At best, the police did not interfere in the conflicts

[rakhirhif8963]

"It was a massive bloodbath. My mother considers herself an Azerbaijani, but she was afraid to leave the house. The Azerbaijanis who were friends with the Armenians hid them in their homes. My mother hid her Armenian neighbors in the mezzanine because they simply broke into their apartments," Tamerlan says.
According to one version, the pogromists received addresses directly from employees of housing offices. Witnesses recalled that as soon as an Armenian was thrown out of an apartment, a new owner immediately appeared with an official order, as if it was already ready at the district executive committee.


"In most cases, an Armenian who fell into the hands of home owner database police (no matter in what capacity: defendant or plaintiff), even if he was a thousand times right, was subjected to insults, humiliation, beatings. There was no talk of any justice or presumption of innocence. <...> Violence was in the air, wild, primordial, bestial. No one trusted anyone. Not each other, not the authorities, not the party, not the Soviet authorities."

Alexander Lebed
From the book "It's a shame for the country..."
The general recalled how he saw the body of a young man with a hole in his head in one of the courtyards. A piece of twisted reinforcement with blood and hair was lying nearby. Calmly looking at this picture, the head of the district police department and the doctor confirmed death from "myocardial infarction."

"I went berserk: 'Who are you writing this about? About this one?' <...> Looking at me calmly with his black, lusterless eyes, the colonel said: 'Comrade Colonel, you don't understand. He was hit, as a result of the hit he had a heart attack, as a result of the heart attack he died,'" Lebed wrote.
The army units stationed in the city also did not prevent the riots - some went into barracks mode, others were engaged in guarding administrative and government buildings.

Meanwhile, the Soviet press advised the parties to remember “socialist internationalism” and friendship between peoples, without offering any specific solutions.

Against this background, the influence of public structures grew in the republic. The Popular Front of Azerbaijan (PFA), which emerged in September 1988, demanded that the leadership take decisive action to protect national interests.