There is such an episode in Vardges Petrosyan’s essay-novel “The Armenian Sketches” (1978). The Armenians meet a girl with torn shoes on the street of Moscow; they take her to the store and buy the best red shoes. The people present are surprised and grumbling, and the novel’s hero interprets their actions like this։ “Simply no child in the world should be barefoot. Our grandfathers with tired, blood-stained feet on the migration path silently bequeathed that to us.”
That hero, on whose behalf the events are presented, identifies with a nation with a particular history and values. Now it is called “Soviet-Armenian patriotism.” The approaches adopted in the 1960s and 1970s have their shortcomings. But let’s face it, what’s scarier: to have that identity, however incomplete, or to be a grass, or at best, a gray mass that lacks a past, memory, purpose, or even the ordinary capacity for empathy?
That question is relevant today, as we stand on the brink of a new genocide, when, quite possibly, tens of thousands of immigrants will soon appear whom the “native” state is not ready to accept (all the money was spent on Snoop Dogg). But the society has no demands from the leadership of that state. On the contrary, most of the society is so brainwashed that the tragedy happening in Artsakh causes a feeling of “satisfied revenge” among some of them. It is, of course, the result of years, I would say decades, of purposeful work. Even now, when people are dying of hunger, that brutal anti-Artsakh propaganda continues, and that propaganda has considerable consumption.
In the UN Security Council, not people but representatives of states gather. It’s not that they don’t know the truth – in the 21st century, that’s practically impossible. But, guided by the interests of their countries, they can pretend that they believe Azerbaijan’s lies. It is also known what drives those engaged in anti-Artsakh propaganda today.
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Aram ABRAHAMYAN
