Nikolai Epple’s book “The Inconvenient Past,” tells about how in the 20th century, different countries managed to overcome historical trauma: More precisely, how they did it in Argentina, Germany, Japan, Spain, and South Africa. But in the Soviet Union and after Russia, they didn’t even try to overcome Stalinism. Moreover, since 2002, Putin has interpreted the collapse of the Soviet Union as a disaster, not an opportunity to become a modern state.
Each of the mentioned countries had its unique problem. The most familiar to us is Germany overcoming the Nazi legacy. The author presents a typical episode on that topic. In October 1946, the German Evangelical Church issued a statement accepting responsibility for the crimes of Nazism. “We fought,” the statement said, “but our testimony lacked courage, our prayer lacked devotion, our faith lacked enthusiasm, and our love lacked fire.”
That statement was heavily criticized. The German “Poghoses” or perhaps “Pauls” brought forward their “resentment,” complaining that they were humiliated in Versailles (they meant the peace treaty), they were bombed in Dresden, and even now, the Russian and American occupation regimes are not behaving well. “So,” the “Pauls” concluded, “we are victims, we are not responsible for anything, and we are not guilty of anything.”
But the famous people of the nation – Thomas Mann, Karl Jaspers, Bertolt Brecht, Martin Heidegger , and Theodor Adorno – joined the debate, and the issue was finally resolved, so to speak, “in favor of guilt and responsibility.”
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Now I think the defeat of 2020 was a disaster that has not yet been recognized as a national trauma. The main culprit and responsible person for that catastrophe blame the secondary culprits and persons responsible almost daily. Yesterday, he gave a speech to the “investigative committee” that is subordinate to him, which, it is clear, will confirm all his claims in the conclusion. And where are the authoritative people not in “Taifa” who will try to understand what really happened?
From the beginning, however, society should understand that it was a trauma and then that it should be overcome. After this, we should realize that to overcome this, we must listen to the truth, not the propaganda of one side or the other.
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
