A few days later, on 30 October, Russia and maybe a few other former Soviet countries will mark the Day of Remembrance of Victims of Political Repressions. The theme by our Armenian standards is not topical, it is neither a baptism, nor a wedding, nor even the next oligarch’s political ambitions or an uncompromising struggle of the “present” and the “past criminal regimes”.
But something hints me that without clarifying our not-in-the-past problem up to the end, we will continue to grope in today’s, to put it mildly, not so bright reality. The matter is that our psychological and ideological “evolution” is constantly moving towards one direction: from blind faith to a perfect cynicism. For some period of time, most of the people unreservedly believe in the honesty and wisdom of the political elite, right or wrong ideological, spiritual values. In another period of time (as it is now), the same majority similarly is unreservedly confident that all the representatives of this elite are deceivers and profit-seekers, and the values are false and fictional. Until another “excuse” of unreserved belief appears.
The similarity of these extremes is obvious. There is a persuasion at the moment of “believing” that generally there might be “separate drawbacks” in the bright reality, “certain anomalies” and, as a result, inevitable human casualties. In particular, exactly in this way, actually in a cynical form, the political repression period is described today. “Yes, there were concentration camps, instead we won the war and have built a strong country.” This, allegedly pragmatic explanation opens a direct way to a “disbelieving” period. Because if the violence, brutality, human dignity abuse are not condemned unreservedly, the institutions committing this crime are not denied (in this case, first of all, the “KGB”), if justifications are for them, then it is much easier to justify the corruption and abuse, election frauds, here, definitely a complete list of “lofty purposes” will be found. The reasons for such cynicism are also the “unlearned lessons” in the past.
For Armenia, examining the political repressions seriously and condemnation thereof is also important by the fact that the “KGB” (with its other names) committing these repressions is an alien structure. The lists of the people for execution and exile were approved in Moscow. Then comes the lists of persecuted dissidents. And who can say that these “traditions”, with a slight modification, are not still in the process?
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… The actions of Remarque’s novel “The Spark of Life” take place in the Nazi concentration camp. The main hero is a former editor of a newspaper. He organizes something like an underground resistance with the communist prisoners. One of the communists asks, what your newspaper was advocating. “Tolerance, broad-mindedness, pluralism,” replies the hero. “When we come to power, we will arrest you too,” promises the communist.
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
