Once again, I want to remind you of an old story. About 18 years ago, in the summer of 1997, “Aravot” newspaperman applied to NDU board member David Vardanyan with questions. The latter hesitated, “Why are you asking about the source, ask about the dragon sitting at the spring.” In other words, all the attention of the opposition figure was focused on saying something bad about Levon Ter-Petrosyan and did not care about the rest of the questions. Half a year after this incident, Levon Ter-Petrosyan was no more a President, David Vardanyan was assigned to different positions, but if you compare in terms of corruption and looting, then not so holy PANM members, in my impression, are just nursery children compared with the people who had come with them.
This is bad in itself, but worse is that when someone is talking about the “dragon” and the “spring” since 1998, it immediately raises doubts about whether he does not want to take the place of the “existing” dragon and personally “slake his thirst”. The conduct of the political parties during the next 17 years, to put it mildly, has not dispelled these doubts. The words like “party,” “power” and “opposition” cause internal resistance with many of us. Connecting all the problems with one person, although it fits very well into the “best traditions” of our political culture, but, it seems, also have proved its inefficiency. Today, to speak in a way like the NDU members in 1990-ies, by changing only the names … I do not know, maybe it is from a “retro” genre.
And here comes the 20-25-year-old ones who at the minimum have heard about all of this and say, “We do not want to repeat you.” It is an extremist approach, may be wrong, but understandable. Now, some of them say, “Let us find an uncredited party members” (which is very difficult), and the other part says, “let us give up the political tools of the struggle” (which is impossible). I’m not going to offer anything in these conditions, as it is there are too many to give advice from the side.
Instead, I want to remind the story of the “dragon” exactly as it is represented by Yevgeniy Schwartz’s play and in Grigoriy Gorin’s scenario screened based on this film. Those who have seen the play or the movie, theoretically agree that the dragon is found in each of us, and as it is so, any “knight” who will kill the dragon, he will become a dragon on the very next moment. But in practice, we do not want to give up our personal “dragonism” and say, “Let first this one or that one refuse, and then I’ll think.”
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As for the political figures’ and politicians’ offer, then in the same Mark Zakharov’s film there is a wonderful cue, “Our commanders have elaborated in detail the plan of the preceding battle”.
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
