From Budapest-1956 To Baku-1990 – Commemoration in Budapest
Change language:
On Monday, the people of Azerbaijan marked the 30th anniversary of the Soviet Army’s invasion of Baku. The commemoration was held at the Embassy of Azerbaijan in Budapest.
Ambassador Vilayat Guliyev, who eye-witnessed the cruelty of the invading army 30 years ago, shared his memories from that tragic night. He noted that what happened in Baku on January 20, 1990, wasn’t anything new:
the Hungarian people lived through a similar tragedy in 1956.
Both events played the profound role in shaping national pride for the heroic resistance and forming collective memory. The ambassador emphasized that the communist regime succeeded killing many people and failed to achieve its main goal – to subdue and kneel the Hungarian and Azerbaijani peoples.
Eventually, both nations regained their freedom and independence, said Guliyev.
Azerbaijani students from Hungarian universities and their Hungarian friends attended the commemoration event. Actually, it was organized mostly by the students with the support of the embassy and the diasporal “Qardashliq” (Brotherhood) Hungarian-Azerbaijani Society. The program included reading patriotic poems, singing songs. The documentary with rare video recordings from the bloody night of January 20, 1990, was screened.
Mr. Ákos Pataki and Ms. Anjelika Takács addressed the Azerbaijani friends and expressed their sympathy and solidarity. They noted many common features in the bloodshed of Budapest and Baku.
By the end of the 1980s, the Soviet regime entered its death agony. The independence movements in the constituent republics, on the one hand, and violent ethnic separatism, on the other, coupled with the overall economic disaster, brought the 70-year-old communist empire to the edge of a total collapse. Armenia expelled the Azerbaijani population from its own territory and inspired separatism in the Nagorno-Karabakh region of Azerbaijan. Refugees were arriving from Armenia and the Nagorno-Karabakh region every day.