Armenian pride and the “Iskander’s” fallen honor…

Armenia is a paradoxical, paradoxical country—a country where mustard is always served after the meal, and reality becomes comprehensible only after it has become historical past.

Armenia is a country where a substantial segment of the population tries to present itself to the world as more Russian than the Russians and more Yankee than the Yankees.

A country whose “establishment” knows more about the indispensable accompaniment to khash, “tender, delicious tripe (‘zing’),” than about regional developments and the real dangers hanging over the country.

Why is it so? What are the underlying causes of the situation, and where should we seek a way out? These and other issues are the subject of my conversation with Arbak Khachatryan.

A man I have known since the days of the First Artsakh War. An individual whose invaluable service to his homeland is known to few. A dignified Armenian who has always opposed publicizing his name. This is, as they say, a hint to journalists, whose duty I am trying to undertake today for the simple reason that the current political leadership, whether president or prime minister, instead of surrounding themselves with such people and relying on their substantial reputation and capabilities, have chosen as their support people whom it would be more logical to see in a nursery or kindergarten than on the political Parnassus. Such is Armenia, a country where people are judged not by deeds benefiting the nation, but by the offices they hold. Anyway…

I turn to my friend, known for accurate political predictions, hoping to understand the logic of the rapid developments that have begun in the region.

— The domestic political situation in Armenia reminds many people of the familiar scene in the film Wedding in Malinovka, where one character cannot choose between his own people, divided into Reds and Whites. Why do we constantly find ourselves in such a situation? What causes this nightmarish déjà vu?

— Although I am not Jewish, I will answer your question with a question right now. Can you say why, for what reason, we Armenians have not managed for centuries to have a stable and solid state? What causes our ineptitude, if you like, our incapacity, and the inclination toward emigration and admiration of foreigners evident among many compatriots? In my view, these are not rhetorical questions at all. It is precisely beneath these questions that we must seek answers to the puzzles that regularly confront us.

Now, about the deeply troubling situation in Armenia. It is astonishing: on one side of the barricade is the shameless government, deserving the description “insane,” which considers “getting off the donkey a disgrace”; on the other are the former rulers, accused of revanchism and counting on the people’s short memory. And then there are the people deeply disgusted by all of this, waiting for the return of missing and captured soldiers, the inconsolable parents of more than six thousand soldiers laid in the ground. Frankly, the “developments” concerning the chief of the General Staff’s dismissal also seem absurd to me. You understand, this tragicomedy threatens to become a textbook example.

Now tell me, please explain why professional military officers, commonly called the “general corps,” did not isolate Nikol Pashinyan, who is far removed from the art of war, and take control into their own hands on the fourth day of the war, thereby preventing the pointless loss of thousands of Armenians. After all, who, if not they, should have known the real balance of forces?

Instead of doing so and taking strict measures entirely acceptable in wartime, those same officers continued to carry out the indirect instructions of the clueless prime minister and his “chief adviser,” the commander of the Erato military formation. Something else astonishes me, and I think many others like me. The cause of the officers’ anger, what “escorted” them into the square, was not the interrupted lives of six thousand young people, but the dismissal of the deputy chief of the General Staff. And, more absurdly, it was the “hermaphrodite” that lay low at the war’s critical moment, subjected to the prime minister’s “severe” criticism—the Iskander “of Armenian origin,” which used only 10 percent of its capabilities.

The officers could stomach anything but this dishonor. More than the senseless martyrdom of thousands of Armenians, they were outraged by the fallen honor of the uniform. This was intolerable because the world-famous reputation of Russian weapons had been called into question.

— For years, you have spoken in Russian media about the harm of servility and the need to develop dignified interstate relations founded on mutual respect. During the visit to Georgia a few days ago, I witnessed this personally. The Georgian side’s deep respect and esteem for us Armenians, and the wish of Armenian and Georgian intellectuals to establish a confederation, were evidence of this. That mutual trust, as I learned, goes back to the 1990s, when Armenian and Georgian devotees made it possible to prevent fratricidal war and famine.

— I can guess what you mean. You are undoubtedly right. History has a way of repeating itself, and we must be ready for everything. We can face the dangers threatening the region with joint efforts; otherwise, we are doomed to destruction. In this part of our conversation, I want to speak not as a political analyst but as a Russian human rights advocate, and put a question to the strategic partner that sold Armenia essentially unusable missiles. How many more victims were needed for the use of Iskander and other missiles that never took to the air to be justified?

Did you sell Armenia highly useful weapons intended for wartime, or theatrical props that soar in the sky during celebrations and march proudly through the festive square, terrifying the enemy? I would ask them that. I wonder how Russia’s leadership would have acted. After countless casualties, would it have remained faithful to the agreement not to use the weapons, or would it have shot its spineless generals who, for the sake of an agreement, helped bring about the deaths of thousands of young people?

— According to some assessments, Armenia has entered a zone of “free fall.” State infrastructure is completely paralyzed, and uncertainty-driven apathy is deepening in society. An atmosphere of suspicion is becoming dominant. What would you say about this?

— First, let me note that everything is changing in the world. In this sense, Armenia can be viewed as an indicator that clearly records the course of developments. The financial and banking system that took ownership of the levers of world governance over the last three centuries is in a deep crisis. Its imminent collapse, however, is beyond doubt. Nevertheless, the world’s uncrowned kings are trying at any cost to postpone the system’s inevitable death throes and prolong their power by every means. Covid-19 became a true test for the modern heirs of the Templars’ usurious traditions. The pandemic that afflicted the world is a distinctive warning to the forces that disrupted humanity’s normal life and Earth’s ecosystem, for whom the accumulation of material values became the overriding objective.

And now everything is collapsing. Imagine for a moment how New Yorkers losing tens of thousands of loved ones daily would react if someone tried to speak about the importance of material values. Why do I bring this up? The latest Artsakh war, which took the lives of thousands of soldiers and confined many young people to wheelchairs, reaffirmed that money plundered from one’s own people is entirely useless and powerless to save anything. This is a warning to everyone who thinks they can save both their descendants and their possessions. That is a delusion. The sooner all this is understood, the greater the chance of being saved.

Social polarization and political circles’ intolerance of one another can lead to fratricidal war, giving enemies calmly observing all this an opportunity to present us Armenians to the world as responsible for everything. Sadly, this kind of conduct on our part may even call into question the authenticity of 1915…

I have always fought for my nation to be independent, but if a nation has a slave mentality, it does not matter whether it is under the patronage of Russia, Europe, or Turkey. (Arbak Khachatryan previously spoke about this in his article “If You Are a Rag, What Does It Matter Whom You Are Under—Europe, the United States, or Someone Else?”)

Today, if a disaster occurs in Indochina or some African country and people die, sadly, we will either not hear about it or treat it with indifference. Do you know why? Because what happened does not concern us directly, because the spiritual and cultural connection with those countries has been severed—in other words, the cosmic order of coexistence has been disrupted. Yet that connection is crucial to fully understanding the axiomatic truth: “There is no such thing as someone else’s pain.” For Armenia, situated at the crossroads of geopolitical hot winds, closer spiritual and cultural ties with Russia and Georgia may become one lifeline.

— Do you have a specific proposal? Is there a universal proposal that would be acceptable to many countries? More briefly: what will be the foundation, the cornerstone, of the proposed system?

— Frankly, that is a subject for a separate conversation, which our colleagues, the representatives of the Armenian-Georgian confederation, will address more thoroughly soon. Let me limit myself to one reminder: from the beginning, humanity was guided by natural laws established by God. But over millennia they were distorted—I mean the constitutions and other laws adopted around the world—and transformed from a mandate to protect human rights into an instrument for enslaving people, serving the authorities of the day. This is visible even to the naked eye, both in Armenia and throughout the world.

In my profound conviction, humanity has only one path to salvation: placing Divine laws at the foundation of people’s legal relations once again.

Gagik MANASYAN

President of the Federation for the Protection of Intellectual Property