Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War

"Brilliant."
—Time

"This book is a major milestone in the Western scholarship on Karabakh."
—Armenian Freedom Network

"Some of the most illuminating - and alarming - reading in de Waal's book includes the battle of historians and writers on both sides. They fire polemical missiles at each other through bscure history and literary journals, denigrating and, in some cases, obliterating the history and identity of the other side."
—Eurasianet

"Only rarely does a university press publish such a gripping, poignant book as this. . . . This is an impressive work of careful scholarship and vivid writing."
—Choice

"Admirable, rigorous. De Waal [is] a wise and patient reporter."
—The New York Review

Black Garden is the definitive study of how Armenia and Azerbaijan, two southern Soviet republics, got sucked into a conflict that helped bring them to independence, bringing to an end the Soviet Union, and plaguing a region of great strategic importance. It cuts between a careful reconstruction of the history of Nagorny Karabakh conflict since 1988 and on-the-spot reporting on its convoluted aftermath.

Part contemporary history, part travel book, part political analysis, the book is based on six months traveling through the south Caucasus, more than 120 original interviews in the region, Moscow, and Washington, and unique primary sources, such as Politburo archives.

The historical chapters trace how the conflict lay unresolved in the Soviet era; how Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders exacerbated it; how the Politiboro failed to cope with the crisis; how the war began and ended; how the international community failed to sort out the conflict.

What emerges is a complex and subtle portrait of a beautiful and fascinating region, blighted by historical prejudice and conflict.

At the same time, however, the book has single but fundamental flaw. Apparently, in pursue of not being accused of siding with either party of this conflict, the Author obstinately balances the "pro-Armenian" and "pro-Azeri" facts with each other in order to create some facade of neutrality. In most of the cases it is expressed in improper comparisons, putting accents on incomparably important aspects of the conflict and sometimes even bringing about unchecked (if not dubious) information in order to counterbalance the well-known facts. As a result the truth is often obscured, hidden or even compromised. After all, the reality is much more uneven than 50-50 formula adopted in the "Black Garden...".

First of all, one of the greatest misleading simplifications (hopefully, not intentional) is equalization of Turkey-Azerbaijan with the Russia-Armenia ties. Turkey-Armenia relationship can only be wished to be better. Turkey spends millions of dollars every year to deny the fact of 1915 Genocide. It refuses to have any diplomatic relationships with Yerevan; it keeps the land border locked damaging badly Armenian economy, and sometimes even retreats to open bullying of Armenia. Meanwhile Russian-Azerbaijani ties, even at the worst point, included diplomatic, economic and military aspects (e.g. Gabala radar station). Today Russians' attitude to Azeris is hardly less favorable than to Armenians. The Russian president Vladimir Putin in a friendly gesture (rarely ever made to others) is planning to attend Azeri president's birthday party. Russian oil companies have heavy share in developing Azeri oil and Russian language, TV and newspapers are still very popular in Azerbaijan. At the same time, the level of Azeri-Turkish relationship is often expressed as "two countries - one nation" by top officials of both countries.

Perhaps the most astonishing example of the Author's strictly enforced "complimentary policy" is the chapter covering the pogroms of Armenians in Sumgait. Apparently, he considered the section - for obvious reasons - too "pro-Armenian". In order to somehow "neutralize" such impression, he went as far as trying to console Azeris by citing cases of similar atrocities committed by other nations widely recognized as civilized, such as English. As if it wasn't enough to "smooth away the differences" between the sides, the Author, in another part of the book referring to the same timeframe, quotes the "study" made by an Azeri about scores of Azeri victims of pogroms on the territory of Armenia. This information, never confirmed by any independent source, seems highly doubtful since in 1988, under relatively well-organized Soviet Government, it was practically impossible to violently kill 127 people without any trace in official statistics. Although throughout the book the Author seems to be very reluctant to rely on information given exclusively by either side of the conflict, in the above part - evidently to "balance" Azeri pogroms of Armenians - he decided to depart from this logic.

Less significantly, but equally unfair is "matching" of Ziya Buniatov and Zori Balayan. The first "discovered" and propagated a completely bogus (as the Author confirms himself) theory of Karabakh being historically Azeri land belonging centuries ago to "Caucasian Albania" - and consequently Armenians being only guests there. Today this theory is still the moral foundation of Azeri side of the conflict, thus Buniatov's role in instilling the hatred over Armenians is indeed tremendous. In turn, Zori Balayan's biggest sins are cited to be connecting dots between the 1915 Genocide and the pogroms in Sumgait, calling Turks "an enemy" (if they are not, then tell me what "enemy" means) and Arax river "Armenian" (which it may be called as it runs not only on Azerbaijan's border, but also on Armenia's). Sometimes it looks like the facts in the book are really stretched to fit each other...

Many other examples could follow. Most importantly, however, the Author seems to fail recognizing (or at least to properly illustrating in the book) the significant political, demographic and territorial differences between the sides of the conflict. With the history of narrowly escaping the full physical extermination 88 years ago - Armenians still seem to battle with the same dreadful perspective. Less than three millions of Armenians with 80% of their borders blocked by hostile neighbors since the independence are scrambling to survive in today's eventful reality. It takes looking at the map to understand that any potential change in great powers' stance is prone with the deadliest consequences for Armenians (taking into account that Turks are so much stronger, and still never even apologized for the Genocide of 1915 - who would guarantee Armenians' security?). On the other side are eight millions Azeris - with 15+ millions more in Iran - have open access to the sea, plenty of oil (which seem to have hypnotizing effect on Western democracies, too), and with 60 millions Turkey (the second strongest NATO army in the region) as their staunchest ally. The asymmetry is obvious, and it is impossible to understand the history of Karabakh conflict without recognizing it. Not by coincidence, Andrey Sakharov, the prominent Russian scientist and dissident, a person with huge personal moral authority, was quoted to say "Karabakh is a matter of honor for Azeris, but matter of survival for Armenians". It seems, the Author - who spent so much time studying the history of the region - would agree with such statement, but is very unwilling explicitly acknowledging it in the book.

Despite of the above-mentioned weaknesses the book is definitely worth your time and money, especially if you are able to read between the lines, use your judgment and not fall into "all-balancing" trap skillfully set by the Author.


Good book to inform but stumbles from an intricate balancing act   April 15, 2006
Spartak Ter-Martirosyan (Fresno, CA, United States)
16 out of 21 found this review helpful

Thomas De Waal's book "Black Garden" is one of the first publications that has been a written by an unbiased source on the Armenian-Azeri, Nagorno-Karabakh conflict that began in the latter of half of the 20th century, just as the Soviet Union gave way to form 15 independent republics. In the ensuing introduction of perestroika and glasnost by Mikhail Gorbachev from 1985 onwards, Armenians decided to take advantage and push and take back Karabakh, peacefully at first and violently when war crept forward from the horizon. De Waal does an interesting job in interviewing both Armenian and Azeri officials and those who (mis)lead their respective countries. The Azerbaijani government's numerous coups severly hindered their efforts to focus on the region, rather than the country as a whole. De Waal also dwells into the beginnings and history of the region and consequently debunks myths that were propagated by both sides.

However, it is in this where his book is mired with frustration and displaced onto the reader, a key factor of De Waal's undoing. He unfortunately concentrates too much of his time giving both sides 50-50 air time to explore controverserial issues. For example, when speaking about the 1915 Armenian Genocide and sympathizing for the victims and attending the march in Yerevan, De Waal brings up the recent Azeris' new claims that a genocide had been perpetrated against them by Armenians; giving equality for both without elaborating enough that the Azeris' claims are largely unfounded. He also makes unconvincingly generaliztions: he states that during the Karabakh protests outside Yerevan in February 1988, some Armenians didn't even know where the region was and had simply decided to skip work that day. He also has reluctance to condemn either side of wrongdoing. Near the end of his book, he states that Armenians felt the issue began in Sumgait, Azerbaijan (the site of a brutal pogrom of Armenians by Azeris) while the Azeris said it began in Khojaly in 1992 (the site of an alleged mass murder of Azeris by Armenian armed forces) and finally, leaves the reader hanging on on the edge of a cliff, not dwelling or at the very least expressing his opinion on it; a habit that is otherwise prevalent in his book. Some of the sources he uses are also rather unreliable, whether they come from interviews by former Armenian, Russian, or Azeri leaders or from writers who had slant towards either side (Andrei Sakharov, Thomas Goltz). His book also substantially covers many pages of Karabakh's history, from the reign of the Armenian princes in the 12-13th centuries who governed Artsakh (Karabakh) to the protests in Yerevan and Baku (Armenia and Azerbaijan's capitals, respectfully) in 1988 to the peace talks in Key West, Florida in the summer of 2001.

Another shortcoming is in De Waal's subtle yet central theme, in that of his constant promulgation that Armenians and Azeris are largely alike and had a good relationship with each other until the conflict began in 1988. I lived in Armenia and have spoken to many Armenians and for the most part, Armenians did not have any extraordinary friendships with them. Perhaps this is true in Baku, Karabakh, or Sumgait but I felt that De Waal inflated this claim in an appreciated effort to mollify both sides in seeking a peaceful solution to the conflict. De Waal makes little effort to emphasize of how a brutally dishonest and racist campaign is undertaken by the Azeri government to this day to smear and criticize Armenians; going so far as equate them to the Nazis and even discredit the history of their existance. His analogies are also lopsided; he rightly castigates the work of the Azeri "historian" Ziya Buniatov for blatant academic dishonesty but then compares his actions to the Glasnost-era Armenian writer Zori Balayan who correctly asserted that Azeris had Turkic heritage. Later on in the book, while he again criticizes the harsh rule Armenians lived under the Azeris, he quickly goes on and (inaccurately) condemns Armenians for enacting the same brutal deeds during the 20th century against the Azeris. Perhaps the most contemptible and unconvincing example that he uses is in the end chapter of the book. De Waal praises the famous 18th century Armenian poet Sayat Nova who supposedly overcame the divide and made peace between not only the Armenians and Azeris, but also the Caucasian Georgians. De Waal admonishes both sides for not taking Nova's example but leaves out the brutal circumstances of his death. In 1795, the invading Iranians, led by the Muslim leader Agha Mohammed Khan, demanded that Sayat Nova convert to Islam. Nova was a Christian and refused to do so and hence, was promptly executed and beheaded.

Nevertheless, it is a welcoming gesture to bridge the divide between two peoples as. In either case, De Waal should be commended for writing the book and my own misgivings shouldn't preclude someone from reading it.


Forced Juxtaposition in the Black Garden   August 26, 2003
David Davidian (Belmont, MA United States)
43 out of 63 found this review helpful

Black Garden attempts to objectively analyze and chronicle events before, during, and after the war between Armenia and the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh on one side, and Azerbaijan, on the other. The conflict was the most severe eruption of ethnic violence during the last days of the Soviet Union. This
truggle of self-determination versus territorial integrity temporarily concluded with a truce in May of 1994.

This book is based on a preponderance of data, much of which, unfortunately, is incomplete. De Waal assumes that no comprehensive non-partisan archive or compilation of events exists, which is why he felt this book was necessary. He uses the forced juxtaposition of seemingly related events to present the illusion of neutrality and moral equivalence. With information not readily available, a generally well-informed reader is lead down a path of comfort in the assumption that someone else has provided facts and analysis. As a result, this book has already beguiled many, as demonstrated by their reviews. De Waal forces a side-to-side comparison of seemingly equivalent events, including war crimes, in the name of "two-sides to any issue". This is a technique employed when one is not willing to take sides, or when further, in-depth research will lead to an inevitable hard conclusion. When events clearly don't lend themselves to such manipulation, de Waal does an admirable job. This is evident in his treatment of facts such as Azerbaijanis cashing in personal items, enhancing Azerbaijan's ability to purchase arms above those agreed to internationally (page 198), and the role of the Russian forces on both sides of this conflict.

The author asks the reader to evaluate his book as a whole with a neutral viewpoint; however, his conclusions are far from neutral. His widespread use of forced juxtaposition is compelling enough to label de Waal partisan. De Waal requires parity for the February 1988 anti-Armenian pogroms in Sumgait,
Azerbaijan. Upon failing to find any organized pogroms of Azerbaijanis in Armenia, he turns to anti-German violence in East London in 1915, after the sinking of the Lusitania (page 44) as a contrasting event. Once again, further research has shown that in the weeks prior to the Sumgait pogroms, Azerbaijani officials in Sumgait distributed addresses of Armenians to local henchmen. This clearly qualifies these acts as premeditated murder with the connivance of local authorities. The Sumgait events can be evaluated on their own merits. Had he done so, de Waal would be required to actually reach a
conclusion.

De Waal compares the circa 1990 desecration of the Armenian cathedral in Baku by the Azerbaijanis with the subsequent destruction, by Armenians, of a small, unused mosque in Yerevan (pages 79-80). In parallel, this inappropriate comparison is obfuscated by de Waal's discounting Armenia's reconstruction of
Yerevan's Blue Mosque. Having seen both mosques, it is clear that further research would have lead de Waal to either dumping this topic, or reaching the conclusion that his choice of parity in desecration is not appropriate. When de Waal's research on the Azerbaijani historian Ziya Bunyatov concludes that his writing is inflammatory, he chooses to compare this Director of the Oriental Institute of the Azerbaijan Academy of Sciences and Azerbaijani national hero of the time to a Glasnost-era Armenian journalist Zori Balayan - pointing out they have the same initials. Further investigation would have shown that in the years preceding the conflict, Bunyatov's translation of a number of original texts about the region had systematically removed the noun "Armenian" from the translation, or simply omitted entire sections. Also, De Waal cannot seem to find comparable figure anywhere in dynastic Azerbaijan to equate with the warlord like figure of Samvel Babayan in Nagorno-Karabakh, so he finds the Chechen Samil Basaev - again, two people with the same initials.

Forced juxtaposition is used in the Black Garden various ways depending upon the caliber of the event. If the event is relatively innocuous, parity is presented on the same page or even in the same paragraph. At other times the comparison spans pages or chapters. This is very evident when de Waal characterizes the Turkish genocide of the Armenians as a unilateral Armenian claim (page 75, confirmed in note 5), thus denying it from having any role or basis for actions associated with national survival or self-determination of the Armenians. He contrasts this with an unsubstantiated Azerbaijani genocide counter-claim of 2.5 million people by Armenians over the span of 200 years. This is an interesting technique both; in not taking a position on genocide, and in forcing equivalence with an invalid Azerbaijani claim. Ignoring facts and giving the reader the illusion of neutrality generates a skewed perception of reality. At the end, de Waal takes the unfortunate position that international recognition of the genocide of the Armenians discourages peace (page 277). This clearly partisan stance is finally stated some 200 pages after the issue of the genocide was first introduced.

The process of forced correlation reaches a wasteful level with the entire tenth chapter, which is dedicated to contradictory historical claims, between Azerbaijani and Armenian historians, regarding Caucasian Albanians (no relation to Balkan Albanians), the pre-Islamic inhabitants of areas immediately east of Armenia. De Waal dedicates 13 pages to finally establish that this topic was a non-issue, concluding that it took a New Jersey-based professor to confirm that the Azerbaijani claims are groundless.

De Waal would be much more credible by actually giving the events chronicled the required level of analysis. He heavily implies that the mutilation of the dead or dying is something contemporary Armenians and Azerbaijanis learned from the Armenian guerilla leader Antranik in 1918 (pages 168-169). De Waal's precluded research on the Turkish genocide of the Armenians shows that it was common for the Turkish murderers of Armenian women to cut off their nipples, dead or alive - those with more carried bragging rights. Dehumanizing one's perceived enemy this way has its origins deep in human history, and is not a twentieth century Armenian, Turkish, or Azerbaijani invention.

Avoiding evaluation of events, ideologies, etc., on their own merits assumes there is no right or wrong, only a continuum of events in human relations. The practice of forced parity serves those who are unwilling by choice or unable by circumstance to engage in an in-depth analysis of events. This method allows one not to take a position on the Nazi Holocaust of European Jews by equating it with claims that more Germans died than did Jews during the same general period. Such claims may be true in isolation, but cannot be juxtaposed, nor are they equivalent.

De Waal's utopian proposal (page 283), based on a song from an eighteenth century Armenian troubadour, Sayat Nova, calling for Georgian rule and lingua Azerbaijani as the formula for achieving nirvana in the Caucasus, is taken out of context. A more vigorous study on Sayat Nova chronicles that the Qajar
Prince Agha Mohammed Khan, an Azerbaijani, was responsible for his death in 1795 during an invasion of the region.

Peace can only be achieved through an understanding of events and their causes, not by wishfully granting "parity" to each side. The likely result of de Waal's Black Garden is to stiffen the resolve of the belligerents by obfuscation of
the historical record.


Two sides   June 10, 2009
Edward Chobanian (Bethesda, Maryland, USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

Black Garden gives an excellent rundown of both sides of this war between former republics of the old Soviet Union. Both sides would argue that their side was not properly represented, but in fact it was. This author, while not commonly known outside this region has interviewed scores of common and leading players on both sides in this unresolved conflict. It is a must read.


So far the best book written on "Black Garden"...   May 15, 2003
20 out of 30 found this review helpful

Unlike many previously written texts on the Karabakh conflict, I have to admit that Thomas de Waal has retained a very neutral view of the issue expressing views of both conflicting parties. I am Azerbaijani student in the USA. Thomas has clearly revealed many issues about our so called "enemies" Armenians, their views, beliefs and worries, of which I had only a blurry view. Any foreign author, who considers the Karabakh subject important enough to write a book on it, often ends up with a very biased composition in his hand. Thomas de Waal has managed to do what, not every passionate writer could; stay thrilled by the subject, meanwhile baring a very neutral position with a hint of insignificance.

I had not heard of Sayat-Nova, which the author quoted in the book. Throughout the book there were moments of grief for my own people and for those across the border. As a young son of Azerbaijan, often exploding with nationalistic thoughts like "we will win back our lands", after reading this book, will need to start considering what Sting sang in "Russians":

"There is no such thing as a winnable WAR,
It is a lie we (Europeans) don't believe anymore"