It
happened in such a way that I got "Izvestia" newspaper with "Azerbaijan"
appendix together with the news about Huseinov’s murder. There was a whole page
where the wealthy leaders’ faces of Azerbaijani regions were published. Each of
them performs in communistic way how to fulfil and overfulfil the plans in the
sphere of eggs, milk and wool. The contrast was obvious: on the one hand the corrupted
and self-satisfied "beks" who performed with the communistic "case"
in past and now with democratic. On another hand the intellectual like Elmar who
wasn’t afraid of writing about defects of his own country. And he was accused
of not being patriot as if he poured water in the enemy’s /that is our/ water
mill. The arguments of the Armenian and Azerbaijani authorities are surprisingly
the same: "Let us do what we want unless we’ll accuse you of national treason."
Certainly, our governors/marzpet/ and mayors aren’t better. But our authorities
grasp not to buy pages in "Izvestia" newspaper for reporting about their
success. They understand that the effect of that is equal to nothing, nobody reads
such nonsense and those rose pictures are simply make the readers’ laugh. Perhaps
this is little but another proof that our society is advanced in its level of
democracy than the Azerbaijani’s society. Vazgen Manoukian has lately noticed
that the Karabakh conflict won’t be settled tomorrow or the day after tomorrow
and a long period of cold war is going to wait for us. I think the parallel isn’t
so working first for the reason that they weren’t other world powers beside the
Soviet Union and the USA and nobody could dictate the orientation they must go
to. Armenia and Azerbaijan of 21 century are far from being super powers and the
"rules of the world play" are developing out of those countries. The
main rules are free market, democracy, which lead people to civilization and prosperity.
And we have some privileges towards Azerbaijan on that way / by the way petroleum
hinders instead of helping in this case/ but we’ll pass the way together with
all countries of the region. Unfortunately through the fault of Armenian
and Azerbaijani authorities we go by just the opposite, communistic-feudal direction.
And the hostility, rattling the saber to the neighbor’s address, false patriotic
speeches, devoting to public primitive instincts are profitable for feudals /princes/.
But all these are temporal; the civilization has no alternative in connection
with great, historical prospects.Aram Abrahamian