My grandmother had studied at the Shushi Gymnasium until 1918 and she had studied French in those adolescent years so well that she could express her thoughts in that language all her life. My grandfather studied at the Shushi Realschule roughly in the same period, and that education was absolutely sufficient for him to work as an accountant for a long time. Although born in Nukhi, my paternal grandfather’s ancestors, the Ter-Abrahamyans, performed religious duties in Artsakh as ordinary priests. Those three relatives of mine don’t perceive Artsakh as a region of Azerbaijan, moreover the “Azerbaijan” stereotype was never in the mind of any of them, and they would call “Tartars” the Muslims living in their neighborhood at the time, as it was common in the Russian Empire. Artsakh was a region of that very empire in the same way as Yerevan or, say, the region of Alexandropol with roughly the same level of development. The Bolsheviks’ project called “Azerbaijan” had a rather short history, and there is no full conception of it in the genetic memory of us, the Armenians. I am writing this not to humiliate the neighboring people; brilliant people, well-bred intellectuals are as many in Azerbaijan as in Armenia. I am talking about the psychological perceptions of our people, particularly the residents of Artsakh. In the Soviet period, the Baltic peoples would not accept that they were a part of the Soviet Union; it was not a political position, it was a mentality. When one would speak to an Estonian, for example, he would say, “Your composers, your football team,” meaning the Soviet country and the Soviet culture. No decision of the Central Committee “Against Nationalism,” no KGB, no repression could change that conviction of the Estonians, because it was basically not nationalism, it was rather a lifestyle. And after 1985 when an opportunity was offered that lifestyle gained political content.
The same thing applies to Artsakh. The conception of being a part of Azerbaijan has never been and is still not in the mentality of the people who have been living there. A communist leader or a villager, a labor or a teacher, those people wouldn’t accept Azerbaijan’s dominance psychologically, and when there was a need for fighting and shedding blood to prove it they took that step without hesitation. The term “Azeri region” has never existed in the minds of the people who have been living in Artsakh, particularly those people who led the struggle of that region for independence.
I have known our beloved singer Ruben Hakhverdyan for almost 30 years, and I am convinced that he is very far from regional or any other chauvinism. He speaks of the real vices of our country, which, nonetheless, have nothing to do with the origins of the leaders of this country.
Aram Abrahamyan
