20 January 1990

By January 1990 Azerbaijan was at the peak of a political crisis: the Karabakh conflict, flows of refugees, a paralysed republican government and the growing influence of the Popular Front. On 13 January a pogrom against the Armenian population took dozens of lives in Baku; Popular Front activists blockaded military barracks and the approaches to the city.

On 19 January the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR approved a decree on a state of emergency in Baku, signed by Mikhail Gorbachev. At about half past seven in the evening special forces disabled the power unit of the television centre — the city was left without television and did not know what was happening. That night the troops entered Baku.

Fire was directed at streets, cars and the windows of houses; among the dead were people with no connection to the pickets — teenagers, ambulance crews and passers-by. Most residents learned of the state of emergency only at half past five in the morning, from a radio announcement and leaflets dropped from helicopters, when the dead and wounded already numbered in the hundreds.