The most popular Mass Medias all over the world started to spread shocking information on the 1 of March, 1988.
“An incident happened in Sumgait city of Azerbaijan which was situated in the South of USSR. Azerbaijanis committed violence against Armenians and killed them. An army was sent in order to save armenians lives”.
The world community was cheated with reedited false information. Though the root of these events stands a century ago, they were out broken on the 11 of March, 1985.
The whole world was waiting for the steps to be taken by one of the two world powers. The country was in an economic crisis. There was lack of all types of goods, lack of food, everything. People had to stay in queues in order to buy essential goods which were given only with luncheon voucher. Though the western countries supported the steps taken by Qarbachov , the provocator of the slogans such as “reconstruction”, “publicity”, ”new thought”, the situation in the country was too tense.
The Alma-Ata events happened in December 1986 caused not only economic, but also political crisis. A crisis in the country was inevitable. In 1987, the thesis by Qorbachov on “the solution of national problems” heralded approaching storm. There was a historical chance for Armenians and their supporters around Qorbachov to realize their idea of “Great Armenia”.
But there also was an important factor that could hinder the Karabakh campaign. The great son of Azerbaijani people Haydar Aliyev was still in Kremlin, Moscow and they had to agree with this reality.
Being aware of Heydar Aliyev`s strict position on this issue the Armenian separatists and their supporters in Kremlin could achieve their goal to keep him away from his office in Kremlin on 22nd of October 1987.
Heydar Aliyev: In late October in 1988, I retired form my position as a deputy chairman of the USSR Cabinet. Approximately after 15 days, delivering a speech in Paris Aganbekyan declared that Nagorno Karabakh must be joined to Armenia and that he had already discussed this issue with Gorbachov and Gorbachov gave his agreement.
Before too long, the tragedy of Sumgait Pogroms was spiraled out of control, and became accepted as an example of persecution of Armenians, and the cause of Nagorno-Karabakh (NK) war between then-Soviet Armenia and Azerbaijan.
This out of the ordinary behavior has led the Azerbaijani side to
be adamant that the Sumgait Pogroms were ;
Heydar Aliyev : This was a provocation by some Armenian nationalists groups in order to fuel national humour in different circles in Armenia and a deliberate act of sabotage by some elements within the Communist Party, to fuel ethnic tensions, and keep pro-independence Azerbaijan and Armenia fighting each other, instead of the central authorities, in a classic example of divide and rule. This was the beginning of the events and future tension.
All had been done beforehand to start the Karabakh conflict and in January, 1988 everything was ready. Then, Armenians started to realize their will. Due to the instructions, Yerevan got from Moscow, “Miatsum” actions started in Khankendi.

Some 11,000 ethnic Azerbaijanis were ethnically cleansed from their homes in Armenia, and
became the very first refugees of the NK conflict, settling primarily in and around Sumgait.
Azerbaijanis were internally displaced from Kafan and Cician regions of Armenia.
On February 14, the Armenian nationalists held the first large rally in NK region, on February 20, adopted an appeal on the need to separate the NK region from Azerbaijan and its attachment to Armenia, stunning and frustrating the people of Azerbaijan.
On February 22, 1988, the first casualties of the NK conflict appeared: two Azerbaijani youths, Bakhtiyar Uliyev, 16, and Ali Hajiyev, 23, were shot and killed by armenians. Two more Azerbaijanis were killed on 25 of February in the same village. But this was just the beginning of the process.
On 26 and 27 of February situation in Sumgait city became tenser. On February 26 several minor rallies took place on the central Square of Sumgait. The people were protesting the government`s passive reaction towards the events. On 28 February the events were directed towards another direction.
The apartments of Armenians were attacked and the residents were indiscriminately murdered, raped, and mutilated by the rioters.
In peacetime, the Soviet Union had never confessed what happened then. Gangs of about ten to fifty or more people strolled through the city, broke windows, burned cars.
The Soviet government`s reaction to the protests was initially slow.In a Soviet Politburo session on the third day of the rioting on 29 of February Gorbachev and his senior cabinet, conferred on several subjects before even discussing the events of Sumgait. When the issue was finally raised, Gorbachev voiced his opposition to the proposal of sending in troops. But 26 people had already been killed by that time.
Meanwhile, on the previous day, two battalions of MVD troops from the interior, largely equipped with truncheons and riot gear arrived in Sumgait in buses and armored personnel carriers.
Soviet government gave them right to use deadly force. As a result 400 people were injured, 6 azerbaijanis were killed.
By the evening of the 29th, martial law was imposed and troops in buses and personnel carriers were patrolling the streets of Sumgait. About 3 thousand innocent people were arrested.
According to court documents among the arrested were "Azerbaijanis, Armenians, Russians and
Lezgins". Over eighty people were imprisoned; Among key ringleaders, arrested for killings of 7 of the 26 Armenians, were ethnically Armenian, convicted felons, Eduard Grigoryan and Zhirayr Azizbekian, as well as other Armenians; Most prosecution and investigation was done by central Soviet authorities, from Moscow. Most case documents were taken from Azerbaijan to Moscow and never returned. The Armenian ringleaders, such as Mr. Grigoryan, were freed in the 1990`s from their Russian prisons;
This has been recently carefully acknowledged by then Defense Minister, current Prime Minister and head of National Security Council, and likely next President of Armenia, Mr. Serzh Sargsyan, during March 30, 2005, Parliamentary hearings in Armenia: "There are grounds for a judgment that the mass pogroms and killings of peaceful Armenian population in Sumgait … were exercised with the knowledge of Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, in Moscow". He has confirmed his words during a briefing at the National Press Club in Washington DC in October 2005.

But Communist leadership seemed unrepentant. "`As far as these events [Sumgait] are concerned, we acted properly. ... We took efficient measures that, as it turned out, were just what was needed.
In short, we were on top of events and were able to influence them, averting the worst.`" declared Mikhail Gorbachev in a Politburo meeting in March 1988, after the events in Sumgait.

Moreover, at the earlier meeting of the Politburo on 29 February 1988 in the immediate aftermath of Sumgait tragedy, Gorbachev said: "The main thing now is we need to send the working class, people, people`s volunteers into the fight with the criminals. That, I can
tell you, will stop any hooligans and extremists.

The facts about the Sumgait events of 1988 were distorted and obscured by the propaganda and greater tragedies that followed, such as dozens of Azerbaijanis massacred in Armenia throughout 1988 the terrible massacre of over 400 Azerbaijanis in Baku during the Black January of 1990, a genocidal act of mutilating well over 600 Azerbaijanis during the Khojaly Massacre in February
1992 – the largest massacre in the region to date. All these tragedies caused considerable and irreparable damage to the Azerbaijani-Armenian relations, and should be carefully examined, with their masterminds brought to justice. The Sumgait tragedy, which killed people on all sides, should be considered only in the larger historic context of the occupation of NK and other Azerbaijani regions by the armed forces of Armenia, displacement of over 800,000 Azerbaijanis, killing of a total of over 20,000 Azeris, and of course the gerrymandering of the Soviet Communist regime with the lives of millions of people on their periphery.

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