I don’t want to write stock words about May 9 – “triple festivity,” “the month of victories” etc. Let us pay tribute to everyone – our three presidents, Vazgen Sargsyan, freedom fighters, and the whole Armenian nation – thanks to whom we were able to liberate a part of our historical fatherland. Before that we had lost for centuries. We were able to regain something at the end of the 20th century, and not appreciating that fact is unwise. However, keeping what one has gained is sometimes harder. And this danger is always there, particularly in our case, given our economic, moral and, thus, demographical condition.
Specialists claim that after crossing some lower limit of population, the given country loses its defensibility, no matter how brilliant its army is. And our two neighbors will do whatever it takes, so that there is no Armenian state in the region. One needs special calculations to determine when we will cross that limit, in 10 years or 20 years. However, it is obvious that if we go on like this, we will reach that limit sooner or later, and after that, it will be kids’ stuff for those two states to drive us out of here (by “here” I certainly mean Artsakh too) once and for all. And in that case, May 9, liberation of Shushi and all the other victories will remain textbook facts, pages of our heroic past, so to speak.
Political forces consider it to be an issue of political struggle: on the one hand, the government puts its head in the sand and says that there is nothing terrible, everything is in accordance with the norm and continues to take its calories unperturbed; on the other hand, the opposition basically says: “Unless we come to power, the emigration will not stop.” It is impossible to check this last claim empirically, because the phrase “we will come to power” is a wish, rather than real struggle and calculations.
Whereas this problem is not political; it is a national one. Certainly, the government hasn’t lifted a finger in the past 5 years to prevent Armenia’s depopulation (it is not only about the emigration, but also about the decline in birth rates and increase in death rates). There is no sign as yet that such steps will be taken. But this is not only the government’s problem; I am sure that the atmosphere of indifference, apathy, taking offense and leaving is created by not only objective economic circumstances, but also by the murmur of politicians, social figures,
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and intellectuals in the style of Arshak Sadoyan of the 1990s. According to the existing tradition, if one wants to curry favor with the people, one must mourn their poor condition and give bad news about the country’s imminent perdition. And those formulations of the “elite” have penetrated our people’s everyday life in the past 20 years, whereas the mentioned circles should not only murmur, but also assign certain tasks to us.
…Anyone who has been to Shushi after the war and has seen the poor condition of that former cultural center in the South Caucasus will surely ask using the form that has become very common: “What did we liberate Shush for?”
ARAM ABRAHAMYAN
