“I am not going to be engaged in politics. I am going to write scientific articles, I will receive an honorarium, and attend conferences, symposia and congresses.” Such plans had the historian, also a member of the “Karabakh” committee Hambardzum Galstyan in May 1989, in the Butyrka prison, already feeling that his release from the prison is a matter of weeks (“The Unsent Letters”, page 116). His birthday was on December 14, and 20 years ago, on December 17, 1994, he was murdered. The investigation failed to prove the guilt of the accused in the murder.
What he dreamed in Butyrka did not came true. He failed to be engaged in science, the system, which could be more or less provide normal life by scientific honoraria collapsed, his political team, the “Karabakh” Committee, PANM came to power. Hambardzum Galstyan became a Mayor of Yerevan, he dissembled the statue of Lenin under the unanimous enthusiasm of the crowd gathered in the Republic Square. I remember how the people’s mass was wrathfully throwing their kopeks in the direction of the statue passing accross the Square.
Soon, the social problems began, and the same crowd began to curse the mayor just as it did and keeps doing to all next mayors and, in general, to the government authorities. Then, as it usually happens, controversies began among the former revolutionaries, the “Karabakh Committee” fractured, its members began to speak and write unpleasant things about each other.
Another citation from “The Unsent Letters” book – an open letter to Secretary of the Central Committee Galust Galoyan, which was written on December 24, 1988, before his arrest. “You and your colleagues have stolen all of it (the aid arrived after the earthquake – A.A.); Galust Anushavani, soon all of it would appear in your damned special stores and on your loving kids-grandchildren… You must answer for it” (p. 139). PANM was accusing the Communists of plundering, then others to PANM, then PANM to these “others”…
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It is written on Hambardzum Galstyan gravestone: “All revolutions are conceived by idealists, implemented by fanatics, and its fruits are stolen by scoundrels.” The 19th century British writer, also author of numerous works on the Great French Revolution, Thomas Carlyle’s words are absolutely true. Often, it happens that the same people are idealist in the beginning, then they become fanatics, and at the end, they display themselves as scoundrels (this does not refer to Hambardzum Galstyan, he was a decent man in person, which, however, does not alter the overall pattern).
The outcome, I think, is obvious: not to be a romantic, but to calculate in advance what incurs from what. In particular, what incurs from the revolution. Because the same Carlyle has another popular proverb, “Nobody knows how the crowd will behave, even the crowd itself.”
ARAM ABRAHAMYAN
