FALSIFICATION OF HISTORY OF THE KARABAKH MOVEMENT CONTINUES?
Gagik Avanesyan Hadrut

Lragir

Feb 13 2008
Armenia

During the meeting of the commission for the celebration of the 20th
anniversary of the Karabakh Movement which was covered on the Public
Television of Artsakh, Janna Galstyan suggested publishing the names
of the people who organized the Karabakh movement starting from the
"underground". The co-chair of the commission and speaker of the
NKR National Assembly Ashot Ghulyan gave an answer in the spirit of
the Turkish government denying the Genocide of Armenians in 1915:
"Let historians deal with it."

It is sad but hardly 20 years have passed, and the organizers and
activists of the Karabakh Movement are already mentioned selectively,
proceeding from the political conjuncture. Perhaps the historians
will announce their names many years later, posthumously, like spies.

The names of the alive seem to bother someone. Not everyone has access
to the media, and if someone who has access to the media sees only
"himself in the Movement", distorts facts, falsification of history
starts. Silencing is the same as lying and falsifying history.

Yesterday is already history, and it cannot be changed, independent
from whether someone likes how they lived that day. It concerns not
only the government but also some activists of the Karabakh Movement
who try "not to remember" "inconvenient" names. It also concerns
everyone who is in charge of organizing the celebration of the 20th
anniversary of the beginning of the Karabakh Movement.

Unconscientious attitude toward history is intolerable. In particular,
the presence of Member of Parliament V. Avanesyan from the region
of Hadrut in the commission who has nothing to do with the Karabakh
Movement is also part of falsification. How can this commission
be objective?

Meanwhile, history is that the first meeting in the Autonomous Region
of Nagorno-Karabakh was in the evening of February 12, 1988. The first
declaration on unification was signed and sealed on behalf of the
district soviet of People’s Deputies by E. Navasardyan, president of
the Executive Committee of the district soviet of Hadrut on February
13, 1988. All the meetings in the other towns and Stepanakert took
place afterwards.

First in the NKAR the people of Hadrut protected the head of the
district soviet when the procuracy of Azerbaijan was going to take E.

Navasardyan to Baku on February 17, 1988.

The extraordinary session of the Regional Soviet of People’s Deputies
was held February 20, 1988 after the sessions of district soviets of
people’s deputies.

When history is written, the value of every fact should be realized
instead of fitting history to someone. During the office of the
ex-president Arkady Ghukasyan, for instance, to somehow link him
to the Karabakh Movement, insignificant occasions were presented as
"bold moves". For instance, there was a lot of praising of articles on
the February 20 decision of the Soviet of People’s Deputies published
in the February 22 issue of the Russian version of the Soviet Karabakh.

In the meantime, nobody stated that the same articles were published
in the Armenian version of the newspaper as well, and the editor of
the newspaper was not Arkady Ghukasyan, and the newspaper was the
official newspaper of the Soviet of People’s Deputies and it had no
right not to publish the decisions of the Soviet. If it was a matter
of boldness, why nothing was written about the meetings which shook
Nagorno-Karabakh before February 22?

Reality has nothing to do with those "fairy tales". There was a lot of
ambiguity in those years. In particular, while most party organizations
in Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region and the Bureau of the regional
committee of the party in Askeran had to approve the decision of the
Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the USSR,
defining the Karabakh movement as extremism, Hadrut was the first to
boycott it. Not everywhere in Karabakh the leaders were so determined.

As to the evaluation of history, in 20 years time it is obvious that
in the political and time aspect, everything was decided in Karabakh
and Yerevan within 9 days, between February 12 and February 20. The
role of Arkady Karapetyan, Arthur Mkrtichyan, Igor Muradyan, Manvel
Sargsyan and others is tremendous. Over the next three and a half
years it had to be kept up through counteractions out of necessity,
successful or not, meetings and parties for unification until the year
1991 when Karabakh took the initiative and again reached success both
in politics and battlefield.

As to the beginning of the armed struggle, it is the events in
Askeran when several guys with hunting rifles stopped the crowd of
thousands of Azerbaijanis. "When an Armenian with a rifle shows up,
the Azerbaijani female turban appears too to justify the escape
of their men." And maybe the names of those heroes have not been
announced out of fear that Azerbaijan will start searching them all
over the world? Meanwhile, this historic event can also serve as a
model for bringing up the young generation.