13.10.2020, Moscow.
Political scientist and the leader of the Essence of Time movement Sergey Kurginyan described the how inter-ethnic conflicts were instigated in the republics of the Soviet Union, speaking on the air of the Evening with Vladimir Solovyov TV program on the Russia One channel.
Discussing the escalation of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Sergey Kurginyan recalled the riots in the city of Sumgait in 1988, when a real massacre against the Armenian population took place in this Azerbaijani city.
“What happened there was really terrible. Of course, it was done by certain members of ‘The Grey Wolves’ (a Turkish right-wing radical organization linked with ‘Gladio’ ― Rossa Primavera News Agency) and US-supported mercenaries, who began the massacre,” the political scientist recalled.
According to Sergey Kurginyan, there was a way to resolve the inter-ethnic conflict, and the necessary tools were available.
“And then I said, in the beginning of my political activity, that about one hundred people had to be executed. In those days, the Soviet Constitution and the Soviet law allowed this; a large investigation had to be initiated, and all those responsible for these events had to be executed in order to put everything down. Thiswasnotdone,” Sergey Kurginyan noted.
He recalled that in the cold war period Western experts developed various technologies aimed at disintegrating the Soviet Union, and they focused on the national republics.
“We do not remember well today how Brzeziński and others developed the concepts of an ‘arc of instability’ and ‘actualization of historical time.’ The option of creating these ‘arcs’ to disintegrate the Soviet Union as well as actualizing ‘historical time,’ i.e. all this historical memory (and it is terrible, of course), all this indeed took place,” Sergey Kurginyan said.
The political scientist noted that the incompetence of the center led by Mikhail Gorbachev played a major role in instigating the conflicts at the periphery of the USSR.
“All this began to shift the situation, and Gorbachev’s guilt in all these events is paramount. He was going from one extreme to the other, thus only escalating the conflict. The feeling that the federal center, the union-level center, was helpless, made people take up arms themselves, which led to the terrible events,” the expert concluded.
According to the political scientist, one of the most terrible things for any people is when they are expelled from their ancestral lands. Speaking about the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, it should be noted that the massacre in Sumgait and the events that followed resulted in a major displacement of Armenians who lived in Azerbaijan. Before the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, hundreds of thousands of Armenians were expelled from their ancestral lands in the period of the Ottoman rule.
“In this terror, the most terrible thing, of course, is expulsion from the lands. Hundreds of thousands had to leave their lands. This memory is forever. Everyone who initiates this sort of latifundist-style expulsion from lands, and of course it was organized crime, including its politicized variety, knows that it will maintain for centuries to come. This was the basis of what we have today,” Kurginyan said.
He believes that, if the Soviet Union had been as decisive as in its earlier periods, any inter-ethnic conflicts would have been resolved.
“Had the Soviet Union continued to exist, even if it had not acted as decisively as in Stalin’s period but at ten percent of that level, no conflict would have taken place, and the people would have lived in peace, although with terrible memory about certain events in their past. The memory was revived, the (union-level ― Rossa Primavera News Agency) center stepped aside, and now we have what we have. This is a terrible tragedy, a tragedy of the people,” Sergey Kurginyan concluded.
On September 27, 2020, the largest escalation of the conflict between Azerbaijan and Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) over the recent years took place. Azerbaijan claims the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. The people of Artsakh, who successfully defended their independence in 1994, believe that they have the right to self-determination.
Azerbaijan is supported by Turkey, which is directly involved in the hostilities in the Karabakh conflict zone. Artsakh, in its turn, is supported by Armenia. The leaders of the global powers call the conflict sides to stop the hostilities and negotiate.
Source: Rossa Primavera News Agency
