ABSTRACT
In the beginning the demonstrators in Erevan flew, not the provocative tricolor of the shortlived independent republic, but the red flag with blue stripe of Soviet Armenia. They carried portraits of Gorbachev, and their defiant yet loyalist placards warned the Moscow leadership that "Karabagh is a test of perestroika". On a clear night in the spring of 1988 twenty thousand people quietly marched through the streets of Erevan, capital of Soviet Armenia. For six hours they made their way reverently through the dark town, in disciplined columns, quietly chanting "Karabagh, Karabagh". All hopes were placed on Gorbachev and the new reformist leadership in Moscow, which had repeatedly called for redress of the crimes of the Stalin era and greater sensitivity to the problem of nationalities. The new violence in the countryside and the militance of nationalist leaders on both sides stimulated a new flood of refugees at the end of November and the beginning of December.
