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Of more immediate importance for Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev are the domestic effects of the quake. The enormous costs of rebuilding Armenian towns and villages will be a serious setback to perestroika, his program of economic restructuring. The political aftershocks are already severe. Even before the tragedy, Armenians distrusted Gorbachev because of his rejection of their territorial claims to Nagorno-Karabakh, a largely Armenian enclave embedded in neighboring Azerbaijan, a blood enemy of Armenia. The earthquake only heightened the Armenians' anger, and that prompted a furious Gorbachev to describe the airing of nationalist grievances at such a time as "immoral." His words, however, had little effect.
The Soviet press, meanwhile, lambasted some aspects of the relief effort as bungled and inept. Pravda, the Communist Party daily, said that because of a lack of cranes "seconds and hours are being lost -- that means lives." It complained that for each Soviet searcher "we have about ten observers who give advice rather than clear up the rubble." Sotsialisticheskaya Industriya asked, "Why does it happen that many families are still living out in the open though there is an abundance of tents?" Some of the homeless spend their nights huddled over bonfires. Even a Communist Party commission report lashed out at the poor organization, noting that "in a number of localities food is distributed sporadically." Health Minister Yevgeni Chazov urged that a national body be set up to handle major disasters.
Although in most cases the Soviets seemed remarkably adept at cutting red tape to get foreign disaster teams into Armenia, unexplained tie-ups cost time and possibly lives. Baxter International Inc. of Deerfield, Ill., assembled a flying medical lab, including 20 special dialysis machines to treat victims of crush syndrome whose kidneys had been affected, but four days passed before visas arrived. A Japanese offer to send an earthquake rescue team was rejected without explanation, as was a Turkish proposal to send helicopters and cranes. An American plastic and reconstructive surgeon, Claude Frechette, who arrived shortly after the earthquake, says he was told by a Soviet doctor in Yerevan that his help was not needed. "The problem is there is no central organization at Yerevan to dispatch people and equipment," Frechette said. "No one knows what anyone else is doing. Information passes simply by word of mouth."
The man in charge of what was left of Spitak last week was the local party leader, Norik Moradanyan, who lost eleven relatives in the disaster. He had no time for grief, working round the clock to resolve disputes over where to send cranes, advising people on how to seek missing family members, or barking out orders for feeding and clothing survivors. Numb with fatigue, he had no idea how many people in his area had died: "We have pulled 7,000 out of the rubble. Many were still alive." Many died instantly, said Dr. Robert Gale, who was also present at the Chernobyl aftermath. "Once rigor mortis set in, they were frozen in time. Just like at Pompeii, you could tell what they were doing when the quake struck."