The Early Years
It wasn’t the best of times, and it wasn’t the worst of times, we were stuck somewhere in the middle. We were a middle class family, living in Baku, Azerbaijan. Back then Azerbaijan was one of the 15 Republics of the USSR, located on the shore of the Caspian Sea (despite being called a Sea, it actually is the largest lake in the world). The city had a population of about 2 million people. The main nationality was Azeris, however Armenians, Russians and Jews were very well represented. My father was Armenian, and my mother was half Armenian/half Russian. Both of my parents worked. My mother was a music teacher in kindergarten and my father was a computer engineer. Both of my grandparents on my mother’s side were engineers for the subway system in Baku. On my father’s side my grandfather was a store manager and my grandmother was a housewife and a seamstress.
Panoramic view of Baku and the Caspian Sea.
When I was born in 1978, my father signed up to get an apartment, but we would be in line for many years. Housing, healthcare, education were all provided by the government, and therefore free of charge. Stores, hospitals, restaurants, schools, universities, factories, TV stations, newspapers were all government owned. As bad as that might sound to the people outside of the USSR, people who lived in the country were OK with it. After so many years of living like that you kind of get used to it. Basically, if you didn’t “rock the boat”, you were all set. The ones that got hurt were the people who spoke up against Communism. We had nothing to complain about; stores always had food, my parents always got paid on time. We didn’t have a car, but there was plenty of public transportation: buses, trolleys, subway, so a car was never a necessity, rather a luxury. Education system in the USSR was one of the strongest ones in the world. Kids got a well-rounded education. Back then we attended school 6 days a week, with Saturdays being a half-day. Each day consisted of different classes. Students didn’t pick and choose what they wanted to take, they were required to take all the basics: Russian, Literature, Geography, History, Math, Geometry, foreign language, etc. One of the things that I am grateful to USSR for is their education system. I attended Russian schools till 8th grade, and I learned a great deal about many things in those 8 years. (In 9th grade here in the US we studied the same Algebra problems I studied in 7th grade in Russia). We lived in a 2-bedroom apartment that we shared with my maternal grandparents. My mother gave birth to my sister in May of 1982. Everyone had a job, everything seemed to be OK.
Leonid Brezhnev
My first vivid memory of anything Communism related was of Leonid Brezhnev, the General Secretary of CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union). On November 10th, 1982, after 18 years in office, Leonid Brezhnev passed away from a heart attack at the age of 76. I remember his funeral being televised. The whole country observed the minute of silence, as cars stopped on the roads, factories stopped, people stopped. The biggest country in the world froze for a minute to pay respects to its dead leader. Now that’s Communism for you! The country had such respect for the government that it stopped for 1 minute. Was it respect or was it fear? Back then I was too young to know. To ordinary folks like us, Communism didn’t play a big role. After Brezhnev’s death, Russia experienced its 2 short-term GenSecs. While from 1917-1982 only 4 people headed the government (Lenin, Stalin, Khruschev and Brezhnev), and only 1 of them (Khruschev) resigned, between 1982-1985 there were 2 GenSecs. On November 12th, 1982 Yuri Andropov, former head of the KGB, was elected by the Central Committee of the Communist Party as the General Secretary. He died on February 9th, 1984. On February 13th, Konstantin Chernenko was elected General Secretary, despite objections of his doctor who was concerned with Chernenko’s health. On March 10th, 1985 Chernenko passed away. On March 11th, 1985 a young buck by the standards of CPSU (he was 54 at the time) came to head of power, Mikhail Gorbachev. Once he came to power, the calm existence of USSR came to the end.
Year 1986
January of 1986, beginning of a new year, new times for USSR, new times for my family. After this year nothing was going to be the same. On February 25th, 1986 the 27th Party Congress endorsed new party programs and changes in the selection methods of officials and elected a new central committee. No other Soviet leader in history had consolidated power in the Politburo as quickly as Gorbachev. In 1986, he introduced the radical reform policies of perestroika (restructuring), demokratizatsiya (democratization) and glasnost (openness). Perestroika implemented more profit motives, quality controls, private ownership in agriculture, decentralization, and multi-candidate elections. Industry concentrated on measures promoting quality over quantity; private businesses and cooperatives were encouraged; farmers and individuals could now lease land and housing from the government and keep the profits made from selling produce grown on private plots; hundreds of ministries and bureaucratic centers were disbanded. A law was passed that allowed individuals to own small businesses and hire workers. In the campaign for demokratizatsiya, open elections were held. For almost 70 years we were told that democracy was bad, openness was against the law, and freedom of expression would be punished. Now all of a sudden things started to change, and what was bad yesterday, was good today.
The year started of nicely for my family. In March we found out that my mother was pregnant with a boy. We were very excited. This was going to be the 3rd child for my parents. However on April 8th our world came crashing down. My paternal grandfather had a heart attack and died before paramedics even got there. Grandpa Dmitri was born in 1914. He was 15 years older than my grandmother, and lied to her when they got married by telling her he was only 25. He grew up in an orphanage. In June of 1941 he joined the Soviet Army in its fight against the Nazis. Fighting in some major battles like the Battle of Stalingrad, he went all the way from home to Berlin. He received numerous medals, as well as Honorable Mention Certificates signed by Stalin himself. On the evening of April 8th, after watching the evening news, he decided to go to bed. He started to loose his breath, and asked my grandmother to call the ambulance. He passed away 20 minutes later, the ambulance arrived 25 minutes after he died! This came as a total shock because no one expected it. We buried him 3 days later. According to Armenian traditions the body lay in the house, where people came to pay their last respects (there were no funeral homes in USSR back then). On April 11th we buried him in the Armenian cemetery in Baku. In a few years all of the headstones with Armenian names will be bashed, but back then everything was peaceful. He was laid to rest near his mother in law, hundreds of people came to pay their respects. There were Armenians, Russians, Azeris, Jews, Ukrainians, people of many nationalities, back then it still didn’t matter. Due to his job as a store manager and his pleasant personality, he had a great deal of friends, and everyone turned out to pay their last respects.
Following his passing, the country suffered some major tragedies. On April 26th Chernobyl-4 reactor exploded killing 30 people. This was a horrible disaster. Over 1 millions people were possibly affected by the radiation. The accident was a result of a flawed reactor design that was operated with poorly trained personnel and without proper regard for safety. Shortly after, on August 31st, “Admiral Nakhimov” (the Russian Titanic) collided with “Piotr Vasiov” bulk carrier. The steamer rolled starboard and sank 47 meters deep in a matter of seven or eight minutes. According to official statements 423 people died in the shipwreck.
Admiral Nakhimov steamship
Bad omens didn’t stop Gorbachev from pushing through his reforms. At the 1986 Iceland Summit, Gorbachev proposed to sharply reduce the Soviet stockpile of ballistic missiles. In December 1987, Gorbachev and US President Ronald Reagan signed a treaty at the Washington Summit to eliminate intermediate nuclear missiles. In January 1988, plans to withdraw all forces from Afghanistan were announced.
Meanwhile, on December 12th, 1986 my mother gave birth to a boy. Only 7 month have passed since we buried my grandfather, and we decided to name the new boy Dmitri, in memory of his grandfather. No one knew that for the first 5 years of his life, little Dmitri would bounce back and forth all over the world. The following year went pretty smooth. Gorbachev was pushing his reforms, but was not being very successful. He was being praised for the boldness and far-reaching nature of his reform proposals. But to some people Gorbachev moved too fast, while to others he didn’t move fast enough. A country the size of USSR can not change over night. If the approach to the reforms had been gradual, perhaps so many people might not have been alienated at once.
The Beginning of the End
On December 12th, 1987 my brother celebrated his 1st birthday. On December 31st, 1987 we celebrated the New Year’s Eve at our house, with friends and family, that was the last “normal” New Year’s party for quiet some time for us. On February 20th, 1988, a session of the Supreme Soviet of the Mountainous Karabakh Autonomous Region (Mountainous Karabakh region) appealed to the Supreme Soviet of Armenia, Azerbaijan and the USSR to allow it to be separated from Azerbaijan, and joined with Armenia. The Azerbaijani government quickly rejected this request on the basis of the USSR Constitution of 1977. This constitutional act of Azerbaijan was received in Mountainous Karabakh and in Armenia with hostilities against Azeris. After the first direct clash between an Azeri crowd and Armenian residents, in which about 50 Armenians were wounded and two Azeri attackers killed, Deputy USSR Procurator-General, speaking on central TV on February 27th, told the audience about the killing of two young Azeris, specifically naming the nationality of those killed. This announcement may have acted as a catalyst. Within hours, a pogrom against Armenian residents began in the city of Sumgait, 25 km (about 30 miles) from Baku. Despite the fact that the city of Sumgait was located hundreds of miles away from Nagorno-Karabakh and was not related to it in any way, Azeri nationalists decided to teach a bloody lesson to all ethnic Armenians, wherever they resided in Azerbaijan. The pogrom, obviously prepared months in advance and marked by forms of extreme cruelty, lasted for three days, with the Azeri police nowhere to be seen. Phone calls to police or the ambulance went unanswered.
“Seized by an Azeri-Turk crowd, she was stripped and forced to dance before having her breasts slashed and body burned with cigarettes. She was raped and then killed.”
http://www.geocities.com/master8885/sumgait2.html
However, the Gorbachev administration kept quiet. One can’t help but think that in 1988 the KGB with its network of informers was still very strong, and both KGB in Baku and Moscow probably knew about the preparations for the pogroms. However, Soviet troops, even those stationed in Sumgait, had strict orders not to shoot. It wasn’t until the third day that the Soviet troops finally intervened. Under strict orders from Moscow, the Sumgait affair was covered up and the press was kept in the dark about it. The official news accounted for only 32 dead, while the actual counts were much larger. We were shocked! That’s only 30 miles away from us, about a 30-minute car ride. For us Armenians, the pogroms in Sumgait brought back memories of the Armenian genocide in Turkey in 1915 (while some countries have recognized it as genocide, US as well as some others have not, even though 1.5 millions Armenians were killed). Gorbachev’s failure to act was viewed as betrayal by us for it was he who preached change, democracy, and the new way of life.
Around the same time, my father read an article about emigrating to the United States of America. With all of the new policies that Gorbachev was introducing, the Iron Curtain was lifting, and more people started emigrating. My father decided to go out to Moscow and apply for a political asylum. It’s funny now, but back then my grandparent’s reaction was that of shock, how could we leave our homeland? The conflict between 2 neighboring republics was heating up. My father decided to go to a small town in Russia where his uncle moved, and check around. We needed a place to escape to if things got worse. Yeah, we still thought of it as a big “IF”. This wouldn’t happen in Baku, we thought. Soviet Army wouldn’t let things get so bad. My father was joined by his mother, my mom’s aunt and cousin to go and explore this little town. As they were boarding the train in Baku train station, a mob of Azeris stormed the place. They knew that Armenians were fleeing, and they wanted to put a stop to it. My relatives, together with other passengers, barricaded themselves in their train car until the train took off.
They traveled to Taganrog, a town of 300,000 half way between Baku and Moscow. Taganrog is a very small, provincial town. It is located on the shore of the Sea of Azov. It’s famous for being the birthplace of Russian writer Anton Chekov.
We Start Running
From Taganrog my father called and told us how they escaped. At this point we were afraid for our lives, all of us, except my grandfather, who was always very skeptical. My maternal grandmother, who is Russian, called her relatives in Russia, and asked if they can take us in. At the end of November 1988 we got plane tickets to fly to Novosibirsk. One of the biggest cities in Russia, Novosibirsk is located in Western Siberia, sort of in the beginning of Siberia. We caught a packed bus to the airport. Tanks and military personnel were blocking the road to the Baku airport. They were checking everyone’s papers, to make sure terrorists weren’t making their way there. We were overwhelmed by the amount of people in the airport. We flew to Novosibirsk, and settled in my grandmother’s cousin’s apartment.
On December 7th, 1988, at 11:41 a.m. local time a magnitude 6.9 earthquake shook northwestern Armenia and was followed 4 minutes later by a magnitude 5.8 aftershock. The earthquake hit an area of 80 km in diameter (roughly 50 miles). Despite its moderate size, the deaths and damage that the December 1988 earthquake caused made it the largest earthquake disaster since the 1976 magnitude 7.8 earthquake in Tangshan, China that killed more than 240,000 people. The Town of Spitak (population 25,000) was nearly leveled and more than half of the structures in the City of Leninakan (population 250,000) were damaged or destroyed. 25,000 people were killed and 15,000 were injured by the earthquake. In addition 517,000 people were made homeless. However, 15,000 people were rescued. Direct economic losses were put at $14.2 billion. Out of 25,000 killed, many were children. At the time of the earthquake, most kids were at schools or kindergartens, and a lot of them died in those buildings. Armenia was now faced with a civil war and a tragedy on its hands. However an overwhelming amount of aid flooded in for the earthquake victims. Medical teams, rescue specialists, aid supplies and money poured in from all corners of the globe to the stricken area. Even before information became available from the Soviet Union about what was most needed, countries such as Poland, Italy, France, The Netherlands and Great Britain had already swung into action. USA too made money, supplies and specialists available. For the first time in history NATO sent a telegram to the Soviet Union expressing sympathy. Meanwhile in Baku, Azeris celebrated the earthquake with fireworks. They said that Allah has punished the Armenians for the civil war, and they were thrilled to find out the number of people were killed.
December 12th, 1988 we celebrated my brother’s second birthday, this time we were thousands of miles away from our home, in Novosibirsk. After the earthquake, things settled a little in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and we returned to Baku in the spring of 1989. We were so blind that we even moved into our new apartment. You see, after a long wait we finally got our government apartment, and we moved there in July of 1989. As people were fleeing the city, we were moving. Things weren’t as calm as we thought, and at the urges of both grandparents, we decided to go to Taganrog. We left at the end of August 1989, after spending 3 weeks in our new apartment. We would never return.
In Taganrog we settled in with my father’s uncle. There were 12 people living in a house with 5 rooms. We had 2 big mattresses on the floor where we slept. All we had with us were a few suitcases. My sister and I enrolled in school, and shortly my paternal grandmother sold some of her jewelry, and rented us a house. She went back to Baku, where my other grandparents remained. On December 12th 1989, Dmitri celebrated his 3rd birthday, this time in a small town in the middle of Russia. For New Year’s, my mother was supposed to take all of the kids to Baku, but my sister fell sick with bronchitis and I ended up going there by myself. I stayed with my grandparents, and each day we took a trip out to my family’s apartment, and brought out things. On January 7th my maternal grandmother (who was Russian) took me back to Taganrog.
Baku Pogroms and My Family
On January 13th, 1990 what was an unorganized activity, took shape and form. Azeris began organized pogroms in Baku, capital of Azerbaijan. The city was methodically cleared of all Armenians, house by house. This was the same brutality that Sumgait experienced. We felt it close at home. This is my grandfather’s account:
“I was getting ready to go out, I was already dressed. All of a sudden, there was loud banging on the door. People were screaming ‘Death to Armenians!’ I heard the door starting to crack. I grabbed the phone, ran in the living room and shut the door. I dialed the police, and it was busy. I dialed grandma’s friend, told her to call the police, and then they broke in. I was pushed on the floor, and they started to beat me. I tried to cover my face. When they took a break, the police arrived. The police told them to leave, and told me that it’s not safe for me to stay in the city being Armenian. They were going to escort me to a police station where they were rounding up Armenians. I already had my coat on, I broke Alex’s piggy bank, took whatever money was there, and left with the police. They escorted me to the police station and sealed of the apartment.”
Meanwhile, on the other side of the town, my grandmother also fell victim to the pogroms.
“My neighbor knocked on the door, and told me there’s a huge group of Azeris heading this way. I was the only Armenian left in the apartment building, so I figured they are coming for me. The whole house was packed. I was expecting the movers in 2 days. The furniture was taken apart, everything was in boxes, all of it was to go to Taganrog. More neighbors started to gather Russians and Azeris, they stayed there with me. A group of 10-12 men came up to my apartment. The neighbors got in their way, arguing with them in Azerbaijani. The men said that they had to take me away, they are deporting all Armenians. I had no time to dress. Someone shoved some money in my hand, which I hid. In slippers, and a dress, they took me outside on a cold January day. Some neighbors tried to stop them, but they beat them. They put me in a car and drove off.”
All of Baku Armenians were shipped via ferry across the Caspian Sea to a city of Krasnovodsk (Red Water City). My grandfather ended up on a ferry, and he searched it up and down in hopes of finding my grandmother, but to no avail. When he got to Krasnovodsk, he boarded a plane for Yerevan, the capital of Armenia. When he arrived in Yerevan airport, it was chaos. Hundreds and hundreds of refugees, with nothing but a coat.
“All of a sudden someone ran up to me, grabbed me and started sobbing. It was Edward (Edward is my uncle). He had no news on his, but he was happy to see me. I told him that I searched for her on the ferry, but had no luck. He told me that he sent a telegram to Gorbachev pleading for help in finding his mother. I saw that he got some noticeable gray hair since the last time I saw him, and he was only 28. We sat for a while, I didn’t want to leave him alone. All of a sudden the announcer came on the intercom and asked for him, saying his mother was found. He beamed, hugged me goodbye and left. I continued my travel towards Taganrog.”
My grandfather flew from Yerevan to Rostov, the closest city to Taganrog with an airport. From there he took a train to Taganrog, and from a train station he walked for over an hour (it was really late) to our house. As for my grandmother, as soon as my aunt found out that the mob took my grandmother away, she called a really good friend of the family, who was Azeri. He was very powerful and influential man in Baku, and was shocked to find out what happened to my grandmother. He called the Chief of Police in Baku, and informed him that he had 24 hours to locate her or else (now it all sounds very exciting, but I would never in a million years want to relive those days again). She was quickly located, and placed on a ferry to Krasnovodsk, and then by plane to Yerevan, where my uncle met up with her. Meanwhile, my grandmother’s apartment was being robbed. The police arrived when it was completely cleaned out. Apparently my uncle’s telegram to Gorbachev led to someone from Moscow calling Baku, and they send the police to seal off an empty apartment. Our apartment was also lost. My other grandparents’ apartment was sealed off, therefore it remained intact.
The pogroms raged on for a week, but not till January 19th did Kremlin declare Baku state of emergency, and ordered Soviet troops to enter the city. The Azerbaijani parliament condemned both the state of emergency in Baku and the arrival of the troops. The Soviet military push into Baku was marked by multiple acts of willful murder of civilians. The tanks and armored cars of the Soviet Army had to remove barricades, which were often defended by unarmed Azeri youths. The army fired automatic weapons and machine-guns at random, causing many civilian deaths. That was late action and unnecessary violence. But by that time Gorbachev had to save his image. Official reports stated that 66 people were killed, 220 wounded and 210 cases of arson and burglary occurred between January 13-19. With that on their hands, Kremlin decided to play the “Islamic factor” card. That was probably directed towards the West, whose sympathy for Gorbachev prevented many from seeing the situation as it was. US President Bush, for example, saw the intervention in Baku as justified by Gorbachev’s need to “keep order”. But where was the order during the entire week? Why did the Army only act on January 19th? These questions will never be answered.
During all of these events, our paperwork was moving through the bureaucracy and the red tape. In November of 1989, we had an interview at the US Embassy in Moscow. We argued our case that we can no longer live in Baku, we are forced to start from nothing, and we are refugees. Later that day, we were granted the status of “refugees”. That entitles us to receive a sponsor in the United States, who would help us for the first 4 months of our time there. We still lived in Taganrog. My maternal grandmother returned to Baku, sold her apartment, packed all of her stuff, and with a tank escorting the truck with her belongings, left the city and moved to Novosibirsk, to be near her family. My grandfather joined her shortly. My other grandmother and my uncle were living in a college dormitory in Armenia, a place that many refugees now called home. My aunt with her husband and kids lived in a complex about 35 miles outside of Moscow. The rest of our family (my mother’s aunts, cousins, grandmother) also settled in Taganrog. One extraordinary thing happened to us while living in Taganrog: my mother decided to baptize my sister, my brother and myself.
While conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan continued, we were no longer part of it. We saw a light at the end of the tunnel, USA. At the end of 1990 we found out that all the paperwork has been completed, and we were set to leave on October 21st, 1991. We were scared and excited at the same time. We knew no one who lives in the US, we didn’t speak any English, and yet we had tickets to go. In March of the same year, the Soviet Union created an office of the President of USSR, and Gorbachev was chosen. He was now the Head of the Communist Party and the President of USSR, 2 most powerful offices combined.
A Little Coup That Couldn’t
On June 12th, 1991 Boris Yeltsin became the first democratically elected President of the Russian Federation. At this point, USSR was still intact. On August 18th, 1991 USSR was thrown into a political chaos, bordering a civil war.
At 12:00 p.m. on August 18th, Gorbachev speaks with Vice President Yanaev from his vacation home in the Crimea. He tells him he will be returning to Moscow the following day. Yanaev promises Gorbachev to meet him at the airport. At 4:50 p.m. all of the phone lines in Gorbachev’s summerhouse are cut off. A group of plotters consisting of his Chief of Staff, Deputy Chief of Defense Council, Army General, and a few others arrive and demand he sign a decree declaring state of emergency or resign, and he refuses. His nuclear briefcase is confiscated and the house is surrounded.
At 6:30 a.m. the following day (August 19th) announcement is made that Mikhail Gorbachev is relieved of his duties "due to the condition of his health" and that power is transferred to Vice President Gennadi Yanaev. A State Committee on the State of Emergency is established with the following: First Deputy Chairman of the Soviet Defense, Chairman of the KGB, Prime Minister of the USSR, Minister of Internal Affairs, Chairman of the Peasants' Union of the USSR, President of the Association of State Enterprises and Establishments of Industry, and Minister of Defense of the USSR. At 11:30 a.m. Russian President Boris Yeltsin denounces the coup as reactionary and unconstitutional. Yeltsin denounces coup at a press conference. He also says that leader of Ukraine and other republics with which he has spoken share his feelings. He says attempts to contact Gorbachev have failed. He notes that Gorbachev was given power by the people and no one can strip him of that power. At 11:54 a.m. ten armored personnel carriers are positioned near the TASS news agency building in Moscow. The captain in charge says he will fire on the population if ordered to. At 12:30 p.m. a column of tanks is spotted on the Minsk Highway heading towards Moscow. By 1:00 p.m. tanks are posted on all the bridges in the center of Moscow. Mayor of Moscow declares the state of emergency in the city. At 1:45 p.m. Yeltsin issues a decree declaring the Committee illegal, and promising to prosecute anyone who helps it. At 4:50 p.m. Yeltsin issues a new decree stating: (1) all organs of executive power of the USSR on Russian territory--including the KGB, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the Ministry of Defense--are now subject to the authority of the President of Russia; (2) All organs of USSR executive power on Russian territory are now subordinate to the corresponding organs of the Russian government; and (3) any government workers who fulfill the orders of the Committee will be relieved of duty and prosecuted. The situation was heating up. At 5:10 p.m. first reports of shots being fired.
At 10:30 a.m. the following day (August 20) Yeltsin sends a letter to Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Anatoly Lukyanov. He demands a meeting with Gorbachev, an evaluation of Gorbachev’s health, reinstatement of Gorbachev if his health allows, end on press restrictions, return of all the troops, and dissolution of the Committee. At 11:30 a.m. Vice President of Russia, Rutskoy, along with some others meets with Lukyanov, and presents him with the demands. Lukyanov states that the coup was a total surprise to him. At 3:15 p.m. Yeltsin speaks with US President Bush. Bush says that he spoke to the leaders of G7 countries, as well as heads of former socialistic nations, and all of them support Yeltsin and Gorbachev, and have no intention of recognizing the Committee as the new head of the government. At 5:00 p.m. Yeltsin has a phone conversation with British Prime Minister John Major. Major promises support if the Russian parliament building is attacked. At 5:48 p.m. Yeltsin appoints himself Commander-in-Chief, in Gorbachev’s absence. At 10:40 p.m., newly appointed Russian Defense Minister Kobets issue Order #1 which states that all military units in Russia are forbidden to carry out orders of the Committee or to be used against the peaceful population. All units are ordered back to their bases.
At this point in the crisis the country is divided. Some are supporting the new Committee, some rallying behind Yeltsin. Taganrog’s government passed a resolution in support of Yeltsin. We were in a state of shock. We saw a personal defeat in this coup. If this coup had prevailed, the Iron Curtain would’ve come down again. Here you had a group of strict Communists who were doing what was done in 1917, except with considerable less bloodshed. We had tickets in our hands to leave in 2 months, and this has happened. But this wasn’t the end.
At 12:07 a.m. on August 21st a column of military attack vehicles has approached the barricades around the Russian Parliament Building. As protestors tried to stop the lead vehicles, soldiers fired shots in the air. At 12:30 a.m. a major from the 27th Brigade, part of the forces encircling the Parliament Building, spoke anonymously to a reporter and informed him that the Parliament will be stormed this night. Thirty tanks and 40 armored personnel carriers will take part in the operation along with approximately 1,000 soldiers. A few moments after, a young man was shot at point blank range as he attempted to open the hatch of a troop carrier. At 1:30 a.m. come reports that initial attack on the Parliament Building has been repulsed. At 7:42 a.m. reports come in that all troops brought into the city on August 19th have been withdrawn. At 11:30 a.m. the Russian Supreme Soviet begins its emergency session. At 1:50 p.m. Yeltsin informs the Supreme Soviet that members of the Committee have set off for the airport. He proposes that Aeroflot (Russian airline), KGB and the Interior Ministry blockade the airport and arrest the members of the Committee, and the proposal is accepted. At 2:20 p.m. a plane carrying all of the member of the Committee takes off, 10 minutes before the arrival of 50 Interior Ministry troops with arrest warrants. At 5:50 p.m. communication is established with Gorbachev. The Committee is there and wants to meet with him, but he is advised to wait for the representatives of the Russian parliament who are en route to see him. At 6:10 p.m. it is announced that 3 people were killed the night before, and 4 had gunshot wounds.
At 12:05 a.m. on August 22nd, reports come in that Gorbachev and the member of the Russian Parliament are en route to Moscow. They arrive at 1:30 a.m. At 4:30 a.m. it is confirmed that more than half of the members of the Committee have been arrested. At 10:00 a.m. it is confirmed that one of the members of the Committee, Minister of Internal Affairs Pugo, has committed suicide. At 1:50 p.m. Yeltsin announces that the aborted coup of the so-called Committee was sanctioned by the neo-Stalinist core in the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Speaking at rally at the Russian Parliament building, Yeltsin says it is impossible to permit further activity by the Russian Communist Party. "The chief ideologist of the coup", he says, was Anatoly Lukyanov, the same man that a few days earlier declared that he had no knowledge of the coup.
On August 22nd we breathed a sigh of relief. While we didn’t really feel the chaos and excitement of the events in Taganrog, it is 24 hours train ride away from Moscow, we followed it closely on TV, and independent radio stations. Have Yeltsin not succeeded, my family probably would not be here today. What the so-called Committee has planed was a complete turn around, going back to the Communist ways of Stalin, Khruschev and Brezhnev. Their actions escalated the fall of USSR, and Russia’s demise as one of the super-powers of the world. On August 24th Gorbachev resigned as the General Secretary of the Communist Party, and Yeltsin disbanded it. Seventy-four years the country lived, learned and breathed the Communist-Socialist-Marxist Ideologies of Lenin, Marx and Engels, and overnight all of that vanished. The repercussions of that are still felt in Russia today.
The End and The Beginning
The perfect example of USSR at that time is as follows. Imagine a huge building that has been standing for a long time but now you have to clear room for something new. You put explosives all over the building, so it can be blown up and it can collapse. Then one by one the explosions set off, until finally the building collapses. That’s how USSR was feeling at that time. One by one, the explosions were being set off. Gorbachev’s changes were the switch that set the explosions. The unsuccessful coup was quickly followed by the collapse of the Communist Party. It followed by the succession of the Baltic States: Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. On December 1st Ukraine also succeeds from the Union. On December 8th, Presidents of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus signed a treaty to abolish the USSR, and form CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States). On December 25th, 1991, after 6 years in office, Gorbachev resigned the office of the President of the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics, and the USSR ceased to exist. The final explosion and the building collapsed.
On October 20th, 1991 we boarded a train to Moscow. Many family members were going with us to see us off, while others came to the train station to say good bye. We arrived at Sherementevo-2, Moscow’s International Airport, where we found out that we were bumped to a flight leaving on October 24th. With no place to go, we camped out at the airport for 3 nights. Finally, on October 24th we were ready to board the PanAm flight to New York. It was very emotionally draining time. On top of being completely exhausted from spending 3 days in the airport, we were faced with an uncertain future ahead of us, and a possibility of never seeing our family members again (back then we really didn’t know what to expect). At the passport control, my mother was stripped of most of her jewelry, except the wedding bands. She gave everything to my uncle, and later he wrapped it in a piece of cloth, and threw it to us while no one was looking. She hid it deep into the luggage. With that last obstacle out of the way, we got on the plane. We were leaving behind our entire family, going to a country whose country we didn’t know, whose language we didn’t speak, where we had no friends. We were only allowed to take $100 per person, so we had $500 to our name.
We arrived in New York’s JFK airport on October 25th. My mother spent most of the flight crying, her and my father were scared of what lied ahead. At JFK we were greeted by a representative of Catholic Charities, they would be our sponsor in the US for the first few months. He led us to a terminal for a flight to Hartford, Connecticut, a city that would be our new home. I remember that before we got on the plane for Hartford we had some time, and we saw these little TVs attached to some seats in the airport. While I had no quarters, someone left with the show still running, and my sister, my brother and I huddled around to watch a cartoon, our first experience with American television. Upon our arrival at Bradley International Airport in Hartford, CT we were picked up by a representative of the local office of Catholic Charities. We were happy to learn that he spoke Russian. We were glued to the windows of the 15-passenger van that was driving us to our new home. While Baku was a large city, back then tall buildings were not common in Russia. But here we drove past downtown Hartford, with tall, glass buildings towering above the highway, we were amazed.
Our new home was a 3-bedroom apartment on the 3rd floor. It was a 6 family house, in the Little Italy neighborhood of Hartford. We were very fortunate to have 2 other immigrant families living in the same house. I think that’s what helped us through the first day, knowing people that spoke the language, that went though the ordeal, the understood how we felt. Catholic Charities provided us with basic furniture, (beds and a table with chairs), some food, and some clothing. They told us that they would pay our rent for the first 4 months. Also, for the first 4 months every Friday we can come down to their main office in downtown Hartford, and receive some food (mostly canned). We were also told that every day there would be English lessons given at the Catholic Charities office.
So our life in the USA began. Every day we walked for 45 minutes to downtown Hartford to attend English classes. We became members of a local Armenian church. Living in the USSR we never attended church services, and now we went every Sunday. While many chose to slide from Catholic Charities and onto welfare, my parents both found jobs. My mother held down 2 jobs cleaning banks. This woman who had played piano for over 25 years now had a mop and a vacuum cleaner in her hands. My father got a job as a delivery boy for a photo lab. Delivery boy! He had a degree in physics, and experience as a computer engineer, but he was a delivery boy! My parents couldn’t get a job due to their language barrier. No matter what people say, discrimination against immigrants runs high in American companies. The thinking is if you don’t speak good English, you shouldn’t be doing anything but dirty work. My brother and sister started elementary school. On December 12th, 1991 my brother celebrated his 5th birthday, this time in America. In January of 1992 I started high school. It was recommended that I go to 9th grade, even though I was only 13, because the high school had a good ESL (English as Second Language) program.
Our first impressions of the US were mixed. The very first time we went into a supermarket, my mother came out crying. How could this be bad? Why for years were we told that this country is not good, this way of life is not correct? Why then is it so prosperous, while people in Russia are now forced to stand in line to buy bread, milk and meat? Look at the variety of things that are offered in stores here, and remember back home? We were slowly adapting. I was surprised to notice the difference in the education systems of Russia and the USA. Overall, our impressions were leveled. My father told us when we were sitting in the airport in Moscow: “Don’t expect to come to America, and have everything. It’s just like everywhere else, you have to work for it.” And he was right!
Meanwhile, on January 2nd, 1992 the Prime Minister of Russia freed the prices. Immediately ruble (Russian currency) plummeted, and prices skyrocketed. Russia began sinking faster than the Titanic. This in turn brought more chaos to an already unstable country. Yeltsin’s hard-lined economic policy was increasingly unpopular. Due to the breakdown of the USSR and the centralized state-run economy, many traditional economic and trade ties and markets were lost. Living conditions of the significant part of the Russian population quickly deteriorated. The crisis, both political and economical, was made worse by a power struggle between President Yeltsin and his opponent in the Parliament headed by Vice President Rutskoy. On September 12th, 1993 Yeltsin dissolved the Parliament and announced that new elections will be held on December 12th. At the emergency session of the Parliament (at the infamous Parliament Building) Vice President Rutskoy announced that he is assuming the office of the President. With about 100 deputies, and several hundred armed supporters Rutskoy occupied the Parliament Building. For next day Moscow was a war zone. Supporters of the Parliament occupants stormed the TV stations and the Moscow Mayor’s Office. Yeltsin responded by firing at the Parliament Building with tanks and snipers. At the end Vice President Rutskoy and his supporters surrendered. He was jailed, just to be pardoned a few months later. Officials estimate that 146 people died, and over 1,000 were injured during those horrible days. Three hundred million US dollars were spent on the restoration of the Parliament Building (I was in Moscow in March of 1994, and I could still see where the building was shot at). More detailed account of the tragic events can be found here: http://www.bullatomsci.org/issues/1993/d93/d93Zagalsky.html.
On the home front things were looking up. In August of 1992 my aunt and her family were second to immigrate to the USA. They applied for an asylum shortly after us. Their sponsor was located in Pennsylvania. A few months after, in October of 1992, my grandmother and my uncle arrived. We were lucky, as their sponsor was none other than Catholic Charities of Hartford. The only problem we were faced with was my maternal grandparents. The US Embassy decided that there was no need for them to emigrate. My grandmother was able to sell her apartment, and they were now living in Novosibirsk, near my grandmother’s relatives. They pleaded their case that my mother was their only child, but that had no effect. We decided to try on this end. We wrote to both of our Senators, Christopher Dodd and Joe Lieberman. Mr. Lieberman was quickly to reply that there is nothing he can do to help, and we should just accept the ruling (I am not exactly a big fan of Joe Lieberman since then). However, Mr. Dodd went out of his way to help. We didn’t hear from him in a while, but when he did, we received a big package of all of his correspondence with the members of the US Embassy in Moscow. He was very kind in pleading our case. Shortly after, they were granted a status of “parole”. The difference between “refugee” and “parole” was the sponsor. For “refugee” a sponsor was assigned, while someone with a status of “parole” had to find their own sponsor. We decided to be their sponsor. We bought them tickets, and in April of 1995, almost 4 years after we last saw them, they arrived at JFK Airport.
Now
In October of this year we will celebrate 10 year Anniversary of our arrival in the USA. Since then a lot has happened. Two years ago my parents bought a house in a small town of Rocky Hill, Connecticut. That same year I graduated Cum Laude from American International College in Springfield, Massachusetts. My sister just finished her first year at University of Connecticut, and my brother finished his first year in high school. My mother works as a Litigation Assistant for an insurance company, and my father works for the United States Postal Service. In November of 2000 I found a job in Long Island, New York, and since I have relocated to Queens, New York.
Last spring I went back to Taganrog for the first time in 9 years. My grandfather and I flew to Moscow, and then took the train to Taganrog. The family that we left behind had settled in those 9 years. They were no longer the refugees. Everyone had jobs, houses, lives. Just like we adapted in America, they adapted in Russia. It wasn’t easy. We were faced with discrimination against immigrants, and sadly they were faced with similar discrimination. You see Armenian people (actually all nationalities from the Caucasus: Azeris, Armenians, Georgian, Chechens) have darker complexion than Russians. That led to some harassment by the local residents towards my family in Taganrog. But just like we overcame the problems here, they managed to work through their problems. We spent a few weeks visiting them, and then took a train back to Moscow to spend a few days there. Moscow has dramatically changed. A lot of companies have opened up offices in the city. A city that recently celebrated its 850th birthday, was now filled with skyscrapers, McDonald’s, Pizza Hut’s, etc. In 1990 I was in Moscow when they opened the first McDonald’s. We spent 4 hours in line to get in and try all these new and exciting stuff like Hamburgers, French Fries. Now McDonald’s restaurants are all over the city. But some things never change. The flame is still burning at the Grave of the Unknown Soldier. Lenin is still lying in his Mausoleum in the middle of Red Square (Yeltsin removed the honorary guard, and Putin so far stated that he won’t be burying him until the majority of people feel that way). The Red Square with its towers and cathedral domes still is as beautiful as it was years ago. I came back from my trip appreciating my new homeland more. When I left Russia I was only 13. But now I could see how many more opportunities are available to people here, than there. How different the problems are.
My grandfather had a really good time last spring, so he decided to go back there for the winter. Unfortunately he passed away there. He was a workaholic all his life, working day and night. While my grandmother was excited about coming here to be with her daughter and grandkids, he never got comfortable here. The language barrier prohibited him from doing anything. That had a negative affect on his mentality, and he was diagnosed with severe depression shortly before he passed away. My other grandmother, the one that was kidnapped on that horrible day of January 13th, is now slowly dying of liver cancer. She was diagnosed last summer. But both of them got to see their children and grandchildren succeed in the new country, and that’s something. Update: On August 7th, 2001 my grandmother passed away after battling cancer for 1 year. She was burried here in the US, in East Hartford, CT. May she rest in peace.
No matter what problems we had and will have, my family has never regretted our decision of moving to the USA. I am very grateful to my father for making this risky move. There’s a saying in Russia “One that doesn’t risk, doesn’t drink champagne!” Let me tell you, every New Year we pop open a few bottles of champagne.
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