In December 1988, Armenia was hit by a disastrous earthquake that destroyed entire cities and claimed a death toll of many thousand lives. The entire world stretched a helping hand with humanitarian cargoes reaching Armenia from different parts of the world. Azerbaijan too sent trains, but they were loaded with crutches and nails for coffins.85
The parallel existence of three separate sets of values which were equally fostered and promoted ultimately led to an internal conflict within the Azerbaijani society which at the outburst of the first conflicts with Armenia revealed itself in line with the non-Soviet ideology instilled in the minds of the people in the following fashion: to take revenge on Armenians, to show them their place, to destroy them.
Decline of the Soviet period – Independent Azerbaijan
By the late twentiеth century as the Soviet Union collapsed, with a conflict between Armenian and Azerbaijan and a de-facto military, another round of rethinking history, self-identification, comparison (or contrast) with Armenians commenced, but this time it was on different precepts. Now Armenians were portrayed in a new quality as “not indigenous people”, as “weeds that must be pulled out”, as a “cancerous tumor” etc.
We shall not dwell on the chronological order of the conflict and all ensuing consequences, but we shall examine the ideology that served as the background against which these events unfolded. Considering the fact that the Soviet press was still censored, nationalistic ideas were instilled in the minds of the people through the ideologist-consumer system on public rallies, in self-published leaflets or through rumors.
The first public rallies were held with anti-Armenian slogans of Khalil Rza Uluturk, the poet of freedom and patriotism:
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The Russian historian Andrey Polonskiy in his article Islam and Establishment of National Self-identity by the 1980-90s writes that “Azerbaijan had a less significant share of relaxed humanism compared to the majority of the Soviet republics. The crisis of Karabakh and increasing level of armenophobia contributed to shaping a well-defined image of the enemy which had a known impact on the character of this new identity (it was originally based on aggression and was victory-oriented)”.87
The tendencies and notions of denigrating Armenians and repudiating completely any contexts, comparisons or benchmarks with them going as far as to deny their very presence in the region were recalled to life and put into practice. The new historiography that swarmed with unabashed falsifications ranked very high in this policy of instilling and propagating armenophobia.
The most favored practice of Azerbaijani authors was renaming medieval Armenian political figures, historians and writers who lived and worked in Karabakh turning them into Albanians. In this way, Movses Kaghankatvatsi who had written in the Armenian language metamorphosed into the Albanian historian Moisey Kalankatuyski. The same lot was reserved for the Armenian prince Sahly ibn-Sumbat (Armenians preferred to call him Sahl Smbatyan) who underwent a transmutation becoming half-Albanian, half-Azerbaijani.88
The academician Farida Mamedova who is a fiery preacher of the myth on Albanian (that is Azerbaijani) origin of Karabakh abuses the fact that the Azerbaijani readership does not know Armenian to deliberately mislead it. Thus, in her book entitled The History of Caucasian Albania, as evidence of “Armenian falsifications” she publishes a photograph of a stone slab carrying an inscription in Armenian which is rotated at 180 degrees89 and tagged as a “fragment of a genuine (Albanian) slab from the church in the village of Dash Salakhli of Qazakh region”90. The inscription is so crisp that any person familiar with Armenian and Armenian script can read it without any special training.
Without dwelling on numerous scholarly self-contradictions,91 we must only underscore that using her feigned knowledge of the Armenian language and misleading her readership is the keynote of her entire scientific activity and scholarly works. In this way, in an attempt to prove the Albanian origins of Gandzasar Monastery92 located in Nagorno-Karabakh, she resorts to the same trick used earlier and passes the Armenian language for Albanian:
I saw the inscription in Gandzasar in 1978 when I was there along with Azerbaijani scientists accompanied by Armenians of Karabakh for this very purpose. On my way there I already knew of the existence of this inscription in the Gandzasar monastery made at the behest of Hassan Jalal which reads specifically as follows: “… I built this cathedral for my Albanian people” (in Albanian: – imaguvaniazgn).93
The scholar that claims knowledge of the Armenian and ‘Albanian’ languages affirms that imaguvaniazg is an Albanian word while, actually, it contains three Armenian words: ‘im’ – my (իմ), ‘aguanits’ from Aghvan (Աղվանից) and ‘azg’ clan (ազգ) merged into a single word ‘in Albanian language’, and with the same meaning for that matter. But the most interesting thing is that no such inscription has ever existed in Gandzasar.94 This is a blatant example of an egregious falsification of the modern times.
The school curriculum was purged from Armenian authors (this particularly refers to the works of the first people’s writer of Azerbaijan, Alexander Shirvanzadeh95). The literary works by Azerbaijani authors of the turn of the 19th century viewed as classics of Azerbaijani literature which portrayed Armenians in the positive light and contained appeals for brotherhood and peace (works of Sabir, Hajibekov96, and Mirza Jalil97) were expunged.
Enlightenment advocates of the early 20th century were replaced by the partisans of ideology and propaganda that appealed to a national unity balked by Armenians.
“Glory to the heroes of Sumgait” was the slogan of the public rallies bringing together thousands of people in the city of Baku.
Bakhtiyar Vahabzadeh, people’s writer of Azerbaijan: The time will come when we will realize the courage and heroic deeds of plain Azerbaijani guys in Sumgait who started the purge of our country from the Armenian filth.98