Azerbaijani professor Rahman Badalov’s article, which was published on the internet, as well as in our newspaper, testifies to the fact that there are rational people who are really concerned about the future of their state and their nation in the neighboring country too. It is obvious that such people are the minority and the overwhelming majority is unhinged by national hatred. Azerbaijanis are not the first, nor are they the last to suffer from massive psychosis. Let us recall, for example, that the majority of Germans in the 1930s were convinced that the only reason for their misfortunes were Jews. We all know quite well how it ended. It couldn’t have ended otherwise, because one can axe a sleeping man or organize a pogrom against civilians because of hatred. However, one can never win a war. Then comes the time to sober up.
However, I am far from thinking that our nation is unique and absolutely different from other nations. Admittedly, we don’t suffer from morbid xenophobia, but it doesn’t mean that our majority is guided by rationality in all issues. Tell me, please, what percentage of our society is convinced that the Karabakh conflict must be settled through a compromise?
Or putting aside the international relations, let us make an assumption and guess what the reaction of the “majority” will be, if one says during an “informal meeting” with its representatives that market economy is fairer and more efficient than the underground market economy of the Soviet Union, that having an independent state is better, than being a part of any other state, that there has been a certain progress in Armenia in terms of the freedom of speech and press in the past 2-3 years, that shopping in a supermarket is more convenient, than in a booth.
If one doesn’t want to have a conflict with the majority, one mustn’t say or write all that, one must patiently listen, when people – sometimes not poor at all – complain about life and curse and damn the government. It will be better, if during that one strikes one’s knees with one’s hands every 2-3 minutes as 80-year-old women do and exclaims, “Oh dear, they robbed, oh dear, they sucked the people’s blood, it was much better in the Soviet Union.” Another election will be held soon and we will witness again almost all political forces strike their knees with their hands and encourage such talk. It has been so for more than 20 years – as a matter of fact, there are no such masters of complaint nowadays, as Arshak Sadoyan and Seyran Avagyan were in the 1990s.
…In the Middle Ages, the overwhelming majority of people were convinced that the planet Earth was flat and if anyone said that it was round, at best he would be laughed at and at worst he would be burned at the stake by the decision of the church “politburo.”
ARAM ABRAHAMYAN
