The first President Levon Ter-Petrosyan thinks that the current President Serzh Sargsyan, before commencing the European integration process, has to go to Putin (by the way, who said that he has not gone) and ask, “I want to do such a thing, what would you say?”. And if Putin has replied, “Oh, gosh! Don’t do it. I’ll give you full of candies, instead”, we would have chosen the least of the evil in this process. But since according to the ANC leader’s opinion, the current President had not done it, he came from Moscow ‘beaten-humiliated”, Putin has threatened him saying “quit your Europe-non Europe, otherwise I will make your country reach an economic collapse, and will give Karabakh to Azerbaijan.”
I do not know, maybe it is just the way it is, and the first president is right, and it is worthy to ‘make a bazaar’ with Russia more precisely. But, I admit, these are details for me, policy shades. And the most important thing is that our primary, the main vector of “not marginal” political forces is the same, and the first, the second and third presidents are convinced that they cannot get rid of Russia, and, ultimately, with good or bad “bazaar”, we should do what this country will impose us to do. The political parties and the presidents still nothing, so thinks the majority of our population “we have lived for centuries under the shade of the Russia and we will still live.” As the great Russian poet participated in “the liberation of the Caucasus” would say, «под сенью дружеских штыков» (under the canopy of friendly bayonets).
In my impression, Armenians do not mourn for joining the Customs Union or for being “humiliated-beaten”. People, who are interested in these issues, perceive everything as a routine process, while others do not deeply care about.
I, like probably a few hundred people living in Armenia, do not agree with this fatalistic orientation, and the ideas of “shade” and “timing” are not cordial to me. It seems to me that being a friend of Russia, maintaining and developing military, economic and cultural ties with that country, it is possible to choose our own path of civilization, which will not counter but combine the best achievements of Europe and Russia, the West and the East, at least, would not borrow the most nasty manifestations of Putin’s current regime, authoritarianism, corruption, permissiveness of officials and others. I think, my opinion as such is not so marginal.
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…. In the book of Hambardzum Galstyan “Unsent letters”, in which the letters of the “Karabakh” Committee member are summarized written in the beginning of 1989, just before the arrest, as well as two times is cited from A. Herzen’s work “On the development of revolutionary ideas in Russia” from the Butyrka prison. “Russia is partly a slave, and because it finds poetry in the material power, and sees glory in being a dummy for nations.” It is clear from the context that the Armenian political scientist agreed with the citation without reservation. In Herzen’s work, the matter, of course, was about Russia and not the Soviet Empire.
Aram Abrahamyan
