Soviet Union

By PAUL HOFHEINZ BAKU

Panah Huseynov, 32, a member of the directorate of the Azerbaijani Popular Front, is seated at a desk in the former schoolhouse that serves as the group's new headquarters. He is listening to an Azerbaijani refugee from Armenia describe how he and his family were expelled from their home last November. "I was thrown from my house, beaten," the man says. "I lived off weeds, anything I could find." As Huseynov shakes his head in anger, the refugee continued, "They want to cut us up like sheep. But we'll burn them first."

Later Huseynov pulls a stack of photographs from a folder and asks a visitor, "Are you a strong person?" The photos show a male corpse that has been beaten and maimed. Small twigs poke out of sockets that once contained eyes. The body bears a gash from groin to throat, apparently made to kill the victim by disemboweling him. "This was in the village of Masis," says ; Huseynov, referring to a town in central Armenia. "I can show you his death certificate if you want to see it."

The 19-month-old tribal feud between the republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan initially centered on Nagorno-Karabakh, a region within Azerbaijan that contains a majority of ethnic Armenians. Moscow sought to defuse the issue by assuming direct rule of Nagorno-Karabakh, where it has stationed 4,500 troops. But the dispute, which has so far claimed more than 100 lives, will not go away. On the contrary, it has escalated into something very close to civil war. In both republics ferocious animosities generated by the rivalries have brought to the fore nationalist groups threatening secession. Indeed, traveling between the two republics, a visitor finds it difficult to imagine how they can continue to exist in the same country much longer.

The nationalist inroads are most pronounced in predominantly Muslim Azerbaijan. The Popular Front, formed by a group of intellectuals less than a year ago, was initially considered a fringe group by the local Communist leadership. But then the front began to stage stunning demonstrations of grass-roots support, including a rally in the capital of Baku that drew some 300,000 protesters and a crippling rail blockade of neighboring Armenia. Finally Azerbaijan's Communist leaders officially recognized the nationalist political organization, and acceded to virtually its entire agenda. In a special session of the republic's supreme soviet three weeks ago, legislators declared Azerbaijan a "sovereign" republic and reasserted its right to secede from the Soviet Union if such a move was approved in a referendum. Even in the Baltic states, where popular fronts have also grown powerful, nationalists have not chosen to send a message quite that provocative to Moscow.

In mostly Christian Armenia, nationalists are also gaining new prominence. Communist Party leader Suren Arutunyan, who jailed many extremists last December following demonstrations in the capital of Yerevan, has ordered most of them released. Says Khachik Stamboltsyan, a member of the Armenian supreme soviet who spent six months in confinement: "Relations are still tense between us, but we talk a lot." Expressions of hatred toward Azerbaijan are the rule. "They had an earthquake in Baku recently," recounts an Armenian girl. "Too bad it didn't hit 20 on the Richter scale and wipe them all out."

Added to ethnic grievances in Armenia is the railway blockade, which began + two months ago when Azerbaijanis stopped allowing freight cars through railyards in Nakhichevan. The facility handles 85% of goods bound for Armenia from other Soviet republics, giving the Azerbaijanis a virtual stranglehold. The cutoff has not affected food supplies, many of which are home grown, and markets in Yerevan last week were stocked with fruits and vegetables. But fuel supplies were virtually nonexistent. Car owners waited in lines at the city's gas stations for days at a time. There were also acute shortages of many building supplies, which are in great demand as the result of the widespread damage caused by last December's earthquakes. Azerbaijani officials said the trains were beginning to move again, a claim disputed by Armenians.

Extremists in both republics have called for formation of republican armies. That is unlikely to happen, but such is the depth of bitterness that civil war would be hard to prevent if it did. Azerbaijani nationalists also speak seriously of carrying out their self-proclaimed secession if Moscow continues to govern Nagorno-Karabakh. "There would be a war ((with the Soviet Union))," says Huseynov with a shrug. "But we think Iran and Turkey would help us." Moscow would presumably have something of its own to say about any attempt by Baku to exercise such an option. But so far, Moscow has managed only to alienate both sides in the bitter feud. That is hardly a claim to success -- or authority.