6 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Tantalizing..., June 18, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Pogrom: A Novel of Armenian History (Hardcover)
As the title suggests, this book is a historical novel drawing on current and contemporary Armenian experience. The `pogrom' however refers to the savage attacks and massacres of the Armenians of Sumgait, an industrial city near Baku, perpetrated by maraudering Azerbaijani gangs in February 1988.
This is by no means a cool, detached, journalistic account of the three days of hell experienced by the Armenians of Sumgait. Shahinyan' s book is passionate and often dramatic and moving portrayal of the tragedy as it unfolds. It traces the policy of genocide that guided the Azerbaijani brutalities, from their inception at the highest levels of party and government authority in Baku and Moscow, as a conspiracy by anti-Perestroika forces to discredit and destroy Gorbachev by " teaching the too independently minded Armenians a good lesson" while at the same time "solving the Karabagh problem by keeping it for Azerbaijan." We meet the local Baku conspirators, the pampered and corrupt bureaucrats, at work planning their criminal deeds, working out the details of how where and when the massacrers should begin and, later still, the common street criminals who carry out the plan by cold-blooded murder, rape and looting.
The novel's main hero is Aramais, the elderly hardworking shoe repairer who lives and works in Sumgait. He is a survivor from yet another genocide in another place: The 1915 Turkish Genocide of the Armenians! His life is vividly portrayed as the story unfolds; we get vivid and shocking flashbacks to his childhood memories of massacre and deportation in Western Armenia, of Turkish soldiers raping, killing and pillaging, while he is protecting a young Armenian girl from the intoxicated and hysterical Azeri mob. During various flashbacks we get to know his wife Susana and short glimpses of the bitter experience of deportation of both their parents and their death in exile in Bulgaria. We see him in action in the Second World War, earning a medal for bravery. Shahinyan is remarkably Solzhenitsin-like in his portrayal of life in Stalinist labor camps, its brutality, waste and sheer stupidity, as experienced by Aramais after the war. But again and again it is the flashbacks to 195 and Aramais's experiences of genocide then and now that draw the unmistakable parallel and similarities between the two events: That on both occasions they were planned state policy to massacre, pillage and deport the Armenians from their ancestral lands when they stood up for their rights and freedom -- the Pan-Turkist easy "solution to the Armenian problem" as applied to western Armenia in 1915 and to Karabagh now, in 1988!
And we see some of the young protagonists of this resistance struggle for survival and freedom in the suffocatingly tense atmosphere of Sumgait: Aramais's son Arshik and his young sweetheart Bella, for example. We meet Dr. Mesropyan, Bella' s father and one of the top surgeons in Azerbaijan, in his vain endeavor to meet the party chief in Sumgait in order to stop the conspiracy! Also are portrayed many Armenian families hiding with fear behind their fortified doors in their homes, saying to Arshik "we don't know anywhere safe to go to!" And we witness with Arshik many scenes of burnt-out and looted Armenian homes and ruined lives as he desperately seeks them out to warn.
Above all it is his treatment of the setting in Sumgait that deserves praise. He is a master of suspense as well as dramatic and abrupt climaxes. He is meticulously vivid and realistic in his detailed portrayal of all the characters, both heroes and villains. The result is masterly and panoramic sketch of Soviet life in general and Sumgait in particular; the ordinary people in their daily lives of pain and little pleasures, their friendships, petty prejudices, and the gradual buildup of hysteria, against the backdrop of a crumbling society, and its utterly corrupt and immoral elite in its last dying days. This is a profoundly and thoroughly pessimistic book reflecting the tortured soul of the author in its quest for answers to deeply disturbing questions about man' s social existence in general and Armenian suffering in particular.
A highly readable and enjoyable book (despite its unfortunate editing errors!) with some intelligent insights into aspects of Armenian and Soviet history -- the origins of the Karabagh problem, the collusion between Kemalist Turkey and Stalinist Russia and the loss of Nakhichevan (and the Azeri success in ethnically cleansing it of its majority Armenian population) as well as issues relating to Western Armenia. Thoroughly recommended reading for all interested in contemporary Armenian literature and history.
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6 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
A lot of incorrect information., June 2, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Pogrom: A Novel of Armenian History (Hardcover)
The book misrepresents many facts and distorts the actual events. It provides only one side of the story. Most of the events pictured in the book are false, never happenned or were twisted around by the authors.
The author does not mention the fact that two ethnic Armenians (Grigorian and Oganov) were arrested in Sumgait for killing at least 6 Armenians. The book is full of hatred towards Azerbaijanis and seems to bear rasist patterns.
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3 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Terrible. False., July 12, 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Pogrom: A Novel of Armenian History (Hardcover)
The book distorts the facts, full of lies
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