Ashkhen Arakelyan

*I received a copy of this book through LibraryThing Early Reviewers.*

The 44-Day War between Azerbaijan and Armenia is a conflict I had very little awareness of prior to reaing this book. This collection of accounts from Armenians captured by the Azerbaijan military makes for difficult reading - soldiers and even ordinary citizens caught at the wrong place and time experienced imprisonment, beatings, and were forced to disavow their national values. I was also intrigued the repeated mentions of Russian peacekeeping forces and would like to know more about how these forces had an impact and their purpose in the region. Overall, a harrowing read, but important for those who wish to know more about this unreported conflict.… (more)

Sadistic Pleasures: Silent Crimes of Azerbaijan by Ashkhen Arakelyan was a May Early Readers selection for May 2022. I am writing this review for the Library Thing Early Readers. This book was not a pleasure to read, but a very eye-opening read that painfully teaches once again the depths inhumanity can reach driven by ignorance and prejudice, and just plain stupidity. Armenia's struggle to survive is as old as the people of Armenia and their land itself. My only previous knowledge the Armenian's struggle to survive was from reading Franz Werfel's "The Forty Days of Musa Dagh", the telling of the attempted genocide by the Turkish government of its Armenian population. Both accounts bolster the truth of Armenia's sad, very brave struggle to survive, and the vicious lengths to which her enemies will resort in an ageless and senseless fight to destroy them. Sadistic Pleasures also highlights the great need for a strengthening of sanctions, also now seen in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, of war crimes. A sanction that must include governments and individuals, acting with or without the approval of their government or people. I am a pacifist at heart, how to implement such measures is a challenge, a great challenge. Unless the Civilized world rises against the barbarians masquerading as great powers, and uses every economic and educational tool they can muster to overcome the challenges presented by ignorance and envy that drive the lust for power and the cruelty that comes of fear of the unknown. These are ideas inspired by the actual events recounted in this book, bolstered by current events.… (more)

While the writing here is workmanlike and the personal accounts by POWs contained herein are certainly believable,after reading the first few chapters of SADISTIC PLEASURES, a sameness and sense of redundancy began to creep in, causing me to glaze over and wish for more specifics. Almost every interview of these much abused Armenian prisoners quickly devolves into generalities of how they were all "tortured, humiliated, violated, beaten and shocked" by their Azeri captors, animals all, for the most part. So yes, the Geneva Convention rules were obviously broken. Armenian author Ashken Arekelyan has made her case about atrocities committed in this mostly overlooked "44 Day War" between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Fall of 2020.

The conflict between these two former Soviet Republics actually goes back nearly 30 years now, to the 1992-94 hot war and the frequently violated cease-fire ever since that time.

Arekelyan's book reads a little too much like an assigned school project culminating in a longish term paper. A dozen-plus interviews tacked together with her own sometimes relevant observations, I found it to be a disappointment. Whether it will succeed in its attempt to draw attention to the implied war crimes cited is doubtful. And the world at present, with the ongoing Russian-Ukraine war, has much bigger fish to fry. That said, although I found the format tedious and repetitive, this account of this "small war" is deserving of attention. Guardedly recommended, but only for those who specialize in studying war and the inevitable crimes against humanity that always accompany it.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER… (more)