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In March of 1985, changes occurred within the Soviet political leadership. Following years of stagnation, younger and more progressive figures came to power. As a part of these political changes, Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and later became the first president of the USSR. Due to the USSR’s vast need for radical changes, Gorbachev declared that reforms are required to overcome the crisis in the Soviet Union. As a result of the depression experienced by the Soviet society, the ideological bankruptcy of the Communist Party, the variety of unsolved issues and especially national problems forced different national groups within the Soviet Union to react. Subsequently, the implementation of the Soviet Perestroika policy resulted in the establishment of the various national liberation movements of the time. Armenians of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) were the first to react; they never accepted the annexation of their historical territories by Azerbaijan, and resented the anti-Armenian policy pursued by Azerbaijan during the Soviet era. On the February 20th, 1988 the extraordinary session of the Council of the Nagorno Karabakh Autonomous Oblast /NKAO/ adopted a historic decision, based on the constitution of the USSR. The Council made an appeal to the Azerbaijani SSR, to the Armenian SSR and the Supreme Soviet of the USSR to withdraw the Oblast from Azerbaijan and transfer it to Armenia. Consequently, a new wave of mass demonstrations broke out in both Armenia and the Diaspora, as a sign of solidarity with the Armenians of Artsakh. Thousand of people participated in the various rallies organized in Yerevan, other parts of Armenia, as well as in Nagorno Karabkh. However, from the outset, the political leadership of the USSR adopted a negative stance toward the Karabakh Movement. They consider it to be provocative, extremist, a demand of a group of nationalists. Nonetheless, at the same time, prominent political activists and intellectuals of the various Soviet republics provided moral support to Armenia and Artsakh. Subsequently, between the 27th and 29th of February 1988, in response to the aforementioned peaceful rallies and demonstrations which took place in Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh, the massacres and mass murders of the Armenian population were organized in the industrial city of Sumgait (not far from Azerbaijan’s capital Baku). As a result of Azeri brutality a few dozens of Armenians perish
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