Events of January 20 were tragic and terrible, Shevchenko says

The tragic events in Baku on January 20, 1990, put an end to the future of the Soviet Union, Maxim Shevchenko, a Russian political scientist, journalist, TV presenter, and public figure, told Report's Russian bureau.

"The events in Baku were tragic and terrible. They fundamentally put an end to the future of the USSR. Many innocent civilians became victims of the January events," the expert said.

In his opinion, all this was done deliberately by Gorbachev to discredit Azerbaijan and destroy the Soviet Union.

He noted that the Baku events of 1990 were one of the steps towards the destruction of the Soviet Union, as a single state of the union of republics with a single economy and a single system of security protection: "During the January events, Heydar Aliyev took a principled position; he left the party, saying that he cannot be a member of a party that authorizes such acts against its people."

According to Shevchenko, the events of January 20, 1990, showed that the top of the Communist Party was completely reborn. He said they had lost any understanding of what was happening and simply used the army to solve their tasks of seizing power in the USSR and ensuring their existence at people's expense.