Exactly 50 years ago, Italian fascist regime leader Mussolini was brutally sentenced to death. Partisans hung him upside-down and gave the Italians a chance to express their outrage over duce by spitting in his face. Mussolini’s sins before the Italian people, as well as the humanity were truly great, and he deserved worthy compensation for his crimes.
The figures of different countries (including Armenia), who tend to nowadays have “Führer” claims, and openly preach fascist ideas, should likely bear in mind this episode of the Italian history. The national intolerance campaign and the promises of free food can inspire the masses for some time, but the end of such mode of actions is so tragic that the same masses wish to spit in the face of the authors of this policy.
Fascism and communism failed because they were conducting uncompromising revolutionary struggle against the previous regimes, the value systems created before them. Taking an aggressive stance against the past, they were historically sentenced.
However, the issue of how we overcome these abnormal phenomena is more urgent and important. Also making tough and aggressive attacks on the past (especially, communism) by ‘spitting in the face’ of the past. Let us recall with what enthusiasm we were filled when Lenin’s statue was dismantled in Yerevan. Wasn’t the thrilled mass acting as a flowerer of Lenin’s commandments? The official positive attitude yielded its place to unofficial hatred; does it change the essence of the phenomenon?
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Revolutionary denial of the past may have more or less brutal displays. French butchers beheaded Louis XVI, official of Cheka shot the family of Tsar Nicholas II by Lenin’s command, Italian partisans hanged Mussolini upside-down. As a Russian publicist recently wrote that one man’s violence is called a “crime”, the violence of authorities is called a “state necessity”, and the violence of the mass is called a “revolution.” Fortunately, Armenia managed to avoid the kind of turmoil, if not to mention the rest of small but painful and disgraceful incidents in the memory of all of us. But the negative trend that was educated in the last 70 years, still remains in our psychology. Any political stream, the essence of which can be described with the adjective ‘anti’, is doomed to failure. The essence of liberalism (at the same time the force) is the very fact that it implies tolerance to any (including also, non-liberal) trends.
…. The past is irrevocable… The advocates wishing to return it simply deserve compassion. However, it is our history, and the experience shows that it is not wise to punch it. All positive and rational displays of the past must be placed in today’s reality. The past needs to be digested.
ARAM ABRAHAMYAN
27.04.1995
