… When the people were in the dark and had electricity for 1-2 hours a day, there was a common idea not only in the society (this testifies to the inexperience of our statehood and the people’s psychology), but also the Karabakh Committee itself, among the leaders of the Movement that, for example, in the Presidential Palace and the leaders’ houses, there shouldn’t be electricity either, they shouldn’t have electricity either, in order to suffer as much as the people. During a war, can you imagine that? It is not only inexperience, but also, I would say, a fact that a people that hasn’t had statehood for a thousand years has broken the habit of complying with any rule of coexistence. There has been no rule of merely national coexistence in Armenia. However, adopting those rules of coexistence was the task of everyone and, first of all, the Minister of the Interior. Saying the Minister of the Interior, I don’t mean only the Minister of the Police. There is a Ministry of Public Order Maintenance and the Military Police around the world…. Ours was a joint one, and when I would interfere in many things, they would say “He pokes his nose into everything.” However, the meaning, the idea was that the people gained the rules of coexistence, which hadn’t been there for a thousand years, the rules of relating with the state. Both the President and the Minister of the Interior should be the tastemakers. Not to mention the Prime Minister. In order to teach those rules of coexistence to people. To get it into people’s heads year in year out that one can have his own state and his own powers that be.
It is a threat to the national security, when the president doesn’t have electricity for half a day. If he sleeps badly at night and goes to work with a headache or bloodshot eyes and governs the country, can you imagine that? And he communicates with other countries. The Komsomol morals, the Communist morals that had existed before the New Economic Policy were immediately eliminated, Levin eliminated them very quickly, and the legend was preserved as if Lenin had eaten black bread, it is a lie…. And Armenians immediately believed that, and thought that rotational power outages should be also in the Presidential Palace, electricity that ensures communication, normal life of people, communication with the front, communication with the world and neighboring countries, in the end, heating that the country leaders are not on the sick list, don’t lie in their beds and don’t keep handkerchief on their noses when they appear before the public This is the country’s dignity, security. There was a need for teaching primitive things not only to the people, but also those in the leadership, members of the Karabakh Committee.
VANO SIRADEGHYAN
Hayk, 9/21/2000
