{"id":15664,"date":"2017-07-08T12:33:10","date_gmt":"2017-07-08T16:33:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/?p=15664"},"modified":"2017-07-08T12:33:10","modified_gmt":"2017-07-08T16:33:10","slug":"how-do-comrades-treat-each-other-when-the-empire-breaks-apart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2017\/07\/08\/how-do-comrades-treat-each-other-when-the-empire-breaks-apart\/","title":{"rendered":"How do comrades treat each other when the empire breaks apart?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nobel laureate\u00a0Svetlana Alexievich’s\u00a0Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>has a lot of material on the conflicts that befell the former Soviet republics after the empire broke up. The conflicts include the\u00a0Nagorno-Karabakh War<\/a> (1988-1994) and the\u00a0Abkhaz\u2013Georgian conflict<\/a> (1989-present).<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026 In Baku\u2026 We lived in a nine-story building. One morning, they took all the Armenian families out into the courtyard\u2026 Everyone gathered around them, and every single person there went up to us and hit us with something. A little boy\u2014five years old\u2014came up to me and hit me with a toy shovel. An old Azerbaijani woman patted him on the head\u2026\u201d \u201c\u2026 Our Azerbaijani friends hid us in their basement. They covered us in junk and boxes. At night, they\u2019d bring us food\u2026\u201d \u201c\u2026 I was running to work one morning, and I saw dead bodies lying there on the street. Just lying there or leaning against the wall\u2014sitting there, propped up as though they were alive. Some had been covered in tablecloths, others hadn\u2019t. There hadn\u2019t been time. The majority of them were naked\u2026 both the men and the women\u2026 The ones who were sitting up hadn\u2019t been undressed\u2014it must have been too hard to move them\u2026\u201d \u201c\u2026 I used to think that Tajiks were like little kids, totally harmless. In a matter of just six months, maybe even less than that, Dushanbe became unrecognizable, and so did the people. The morgues were filled to capacity. In the mornings, before they were absorbed into the asphalt, there\u2019d be puddles of coagulated blood\u2026 like gelatin\u2026\u201d \u201c\u2026 For days, people walked by our house carrying posters that read, \u2018Death to the Armenians! Death!\u2019 Men and women. A furious mob, not a single human face among them. The newspapers were filled with ads: \u2018Trading a three-bedroom apartment in Baku for any apartment in any Russian city\u2026\u2019 We sold our apartment for three hundred dollars. Like it was a refrigerator. And if we hadn\u2019t sold it that cheap, they could have killed us\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Be afraid, you Russian bastards! Your tanks won\u2019t help you!\u2019 on the wall of the building across from ours. Russians were being removed from administrative positions\u2026 They\u2019d shoot you from around the corner\u2026 The city quickly grew as filthy as a kishlak.* 13 It became a foreign city. No longer Soviet\u2026\u201d \u201c\u2026 They could kill you for anything\u2026 If you hadn\u2019t been born in the right place, if you didn\u2019t speak the right language. If someone with a machine gun simply didn\u2019t like the looks of you\u2026 How had we lived before then? On holidays, our first toast had always been, \u2018To friendship,\u2019 and \u2018es kes sirum em\u2019 (\u2018 I love you\u2019 in Armenian). Or \u2018Man sani seviram\u2019 (\u2018 I love you\u2019 in Azerbaijani). We\u2019d lived happily side by side\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019m Russian. I was born in Abkhazia and lived there for a long time. In Sukhumi. Until I was twenty-two. Until 1992, when the war broke out. If the water catches fire, how do you put it out? That\u2019s what Abkhazians say about war\u2026 Everyone took the bus together, went to the same schools, read the same books, lived in the same country, and all learned the same language, Russian. Then suddenly they were all killing each other: Neighbor killing neighbor, classmate killing classmate. Brother killing sister! And they were warring right there, right in front of their own homes\u2026 How long ago had it been? Only a year before that, two\u2026 We\u2019d been living like brothers, everyone was in the Komsomol and a communist.<\/p>\n

Men are always talking about war, they like weapons\u2014young and old alike\u2026 while women like to remember love stories. Old women tell stories of how they were young and beautiful. Women never talk about war\u2026 They just pray for their men. My mother would go see the neighbors and every time, she\u2019d come home petrified. \u201cThey burned a stadium full of Georgians in Gagra.\u201d \u201cMama!\u201d \u201cI also heard that the Georgians have been castrating Abkhazians.\u201d \u201cMama!\u201d \u201cThey bombed the monkey house\u2026 Then, one night, the Georgians were chasing someone thinking it was an Abkhazian. They wounded him and heard him scream. Then the Abkhazians stumbled upon him and thought it was a Georgian. So they started chasing him and shot at him. Finally, when it started getting light out, they realized that all along, it had been a wounded monkey. So then all of them\u2014the Georgians and the Abkhazians\u2014declared a ceasefire and rushed over to save it. If it had been a human, they would have killed him\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, everyone knows about Sumgait\u2026 it\u2019s only thirty kilometers outside of Baku\u2026 The first pogrom happened there. One of the girls we worked with was from there. One day, after everyone had gone home, she started staying at the telegraph office. She\u2019d spend the night in the storeroom. She walked around in tears, wouldn\u2019t even look out the window, and didn\u2019t speak to anyone. We asked her what was wrong, she wouldn\u2019t say. And when she finally opened her mouth and started telling us\u2026 I wished I\u2019d never heard\u2026 I didn\u2019t want to hear about those things! I didn\u2019t want to hear anything! What was going on! What is this\u2014how could they! \u201cWhat happened to your house?\u201d \u201cIt was looted.\u201d \u201cWhat happened to your parents?\u201d \u201cThey took my mother out into the courtyard, stripped her naked, and threw her on the fire! And then they forced my pregnant sister to dance around the fire\u2026 Then, after they killed her, they dug the baby out of her with metal rods\u2026\u201d \u201cShut up! Shut up!\u201d \u201cMy father was hacked to pieces with an ax\u2026 My relatives only recognized him by his shoes\u2026\u201d \u201cStop! I\u2019m begging you!\u201d \u201cMen, young and old, in groups of twenty or thirty, got together and started breaking into the houses where Armenian families lived. They killed and raped daughters in front of their fathers, wives in front of husbands\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2026Men or teenagers\u2026 I was too terrified to remember\u2026 were beating\u2014murdering\u2014a woman with a fence post. Where had they found them in the city? She lay on the ground not making a sound. When passersby saw what was happening, they\u2019d turn the corner and walk down another street. Where were the police? The police had disappeared\u2026<\/p>\n

The bloodbath in Baku went on for several weeks. Or at least that\u2019s what some people say, others say it was longer\u2026 They didn\u2019t just kill Armenians, they also killed the people who hid them. My Azerbaijani friend hid me, she had a husband and two kids. One day\u2026 I swear! I\u2019ll come back to Baku and bring my daughter to their house: \u201cThis is your second mother, daughter.\u201d They had these thick drapes\u2026 thick as a coat\u2026 They\u2019d had them sewn especially for me. At night, I would come down from the attic for an hour or two\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2026We never leave the house at night! If my daughter or husband are late, I take valerian. I beg my daughter not to wear too much makeup or flashy dresses. They killed an Armenian boy, they stabbed a Tajik girl to death\u2026 they stabbed an Azerbaijani. We used to all be Soviet, but now we have a new nationality: \u201cperson of Caucasian descent.\u201d In the morning, I run to work. I never look young men in the eye because I have dark eyes and black hair. On Sundays, if we leave the house, we\u2019ll stroll through our own neighborhood, not straying far from our house. \u201cMama, I want to go to the Arbat. I want to walk around on Red Square.\u201d \u201cWe can\u2019t go there, daughter. That\u2019s where the skinheads hang out. With swastikas. Their Russia is for Russians. Not for us.\u201d [She falls silent.] No one knows how many times I\u2019ve wanted to die.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

More: read\u00a0Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nobel laureate\u00a0Svetlana Alexievich’s\u00a0Secondhand Time: The Last of the Soviets\u00a0has a lot of material on the conflicts that befell the former Soviet republics after the empire broke up. 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