We know in great detail who, for what and how carried out the genocide of Armenians. Who allowed and who contributed to that tragedy is not a secret either. Here the task of our state, our national institutions, and our historians is to find evidence and arguments to explain it to the whole world. To us, Armenians, it is important to clear up other issues, to realize, in particular, why in some places, we were able to put up resistance to the Turkish soldiers and bandits and why in many cases, such resistance was not put up. It is clear that the plan of the Turkish government to exterminate Armenians would have been carried out anyway, but shouldn’t there have been more episodes, which we would have been proud of today, as we are proud of, say, heroic resistance of Musa Dagh (Moses Mountain)? By the way, it is known that there was such an episode in Sumgayit too when an Armenian man killed one of the bandits who had attacked his family.
Besides technical problems, the geographical disposition of the given village or town, presence or absence of weapons stored somewhere and other circumstances like that, can there be also social, political, and psychological reasons for resisting? We avoid talking on these subjects, not wishing probable to play into the Turks’ hands. However, perhaps we play into their hands more when with regard to the events of 1915, we depict ourselves as a feeble, beaten, and long-suffering people; it seems that only we have suffered, and the other peoples’ history is a continuous chain of victories and pleasures. And as a summary of that “textbook” self-pity, one groans at the end: “Oh, Armenian luck.”
Actually, there is no such thing as “Armenian luck.” It is not Armenian luck that we are divided into the Fatherland and the Diaspora. It is a reality, which one should use and which one should overcome psychologically. We should take steps to understand each other, but we don’t take those yet. It is not Armenian luck that half of Armenia’s population has fled from the country in the past 22 years; however much I try to make it a “point of honor” for my brothers to return and suffer, along with us, they don’t deem it such, feel embarrassed and give political and other explanations. If they are waiting for some wonderful improvements in Armenia to come back, then they will never return. We should suffer not to be long-suffering. It seems that what I am saying has nothing to do with April 24, but we are talking about the psychological roots of putting up resistance, are we not?
And we will overcome certain complexes only when we will put an end to the fainthearted and impotent action of burning the Turkish flag in Yerevan’s Freedom Square.
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Aram Abrahamyan
