THE HERO’S IMAGE AS THE FOUNDATION FOR UPBRINGING

Yerkir/am
March 17, 2006

On March 15, 1921 in Berlin Soghomon Tehlerian shot one of the
organizers of the Armenian Genocide, the internal affairs minister
of the Young Turks, Taleat. The fact that Tehlerian is not a murderer
cannot be questioned.

Otherwise, the German court would not have declared him innocent. The
fact that Tehlerian is a national hero cannot be questioned either.

Do we, the citizens of the XXI century Armenia need Tehlerian’s image
as the foundation for the upbringing of the young generation? Some give
a negative answer to this question. Their justification is as follows:
the fact of existence of people like Tehlerian means that an entire
nation, an entire state, has delegated its duties to one or several
persons thus depriving itself of the responsibility of development,
strengthening and self defense. They derive another thesis from this
explanation: a person like Tehlerian could be born only in the context
of the situation that existed in 1921, and one Tehlerian is more than
enough for our nation.

If the authors of this position mean that the nation and the state
should always act as a collective entity and should not rely on heroes,
then it is difficult not to agree with them. If what they want to say
is a desire that we, as a nation and a state, would not have to face
such tragic moments in our history, then again we can understand them.

But we can never accept the opinion that we don’t need the image of
individuals like Tehlerian today, that we should not use this image
as the foundation for the upbringing of Armenian citizens. And this
is why we think so.

We are right to say that Tehlerian was a phenomenon particular to
the reality of 1921. But with the same logic, Vardan Mamikonian was a
phenomenon of the reality of 451, Davit Bek, Aram Manukian, Andranik,
Dro, Nzhdeh, and all other heroes were phenomena of their particular
historic contexts.

A hero is someone whose image is not qualified by the category of time.

Otherwise, no one would remember them. Besides, had the nation failed
to put the image of Vardan Mamikonian at the foundation of upbringing
of its children, there would be no Aram Manukian, Andranik and Nzhdeh
in the centuries to come.

Had the young generations not been taught about these heroes there
would be Tehlerian, and no heroes of the Artsakh war.

After all, what Tehlerian did was not an expression of the weakness
of the state but an act of restoration of justice. Therefore, the
image of the soldier of justice must always underlie the upbringing
of our young generation if we don’t want to turn into a mechanical
collectivity of weak biological creatures.