Some expressions become extremely popular and fashionable in a particular historical period. Everyone repeats those phrases with or without understanding. Then they are forgotten, and there is a need to explain to the generations what they mean. For example, today’s young people are unlikely to know what “devoured fuel oil” means.
The copyright of that phrase belongs, if I’m not mistaken, to Arshak Sadoyan. By the way, maybe the young people should be reminded who Arshak Sadoyan was. He was a member of the Armenian Parliament from 1990-2008. After the change of power in 1998, Robert Kocharyan, through his propagandists, tried to convince the public that the ANM members were murderers and robbers and that they also engaged in “energy terror,” that is, deliberately depriving people of electricity to sell matches, candles, and diesel fuel to the population. (That plot, by the way, was featured in Robert Sahakyants’s cartoon “I’m Armenian, too”). And the fuel oil imported to Armenia, with which the boilers were supposed to work, was resold to other countries; it was “devoured.”
The topic was resounding because it touched the feelings of people who lived without heating and light for four years. But over the years, that theme slowly died out. Are there people who believe the myth of “devoured fuel oil”? There probably still are. But that belief is not “trendy” today.
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Today, the “5th column” myth is more fashionable. As I have already needed to write, the origin of that phrase is not Armenian. Unless we assume that the general of the Spanish fascists, the Frankist General Emilio Mola was Armenian. But that phrase has become too familiar in the last year or two. It is used by the propagandists of the government, who convince us that Pashinyan’s opponents are fighting against Armenia’s sovereignty and want to turn our country into a province of Russia. (Meanwhile, if anyone leads Armenia on the path of making it an outlying province of any other country, it is Pashinyan). In short, according to official propaganda, if “Kremlin agents” are eliminated in Armenia, everything will be great.
And here, a few days ago, the Prime Minister completed the topic; according to him, we lost the war because of the “5th column”.
In 20 years, young people will ask me what that 5th column that participated in the war of 2020 was, and I will answer that it was another propaganda myth.
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
