"I hid my Armenian neighbors in the mezzanine

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According to the USSR Prosecutor General's Office, 26 citizens of Armenian and 6 of Azerbaijani nationality were killed in Sumgait. More than 100 people were injured.

And this case is not the only one. In the village of Vartashen (since 1991 - Oguz), about 300 km from Baku, traditionally lived many Armenians and Udis. In one night they were forced to leave their homes.

"Three generations grew up there in our family, my grandparents ran their own household and were considered wealthy. Their Azerbaijani neighbors simply came to them and gave them 12 hours to leave the house, otherwise they would be killed. They were forbidden to take their things out, so they had to leave on foot," Tamerlan recalls.
First they settled in Krasnodar, and then the father and grandson, who had moved to Moscow at that time, moved their relatives to them. But they were never able to recover from the blow.

"We bought them a small house near Moscow, but home owner database lived their whole lives in Vartashen, where the farm is, where the graves of their ancestors are. Grandfather was very upset, angry and did not understand why this happened. When he tried to return, he was almost killed - they barely dragged him back to Moscow. In the end, he lived for two more years and died of a stroke. The tragedy they experienced is impossible to describe," says Tamerlan.
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© Introduction of a state of emergency and introduction of troops into Baku, 1990 //RIA Novosti
Throughout 1988 and 1989, refugees from Yerevan arrived in Baku. “Having lived for centuries on the territory of Armenia, having largely lost their language, customs, and morals, they were immediately given the contemptuous nickname “Yeraz” – Yerevan Azerbaijani, and turned into a caste of untouchables,” recalled General Lebed.

The government's assistance was limited to issuing 50 rubles per person, which made people even more embittered. According to eyewitnesses, the "erazy" and young people aged 15-18 became a force ready for the most radical actions.

By January 1990, active violent actions against the Armenian population began in the city. Attackers caught people at train stations and on the streets, beat them in a crowd, took away their apartments, smashed their shops and cars.