Historian Edik Minasyan, the dean of the Faculty of History, Yerevan State University, commented on the fuss about his textbook of the Armenian history, particularly the fact that he presented the events of March 1 and the presidential election in a subjective and distorted manner, during a conversation with www.aravot.am.
“I presented the facts objectively; I have all the necessary documents at hand. There is a conclusion of the National Assembly committee’s detailed investigation, the Human Rights Defender’s report, the opinions of the opposition and official press etc. I presented everything based on facts. The fact that they break the text into pieces and present only things that are in their interest doesn’t mean that I made a subjective assessment. I would suggest that they read the whole book. I wrote that both the opposition and the government were to blame. In conclusion, I stated what impact it had on our international image and behavior,” the historian says suggesting reading the whole book, reading carefully, since quotes are in quotation marks, thus, the tendency to express a subjective opinion is ruled out.
“The most difficult thing today is writing the contemporary history. I am surprised at the mentality of those people who criticize me. I wrote based on the facts available today and I don’t rule out that other facts will be found in 10 years’ time. I didn’t criticize the opposition everywhere, I wrote also about the position things, and it is not that I only blackened them; I put forward the drawbacks of the government too. It is pointless to blame, I am not that kind of a person, thank God, I have written other textbooks too, this was not the first time. The opposition considered only the parts that are in its interest; that is why such talk has spread. All this talk emerged when the group Counterattack, Armenian National Congress (ANC) activists, entered with megaphones, started to disrupt classes, make a row, make appeals through megaphones to topple the government, running in corridors. When I said ‘What has happened, let’s discuss, you are disrupting the class,’ they said ‘We do what we want.’ And when we pushed them out for their misconduct, they spread information that their rights had been violated. So they want to win points through provocations and blackmail. They want to make a show once again,” Minasyan is convinced.
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The historian asks with surprise: “If it is so, why didn’t they talk about what was written about the government too?”
According to him, history has not been distorted at all: “I wrote this way, you write a better one. The worst thing is that people who haven’t even seen the book talk about this. I think that I am right; moreover, the book has professional editors, among whom are Petros Hovhannisyan and academician Hrachik Simonyan. This book has been considered, discussed for a long time and has been approved by the department. That work is not done by one person; therefore, the book is the best.”
Eva HAKOBYAN
