THE NATION’S UNITED VICTORY
Editorial

Yerkir.am
February 23, 2007

It was the peaceful and bright February of 1988. The hands of the
clock on the Republic Square stopped for a moment and then started
moving backwards.

They moved to the February of 1918 and the Soviet life ended for
us. The factories stopped and we quitted the proletariat’s delirious
race. The revival of national consciousness started and the streets
of the city were flooded with thousands of people.

People were inspired by the enthusiasm towards their future and the
worry for the present. What will happen? A war? A revolution? The
time seemed to have stopped and people seemed to be breathlessly
looking inwards. It was difficult. To look inwards after 70 years of
searching and try to understand what was going on. Because logic was
itself illogical in times of violent socialism.

There was no need to think, others were thinking for you.

There was no need to take the initiative, other would do that for
you. The Soviets not only deprived us of our faith in God, they also
deprived us of our faith in our national values and our collective
unity. Land, faith, nation – blind is the man who does not see and
does not realize the meaning of these.

An old man of 101 years walked up the stage near the Opera House. He
had survived tsarism, the First Republic, the Second, and now it was
time for the Third Republic. He spoke calmly and peacefully. The Soviet
cote of arms really symbolized the essence of that state. "They hit
the people’s heads with the hammer and cut the society’s elite with
the sickle."

People are a tremendous power when they are united, and they are weak
when they do not believe in their own strength. The nation started
looking at the true symbols of its statehood.

The tricolor sore to the sky, the Kremlin’s leaders were taken off
their pedestals, and the era of appreciation of national symbols
started. Later on the European capitalism as a societal arrangement
was distorted in our country.

In the transition period it was turned into wild capitalism that
caused people ‘s disappointment and depression.

When the First Secretary of the Communist Party visited Armenia
after the earthquake people were asking him, "Comrade Gorbachev,
what is going to happen with the Karabagh issue?"

People who had hardly survived the loss of their families were looking
ahead. They were burying not their relatives but the Soviet value
system that was not very bad for those who had slave’s mentalities. But
nations cannot have a slave’s mentality, it’s the individuals who
can. And such individuals sometimes manage to lead people.

We were divided islands in the Soviet empire. Khrushev gave Crimea
that was conquered by the Russians to the Ukrainians with a stroke
of his pen. We were a united state and were considered to be brother
peoples. There was no "mine" or "yours", everything was Soviet.

The same had happened with Artsakh. It was annexed to Azerbaijan with
a stroke of Stalin’s pen. And the line drawn between the two nations
became the line of restoration of justice in 1988. The reality of
the Third Republic emerged against this background. The winners take
the wreath of victory, and the victorious events of 1988 re-created
the nation.

The struggle for survival in Artsakh was the road to national
revival. Many did not come back from that road. They joined those
who placed the Homeland’s unity above everything turning the wheel
of history towards victory, towards the consolidation of the newly
established state.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress