Yesterday was the Remembrance Day of the Repressed. Imagine there is such a day, according to the law adopted in RA in 2006. There is even a monument in Yerevan, which was opened in 2008. But few people remember that day, mainly the dissidents of the Soviet period and people related to them. I have no direct connection with that circle; neither I nor my parents and grandparents were dissidents, nor were they repressed. But this day is worth remembering at the state and public levels.
The problem is not to oppose the given state order or ideology. Ruling ideologies and orders are changeable, but the oppression of people by states is permanent and unchanging. The excuses for pressure can be different: The “wrong” religion or the “wrong” version of Christianity, the “wrong” nationality, the “wrong” orientation and the “wrong” beliefs
The government, which stands for the “correct” point of view, has oppressed “witches,” “enemies,” “agents,” and “5th columns” for centuries and continues to oppress them. The instruments of repression can also be different, from the bonfires of inquisitions, “Gulag,” Auschwitz, to “fake factories.”
What is the illusion, or, if you will, deception, on which all forms of state repression are based? It is the belief that people can be made happy by force or (essentially the same thing) people can be sacrificed for some idea that will eventually lead to universal happiness later, perhaps after Doomsday.
That longed-for goal can be formulated as the victory of communism, liberalism, or the “values of the 2018 revolution.” Or “the opportunity to live quietly on 29.8 thousand square kilometers” and 120 thousand lives can be destroyed for the last “bright goal.”
The repressions of the Soviet period are one of the most extreme, brutal manifestations of such thinking. That is why June 14 should be remembered and bowed down to the memory of all the repressed.
ARAM ABRAHAMIAN
