The May issue of this year’s CPA official newspaper, “Hayastani Komunist” (Communists of Armenia), has been published. On the first page, Comrade I.V. Stalin addresses the people. Of course, Comrade Stalin is not addressing now but on May 9, 1945 (specifically, speaking on the radio). His address was not directed particularly at the Armenian people but at all the peoples of the USSR. Nonetheless, it is a fact that there are still people in Armenia for whom Stalin remains an unquestionable authority, which is why his colorful picture appeared on the front page of the newspaper.
I am not here to judge that enduring adoration. Instead, I am interested in the mechanics of love for leaders. People love him and that’s it. And what others says about him is “a complete lie.” About 30 years ago, during demonstrations in Russia, old women still took to the streets with Stalin’s picture. Could you convince those grandmothers that Stalin was a tyrant, that millions suffered and died because of the regime he created?
In one of Arthur Miller’s plays, “Incident at Vichy”, the German noble von Berg exclaims in surprise: “But they ador him (Hitler)!. My own cook, my gardeners, the people who work in my forests, the chauffeur, the gamekeeper- they are Nazis!. I saw it coming over them, the love for this creatore- my housekeeper dreams of him in her bed she served my breakfast like a god have slept with her, in a dream slicing my tost!. I saw this adoration in my own house!”
So, the periodic degeneration and degradation of peoples is not an unprecedented phenomenon unique to our nation. There have always been instances where people loved the leaders who made them miserable. They fell in love with an inexplicable, almost instantaneous affection.
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“Pashinyan was loved and will be loved because he is the only patriotic and popular person who cares about the country,” one of my correspondents wrote to me.
People love “people people.”
Aram Abrahamyan
