They want to put one of the creators of the Republic – Aram Manukyan’s statue in the Republic square relative to the anniversary of the First Republic. That figure, according to me, is worth a deep respect and even a reverence: due to, contemporarily said, his behavior which was not conventional and which had overcome “orientation stereotypes”, as he himself told, we now have a statehood in the little part of historical Armenia. But the idea to put the statue of a new historical figure, nevertheless, is premature, especially when that statue is going to stand in the central square symbolizing the statehood.
Putting Lenin’s statue in that square signified that the Second Republic completely and implicitly accepted the ideology which bore the “the leader of the proletariat”. To replace Lenin by any other actual person – be it Aram Manukyan, Garegin Nzhdeh or even Kirk Kerkorian, or Charles Aznavour, would mean that we have a new idol, a new wooden head which we should worship.
Of course, we should not ruin or dismantle any existing statue. But we should be very careful as far as building new ones is considered. Whether there were no “bandit activities” during the First Republic? Did Aram Manukyan have no errs and delusions? It is obvious that everything has not been the way it has been represented for 70 years by the communist propaganda, but it has not been as ideal as the representatives of the Revolutionary Federation try to represent now as well.
The same, by the way, can be told about the Second and the Third Republics and their key figures. Reservations towards any country’s political or state figures cannot lack, generally – towards any person. You will ask – “Why they have put the statues of George Washington, Winston Churchill or General de Gaulle? Whether they were ideal and all their operations were indisputable?” The issue is that in this case we speak of the sustained countries where the national interest is shaped in the social level. And besides, it is not so that, say, Washington’s statue has been dismantled (because they found out that he was a bad one) and replaced by, for example, Franklin Roosevelt’s statue. To replace one symbol by the other – this is the feature of a not mature statehood. This is why I say – we need not hurry as regards putting the statue of any person in the Republic square. Let the state mentality be shaped around our society, this is when the society will decide what symbol it needs.
ARAM ABRAHAMYAN
