Ismailov: Sumgait-1988 - Beginning of Collapse of USSR

Baku / 26.02.18 / Turan: 30 years ago on February 26-27 in Sumgait there were mass riots that led to the death of 26 Armenians and 6 Azerbaijanis. At that time, these events became an important trump card in the hands of Armenia, claiming part of the territory of Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh.

Many international experts also call the Sumgait events the beginning of the collapse of the USSR. This title was given to the book by the famous Azerbaijani lawyer Aslan Ismailov, which was published in 2010. Ismailov was the public prosecution's defense attorney in the criminal case of the Sumgait events.

In an interview with the Difficult Question program, Aslan Ismailov said the Sumgait events were caused by a clash of different geopolitical and regional interests, the crisis of the Soviet system and the ambitions of the Armenian nationalist circles.

Interested in the Sumgait events were Armenia, claiming Nagorno-Karabakh, the West, who wanted to destroy the USSR by fomenting ethnic conflicts, Mikhail Gorbachev and his entourage, who were trying to destroy the system, as well as the KGB. Gorbachev weakened the KGB, and this organization tried to provoke controlled chaos to retain its influence and thus put pressure on Gorbachev, Ismailov said.

In his opinion, at that time Armenian nationalist circles tried to prove that life with Azerbaijanis is incompatible, and they provoked the events - in 1987 the deportation of Azerbaijanis from Armenia and the open struggle for secession of Nagorno-Karabakh from Azerbaijan began.

The first provocation with the aim of Armenian pogroms was planned in Nakhchivan, and the second in Gandja. In both cases, local authorities were able to prevent provocation. In Sumgait, this took place due to the absence of the first leaders who were on holidays. Sumgait then was a young industrial city, without established traditions, and 20,000 former prisoners worked and lived here, Ismailov said.

The former prosecutor recalls that the Moscow and Belarusian investigative groups, as well as Armenian investigative bodies, conducted the Sumgait case. And it was proved that the Armenian pogroms were led by Eduard Grigoryan. But the investigation was nevertheless carried out with the cleansing of important facts. In the end, everything was reduced to the fact that the event was organized by the hooligan elements. The Azerbaijani investigation also acted in the mainstream of the Moscow version.

Ismailov believes that Sumgait was the beginning of the collapse of the USSR, followed by Osh, Tbilisi, Vilnius and then disintegration. The planned nature of the Sumgait events is evidenced by the fact that videotapes made on February 26-27 were spread abroad in only two days. In the Soviet Union closed to abroad this was not realistic. The central Union press then spread biased and confrontational coverage of the events, and this line was picked up by the Western press.

The indictment indicated 32 killed - 26 Armenians and 6 Azerbaijanis, and not thousands, as the Western press wrote.

The guilt of the leadership of Azerbaijan is that it showed cowardice. They knew about the impending provocation, but they were afraid of Moscow and were silent. When the world spoke of atrocities in Sumgait, none of the leadership of Azerbaijan tried to justify themselves and clarify the situation, he says.

"I wrote to President Ilham Aliyev about this and about how officials try to prevent the spread of my book Sumgait - the Beginning of the Collapse of the USSR. In March 2010, the President assembled law enforcement officers and asked them what they could say on the Sumgait events. They all told lies and said they did not know anything, since Moscow was leading the case. They said there are no documents of this case in Baku. But after this meeting the case was found in the Prosecutor General's Office. And the Prosecutor General opened a criminal case on the instructions of the President, but then it was suspended. The case is not disclosed, because the Azerbaijani leadership is afraid of Russia, Ismailov said, noting that he is ready to enter the debate with Armenian and Russian opponents and prove who and in what interests organized and carried out the Sumgait events. -0-