THE LESSONS OF 1915
Aram Abrahamian

Aravot.am
22 April 06

The 91 anniversary of Genocide will be commemorated on Monday. Our
summons addressed to Turkey and the World about recognizing the
Genocide is fair. If our neighbors really want to build a modern
European country they are obliged to condemn the crime made by their
grand fathers. Otherwise Turkey will remain a wild Asian state.

And we, beside efforts made for recognition of the Genocide must find
out for ourselves whether the Armenian ruling clique of the beginning
of the 20 century did its best for not putting the Armenian people
on trial. The Armenian historians are sure that both revolutionary
and conservative branches of non-political thought were unequal to
the occasion. If the mistakes of our leaders of the beginning the
20th century isn’t forgiving they are understandable.

It’s another question when you lead a community and another when you
lead a state. The degree of responsibility and thought are different
not only at leaders but at common citizens, too.

The guarantee of avoiding of genocide, territorial looses and the
security in general is to have independent, democratic state. It’s
obvious that those two descriptions are characteristic for our state
partly. While being independent and democratic isn’t only the US or
CE demand but first of all, demand of national pragmatism. But our
authorities is pragmatic only in case of their posts and pockets and
just it makes them trust in Russia and pressure the freedom inside
the country.

The lessons we can take from our modern /and not only modern / history
become more obvious. In short those lessons can be formulated in the
following way; let’s fight where we can fight, where we have chance to
win. Let’s negotiate where we don’t have chances yet. In other words
we should have achievable problems. When problems become maximalistic
‘from sea to sea’ there is a danger to loose what we have already
had. Let’s don’t trust in anyone too much.

Let’s not have an illusion that Russia will solve our problems
instead of us. Each country is our ally as much as it solves
its problems. Understanding those elementary problems we can go
ahead. Otherwise we will regress.