Black January
Black January (Azerbaijani: Qara Yanvar), also known as Black Saturday or the January Massacre, was a violent crackdown on anti-Soviet and anti-Armenian sentiments, Azerbaijani nationalism, and irredentism in Baku on 19 and 29 January 1990, as part of a state of emergency during the dissolution of the Soviet Union. General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party Mikhail Gorbachev and Defence Minister Dmitry Yazov asserted that military law was necessary to thwart efforts by the Azerbaijani independence movement to overthrow the Soviet Azerbaijani government.