"Nobody knew what was going on"

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35 years ago, Soviet troops entered Baku
On January 20, 1990, Soviet troops entered the capital of the Azerbaijan SSR, Baku. Officially, to restore order and protect the republic's Armenian population from violence. As a result, about 800 people were killed and wounded. Gazeta.Ru learned from local residents how the most multinational city in the USSR became a battlefield.


The foundation for the tragic events in Baku was laid back in 1988. They were preceded by the renewed conflict around Karabakh. On February 20, Armenian deputies of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region demanded that the territory be withdrawn from Azerbaijan and transferred to Armenia.

This caused discontent on the Azerbaijani side. Protests began in both republics.

"The first time I heard about the rally was when I was at work, in the clinic at the Main Administration of the USSR Ministry of Health in the center of Baku. Outside the window they were shouting: "Karabakh-Karabakh." Our team was mixed: Russians, Azerbaijanis, Armenians, and Jews, but no one knew what was going on. One of the girls ran outside to look, came back and said that the rally was for Karabakh, like, it's ours, but Armenians live there," Irina recalls in a conversation with Gazeta.Ru.
According to her, it did not come to direct clashes, but changes were already noticeable in small things. Thus, Azerbaijani patients began to increasingly refuse the services of Armenians.

"We gave one man injections at home, he had a local home owner database assigned to him, a good girl. And then he asked if I could give him injections. I was surprised, asked why? And he said, she's Armenian - what if she does something wrong," says Irina.
It was hard to believe that this could result in a real massacre, residents admit.

"Baku was the most multinational city in the Soviet Union, in our class, for example, there were Belarusians, Kazakhs, Armenians, and Azerbaijanis, and we lived in a community. In Baku, no one ever asked what nationality you were, there were a huge number of mixed marriages, everyone spoke Russian with such a soft Baku accent," Tamerlan shared with a correspondent of "Gazeta.Ru".