actions but by policies emanating from Moscow. The brutality of Red Army and Interior Ministry troops toward both groups further implicates the central government.

What, then, should be done? The presence of Soviet troops may bring temporary relief. But without further and more basic measures, the crisis will only deepen. The only way out is for Gorbachev to begin treating the problem in the Caucasus for what it is, a visceral and primitive response to the way Russians have ruled their empire.

Is it naive to think that this might happen? Given the mounting extremism on all sides, is there any process by which a settlement can be reached among Moscow, Yerevan and Baku? There is. The Inter-Regional Group is a faction within the Soviet Congress of Peoples’ Deputies founded by the late Andrei Sakharov and others. It has called for the creation of regional commissions throughout the Soviet Union, which would be responsible for negotiating new relationships among the republics, and between the republics and Moscow. Gorbachev should convene such a commission for Azerbaijan and Armenia at once. The local congresses should be represented, as should the Communist parties of the republics, as well as the popular-front-type independent groups.

These negotiations could result in a very different set of relations than now exists. They would almost certainly require Moscow to make both economic and political concessions to the republics that have, until now, been unthinkable. But only such a process can address the issues of imperial policy underlying all the violence and save the region from further bloodshed.