"The foundation of the success of the Artsakh movement was the willingness to die" - Arkady KARAPETYAN

"At the Foundation of the Success of the Artsakh Movement Lay the Readiness to Die" — an interview with Arkady Karapetyan devoted to the formation of the underground stage of the Artsakh national liberation struggle, revealing little-known mechanisms behind the creation of the resistance network that led to the mass rally stage of 1988. The author — one of the organizers of the underground, later the first Commander of the Artsakh Defense Army — reconstructs the internal logic of the movement, drawing on his personal experience as a participant in the events.

Historical continuity and the nature of the movement

Karapetyan traces the Artsakh struggle through the prism of the Soviet period, showing that attempts to raise the Artsakh question were made by every generation starting in the 1960s — through the collection of signatures and appeals to Moscow, which invariably met with repression. The author identifies an unquenchable sense of justice as the key factor of national character, one that determines the behavior of Armenians regardless of the objective conditions of life.

Key thesis: readiness to die

The central argument of the article is that the decisive difference between Karapetyan's generation (which took shape by the mid-1970s) and its predecessors was an inner readiness for armed struggle and death in battle, rather than mere protest or the readiness to endure repression. It is this quality, in the author's view, together with the changes taking place in the USSR by 1988, that formed the basis of the movement's success.

Organization of the underground

The author describes in detail the structure of the underground network that had taken shape by the end of 1987:

• cells in Hadrut, Martuni, Askeran, Martakert, and Stepanakert;
• the principle of conspiracy through couriers who knew no more than one contact each;
• the regional characteristics of the participants — the intellectualism of the people of Hadrut, the family-clan cohesion of the people of Martuni, the loyalty of the people of Askeran to the Soviet system, and the authoritarian character of the people of Martakert.

Particular attention is paid to the first rally in Hadrut on February 12, 1988, made possible through the interaction of various regional groups, as well as to the circumstances preceding it, including the visit of the second secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan.

The rally stage and assessment of contemporary interpretations

The author describes the rapid development of events after the first rally as unexpected even for the organizers themselves, emphasizing the scale of popular mobilization, which exceeded all the calculations of the underground. Karapetyan separately offers a critical assessment of attempts by certain public figures, who had no connection to the underground, to claim for themselves the role of founders of the movement.

Conclusion

The key conclusion of the article is that the success of the Artsakh national liberation movement was due not so much to external political circumstances as to the inner spiritual readiness of a particular generation for self-sacrifice, and to the deliberate, disciplined organizational work of the underground, which operated outside the public sphere and beyond personal ambition.