POGROM: A Novel of Armenian History

By Aleksandr Shaginyan, Translated from the Russian by David Floyd

Drawing on Soviet history, author Aleksandr Shaginyan recreates the three days in 1988 when the Azerbaijanis wreaked a savage attack on the Armenians of Sumgait. "Ethnic cleansing," that wicked euphemism, describes the heart of the policy that guided the Azerbaijanis' brutal ejection of Armenians first from Azerbaijan itself and then from the Armenian-populated enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. Shaginyan calls it the beginning of a new genocide against the Armenian people. This fictionalized account of those horrific three days in Sumgait exposes the sufferings and the tragedy behind political parties' cynical maneuverings.

One week before the pogrom, the elected representatives of Nagono-Karabakh adopted a resolution calling on Azerbaijan and Armenia to reach a "positive decision" about the transfer of Karabakh to Armenia. Seeing the actions of the Armenians as a threat to their country's territorial integrity, the Azerbaijanis' violent response, in which up to fifty Armenians were slaughtered, be justified?

edition q (1994)