Imagine this: I go on Armenia’s First Channel and gossip about—or testify against (under Pashinyan’s regime, it’s basically the same thing)—another editor, someone I happen to dislike, but who is in detention on obviously absurd charges and has no way to respond. How would you describe my behavior?
Some questions lie beyond political, ecclesiastical, or personal disputes. These are enduring principles—principles, by the way, that were upheld far more clearly in the past than they are now. In the Soviet school of the ’70s, where I studied, any decent teacher would have said: this is unacceptable. Moreover, in the yard where I played, the boys would have also said: that, to put it mildly, is a degradation.
This is not about extreme situations. A person being physically tortured can do all sorts of things, and demanding heroism from them would be yet another immorality. But when it is possible not to commit degradations, and it is clear that behaving decently will not cost someone their life or freedom, it is entirely natural to expect that the person will maintain their dignity.
In 1975, roughly seventy Soviet academics collectively signed a letter against their colleague, Andrei Sakharov. The text of that letter, drafted “upstairs,” contained accusations that Sakharov, in particular, slandered Soviet institutions and poured water into the mill of hostile forces. Today, the Nikol-style propagandists would have called him “an agent of foreign influence” or accused him of waging a “hybrid war.” Seventy Soviet academics signed under the text that had been put before them, three refused. And, notably, nothing bad happened to the three who refused to sign.
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…Now the choice is very simple: on one side is Pashinyan—with his Civil Contract Party, puppet parties, the NSS and other punitive bodies, pocket courts, pro-regime civil society organizations, and traitorous clergy. On the other side are everyone else who do not accept any of that—people of many different kinds, with many different perspectives. You are either on this side, or on that side.
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
