Hranush Kharatyan Հրանուշ Խառատյան

Receiving Sumgait Armenians and contacts with them was such a hard thing… To this date I keep in touch with many of those families with a sense of duty. Sumgait changed many things. The surprise was too much for me. My worldview, my position was very clear after the Sumgait. For me, Sumgait was a clear proof that ethnic profiling was a very clear political program in the USSR, and that this ethnic profiling formed an entire worldview. But in November, when there were already population exchanges, that is, Azerbaijani Armenians were fleeing, moving, coming to Armenia, and Azerbaijanis of Armenia were going to Azerbaijan, my main real action, in which I specifically participated, was not allowing any violence to happen against the Azerbaijanis leaving Armenia. We distributed those areas in Armenia among us, and I went to Vardenis. I was in Vardenis for about 10 days, and I returned just a day before the earthquake, it was that period of displacement. And I’ve seen how [they] were… it’s a very difficult thing. On the one hand I was meeting the Armenians coming from there [Azerbaijan], and on the other hand there were people on those big roads moving out from 19 Azerbaijani villages of the region. I was trying to get in touch… there were no mobile phones back then to contact each other and spread the news quickly, we did not have the means to spread the news by cars, etc. You just agree with someone every 10 kilometers so that there is a possibility of a quick response. And we were really trying to prevent it, I personally was not a witness to any really violent incident, but they write in Azerbaijan about violence, they give some names. I haven’t met any of those people. But of course it’s a very cruel thing, people were leaving with their belongings: a broken chair, or carrying a chicken perch, etc., and those who came from there [Azerbaijan] were in worse conditions. But I have also witnessed a village exchange case. There was a family that arrived from there and a man got out of the car, and not even emptying the load (there were 4 families in one car) he ran to the barn, reached out with his hand and took out a rifle. As it turned out they had exchanged their home with the former Azerbaijani owner and they both knew that no weapons are allowed on the border, both of them had arms, and they had told each other where they would hide those. So when they arrived, the first thing he did was to check whether the rifle was there or not. So, I was in Vardenis for 10 days, probably day and night, I don’t even know, there was no place to lie down, we were outside, it was November. That was the real activity that I took part in. And the second thing that I somehow participated in was again in November. Some Udis from Vardashen and Nizh came [to Armenia]. And in Armenia people didn’t know who the Udis were. They came to Noyemberyan district and were supposed to settle there. They were asked who they were and upon hearing the answer “Udi” were asked what it was. I was there for three or four days to explain what it was and why those people were also refugees in this case.

In Yerevan a loud conversation already started near the Opera House, and I think it was around that time when Moscow sent Legachov to Armenia and two other people to Baku, if I’m not mistaken. And even that was so disgusting, you can’t imagine. The highest representative had come, he was pacifying people in Yerevan, and he said that he had a good attitude towards the Armenian people, he knew the problems of the Armenian people very well, that Mesrop Mashtots was among his friends. The man opened the encyclopedia, he thought that there should be intelligent people in the encyclopedia, he came across Mesrop Mashtots and he took the name, came to Armenia and spoke about him from the podium in Armenia. Isn’t it clear what this causes? You just want to kill such a person. It was very unsuccessful. The USSR had no experience in talking to society, that’s clear. It was known, ​​but, to that extent? It once more kicks your face with contempt, so to speak. Who are you? Mesrop Mashtots is from the fifth century, what’s the difference? He is my friend, Silva Kaputikyan [a Soviet Armenian poetess] is my friend. Yes, if I’m not mistaken, I don’t remember very well, but we were all standing, and he said those things, and you wanted to throw a piece of paint at his face, to throw a rotten egg. That is all about them. We knew them, frankly speaking there was no surprise, we could hear that quite often, ignore it, laugh at it, but all our emotions were so intense that at that moment we could not laugh at it anymore. You… that thing had been already spoken out, that Baku had told Karabakh to shut up, otherwise they would come and turn Stepanakert into a sea of ​​blood. You [Legachov] already knew about the developments, and you had come, even if we considered you a neutral person, you had come to a place where the emotions were boiling, and you knew that they were boiling, and you had come so bankrupt, so empty. And that was a phenomenon characteristic of the general state of the USSR. And even though we were already in terms with it, with the fact of it being a typical phenomenon, at that moment it became a fuel on the fire. You have always heard about it, but today you experience it, the entire situation changes.

He mostly looked at demographic changes, changes in ethnic composition, not only during the Soviet period, he looked at it from the Khanate period, from the 19th century to the 20th century. But there was a standard of how to approach this and what topics to not touch. And so, at that time, we were discussing how not to speak while speaking, how not to speak at all, to what extent, and in 1987, when we were discussing that, we already knew that collection of signatures was initiated in Karabakh to once more raise the Karabakh issue before the highest authorities of the USSR. And Arthur participated in that signature collection. Arthur’s participation meant that we all participated, we were one group, we thought the same way, and we knew that when it came to the practical matter you had to make a choice: either or. The issue of choice was not even there, since we were one group. And as we thought the same way, you were unwillingly, no not unwillingly, no, it was a will, you willingly joined the cause. We were with it. I personally did not ask anyone to sign the [petition], it was just going from hand to hand. So, you would sign, and then the next one would take it. There was no running around for signature collection, people were queuing for signing. This was 1987. And in [19]88, when people took to streets in Stepanakert, because it was first in Stepanakert for people to take to the streets, there was already no surprise in Yerevan. I don’t even know how fast it was. Yes, that same people gathering in the department of Physics, who would gather to discuss the issue of the Genocide, the Armenia’s bolshevikization in general, Armenia’s border issues… You know, now at this age, when I look at the cases from the USSR political repressions of the thirties, on the peak of purges, in the files of those arrested in 1936, 1937, in all their files you will find the issue of injustice related to handing over Karabakh and Nakhijevan. People were charged with, and often also in reality when speaking to each other they had mentioned about that [the injustice], and somebody had reported that, and the entire interrogation/the case was built on that. The interrogator asked a question, ‘did you talk to this person about handing over Karabakh to Azerbaijan?’ Those interrogated answered that they did not speak about that to the mentioned people, and then the mentioned people were interrogated and they all denied that they had mentioned [Karabakh]. Only after being beaten they accepted and said that it all happened. However, obviously the issue was very important, core political issue at that period. It was not a surprise in [19]87, not a surprise in [19]65, Bagrat Ulubabyan’s fleeing in 1965 was not a surprise. It is only later that you learn about a child killed by his school principal on the basis of national belonging in the sixties. And there was nothing about it, I, for example, am ashamed, but I don’t know, didn’t know, and we did not know, and our not knowing did not make the issue important politically. When the knowledge is accumulated it becomes really political.

I was directly exposed to the issue in 1987, not in the early stage. The direct connection was Arthur Mkrtchyan [the first head of the Parliament of Nagorno-Karabakh Republic] who was our colleague, and his academic research was related to the demographic and other processes in Karabakh. We always discussed that with him and already knew about the Karabakh issue. We knew the issue, we already knew that it was well analyzed, both its economic life and ethnic problems, national oppression, etc. Yet, it did not trigger a political action, we just knew about it. And it was even stranger that we discussed how to edit his work, so the Higher Attestation Committee (HAC) would approve it. All these should have been put in such a wording that no political accusation would be seen, and the HAC would approve the dissertation. That was even before 1987, and in 1987 we didn’t care about HAC approval anymore. What I want to say is that our more or less revolutionary step was that in 1987 we came to realize that as much as we lie to ourselves about HAC’s approval, HAC should… Let me tell you that there were many such cases in the USSR. One of the chapters of my own dissertation was removed, and I easily agreed… I was writing about Circassian Armenians of Krasnodar, and the last Chapter was about the Soviet period, the previous Chapters were covering up until 1913, and that one was about the period after 1913. Let me tell you how it happened. Our Board had discussed it, it was not a bad research, it was interesting, we had discussed it, people made good comments, etc., and then after the discussion I was called to the Ph.D. department and told that everything was fine, but if I wanted my dissertation to be approved, I had to remove that Chapter. I already knew that it could be problematic, because that Chapter covered emigrant movements, the Whites, the destruction of Armavir city, disappearance of Circassian Armenians, these questions, and I easily agreed to remove it. I said that I wanted my work to be approved. There was nothing else, just the removal of the Chapter. The only problem was that Chapter. Everyone knew that I wouldn’t change it, but could take it out. That was the Leningrad Scientific Board, a quite normal, liberal one, very good people, all of them knew what they were saying, it was clear to everyone that we just agreed on, we did not object, it was like that if you wanted to defend a dissertation, it was better to kindly agree, that was the normal way. I agreed with them and there were no objections on the remaining parts of the dissertation, where I had discussed, for example, the Cirkassian Armenians during the Russian annexation of the Northern Caucasus. That also did not cause any objections. The problematic part was the part about the Soviet period, because you could have more freedom with respect to the Imperial or Czarist period, but you could not have that freedom with respect to the Soviet period. The Soviet period brought freedoms, the Soviet period brought equality, the Soviet period brought justice, the Soviet period was untouchable. I just want to say that all that was familiar to us and we were discussing exactly that in Arthur’s work: how to formulate things so that it would be approved by HAC or let’s say a Board in Armenia would not have to apply its political correctness to the dissertation or reject it. Any scientific board had to make a decision based on the political aspects of the work, that was the norm. There could be no scientific work without this. You could secretly publish stuff, but you could not keep the objectivity under Soviet censorship.

For example, I, and I think many others in those times, thought that those dissident movements would result in nothing. Besides, one can say that everyone was dissident. A starving person should be dissident. ‘Dissident’ meaning that one should rebel against the ruling authority, against those who governed the country. But everyone accepted that the revolt was not possible, because all were under the total control. This is the overall picture. And when Gorbachev started to speak, I won’t even mention Chernenko or Andropov who came after Brezhnev and who were the continuation of the same gerontocracy and who were even worse. They imposed more restrictions... What were they restricting? What could be more restricted? You can’t read a book, you can’t eat at home, frankly, like in Orwell’s “1984”. So, when Gorbachev came, there was some fresh talk. They were reconstructing… no, honestly, that too became a disappointment quite soon, because the Perestroika was not clear. It seemed as if he was creating new economic opportunities, but it was obvious that the economy continued to be totally controlled by the government. Some small workshops could be opened, but you either needed connections or it should function under a special total control. It was obvious that these were some small things, and we would laugh and joke that they wanted to show Europeans that we were also becoming a country. This was the overall style. Still, some literature started to be published. Actually that was the time when it was allowed to open closed library collections. Let me tell you, when they opened the library of the Institute of History, the closed part, they found a book that had the word “Dashnak” in its title. It was entitled “A Handbook for Playing Dashnak” [‘Dashnak’ in Western Armenian means ‘piano’. At the same time ‘Dashnak’ was a short name used to refer to the members of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, a political party banned in the USSR]. So, it was a handbook for learning how to play the piano, but they had banned the book, because they saw the word “dashnak”, and Dashnaktsutyun was banned. The end. These were parts of our everyday life. Anyway, although the Perestroika didn’t bring decisive changes, in many republics it gave rise to issues to which some theoretical solutions had been worked out, like The Karabakh movement in Armenia.

In reality one can say that I am fully a product of Brezhnev’s stagnation. I consider that Brezhnev’s stagnation years were the years of maturing for many of us, or it was a good period for my generation to mature; when you could clearly see how rotten was your government, when you could clearly see… It was not only Brezhnev’s dementia. That was the time when in general the Politburo and its actions, its decisions were inappropriate, and it made you think about the place you lived in. We were all… Of course there were people who were different, but our political interests, our main satisfaction was mocking, the sarcasm, ‘where do we live? What characters do we interact with? Where are the decisions made?’ Those things often became jokes, and we often understood each other through jokes, like in a couple of words we knew what it was about, we knew where we were getting to. By the way, something important happened in those years. Maybe a minor thing, but important for me. When I moved to Moscow (I was studying in Leningrad then I transferred to Moscow for my Ph.D. s) I brought with me, at that time it was a common thing, there were no photocopies yet, but we called it samizdat, so, I brought Bulgakov’s “Master and Margarita” with me. To this date there is no way for me to understand why it was banned. I tried to understand it in all possible ways, but even the fact that the issue could get to such a degree of absurdity was already a topic for our jokes. Anyway, I bought a banned book. And of course in the university dorms everyone read it, it went from hand to hand. Then the KGB was either informed by someone, or they found it in the hands of one of our guys. Well, they came to his room, opened it, saw the book and took him with them. He was freed on the same day, but the main question was ‘where did the book come from?’ He informed us that he was caught and that he had told them that he found the book on the windowsill in the lobby and took it for reading. Of course, no one believed him. So, they questioned him 7 or 8 times, and they always asked the same questions and received the same answers. This is a very good illustration to understand the absurdity of the situation in which the matter of a Philosophy PhD student reading Bulgakov’s “Master and Margarita” is a topic for KGB. This Brezhnev period, this period of stagnation, contained in itself all the nonsense of the country we lived in. I’m not even mentioning that during the time of flourishing socialism, during the stagnation period, PhD. students were sending condensed milk and sausage by train to their families. So, this was a country flourishing in socialism, where there were people queuing for sausage and condensed milk, and you couldn’t even find butter. Let me tell you that Armenia didn’t have this problem that much. I am talking about Russia itself, where it was enough to go 200 kms away from Moscow and there was nothing, even dairy products weren’t available. And we all were already used to it, it was just a joke. It was a real tragedy, but we were joking. Probably also because we already knew that there were dissident movements in the USSR, and we also knew that people had been arrested and exiled in Armenia, we also knew about Zatikyan’s case in Moscow’s metro. Yet, all this, at least in my circles, at least to my knowledge, all these were real things, where some heroes were trying to find some solutions. In this huge empire, where we thought that every second person worked for the KGB, we also asked each other, for example if there were five of us gathered, we would ask each other to confess who worked for the KGB, because we were sure that there would be one from the KGB. We lived in a country where we accepted that we lived under the total KGB [control], and it was always dangerous for everyone. But because the danger was always there, you could not eat, raise a child, study or do other things if you constantly had that feeling, and in the presence of that danger we organized our lives by escaping to ourselves.

I believe the Karabakh issue existed at least in my circles already in the [19]70s. Let me put it this way, it was clear that Armenians lived in Karabakh, that Karabakh was Armenian, but the issue of Karabakh, that there was an issue of Karabakh, that there was an oppression of Armenians in Karabakh and of the Armenian existence of Karabakh… That was the general environment. But those were the seventies. Later, or maybe not later but in parallel, for example we learned that Bagrat Ulubabyan had to flee from Karabakh in 1965, and then we learned that there were also others who fled from Karabakh. What did fleeing from Karabakh mean? Why did they? There were these issues which did not have clear answers. Bagrat Ulubabyan wrote history books, Bagrat Ulubabyan and some other people like him. It started partly due to Sevak’s “The Incessant Bell-tower’’, because later we had learned that… Well, I know it now, as I have the archival documents, but at the time we didn’t imagine at all what was the connection between “The Incessant Bell-tower’’ and Nagorno Karabakh. Now I know that there is no connection, but at that time when mentioning the Karabakh issue usually “The Incessant Bell-tower’’ was also mentioned, because as it became clear later, Sevak was among those who were for visiting Karabakh and raising concerns around Karabakh issue. So, it was not the “The Incessant Bell-tower’’ per se, but Sevak himself was one of those people who were familiar with the Karabakh question, the problems, and we were somewhat informed that it was being discussed in some circles, but we did not know in which circles and who was discussing it, i.e. the information was not very clear. However, already in the seventies, people started visiting Karabakh, and not only the ones originally from there. In the seventies it was fairly common for students to visit historic sites and beautiful regions such as Lori, Syunik, etc. That practice became more common at that time and Karabakh became one of those sites. For some reason, people were concerned about what would Azerbaijanis say if they would go to Karabakh, there was this topic. That also encouraged a tempting interest, like ‘what can they say in Azerbaijan? It’s just Karabakh.’ However, I suppose that people started to go to Karabakh to satisfy their curiosity about what was going on there.

I’m not sure that we understood much, but we already knew that there was The Book of Genesis, The New Testament and the Old Testament. We also knew there was the biography of Christ, when they caught us in that ‘dirty business’. I don’t even remember how they exactly caught us, nor how they punished us, but I remember that my first anxiety was that a lot of officers came to our school and then they started to call us to the school principal. Actually, not everybody, probably the readers were mainly the ones who lived in the dorms, and perhaps they also called the ones who were Yerevan natives. The main question asked was ‘where did you get the book from?’ To this day I am amazed that no one asked about what we read, what was in the book, everyone asked “where did you get that book from?’’ To tell the truth, I didn’t even know where that book came from, and if I knew it, would I tell where it came from or not? At least that was the main question that I remember. Newspapers published articles about our incident. “Where was Spandarian’s [Communist] organization looking? Religious literature in schools, faith, religion,” and so on. It all got mixed up and they even fired a few teachers from the school. Probably, they did not find where the books came from, because not a single student was expelled, even though they were threatening us. All that process lasted for two months, and we were following the newspapers, but as far as I remember none of our names appeared in the newspapers. However, there was a mention about pupils doing something at nights, etc., and we were very scared. At least I was scared, maybe the others weren’t that much. And that, the intrusion of the officers, they wouldn’t dare to discuss it long after. For example, none of our teachers talked to us about the incident. The schools at the time had a party organization, and the secretary of ours was having a rough time in my opinion, and there were also many [Communist] party members among the teachers, for them it was much more responsible. I don’t know for sure if there were non-communist teachers, I assume there were, but there was this responsibility towards the party, and the teachers were really careful so the incident was not a matter of discussion at the school. For a long time, it was a pending, threatening subject. I don’t remember the exact year, was it [19]68 or [19]69? But anyone can find that incident in the newspapers of those years.

The topic had been around for a while; the idea of moving to Armenia before the actual move was there for a long time. It was a well discussed issue, and of course we did not participate, but unconsciously we heard and were aware of their discussions. My mother was the main advocate for it, the main motivation being that they had daughters and thus they shouldn’t live in a place with a large Turkish [this is how Azerbaijanis are referred to in colloquial Armenian- HAZARASHEN] population. We have to move to Armenia, we must! And when my sister graduated from the 8th grade and she was starting to get male attention, our parents moved her to Yerevan to study in a college, and the idea of moving to Armenia expanded. “Our daughter is in Yerevan, our daughter is in Armenia, we have to move, we have nothing to do here, everyone will go anyway.” In short, I think we didn't move [to Armenia] for economic reasons. I have thought many times about it later. We didn’t have a bad life either in the village or in Shamkhor. I believe that the strong idea which wasn’t even said out loudly, was that of Armenia being our homeland. As far as I remember, the word ‘homeland’ was never mentioned, just the casual constant discussions that “our future and the future of our kids is in Armenia.” And we arrived in Armenia, my father arrived in [19]64 or 65, more likely in 64, because we were already in Armenia in the [19]65 when the youth movements related to the 50th anniversary of Genocide happened. Honestly speaking we didn’t know anything about the Genocide, nor we understood anything from those movements. Yet, I remember that those movements and the following restrictions were such an issue that they became a discussion topic in our household, something like ‘maybe it is dangerous to be in Armenia, because the youth is being persecuted,’ etc. But those were vague discussions rather than actual knowledge of the subject, at least for my young age.

The news came, but that news should have arrived earlier, i.e. many already knew, it was a surprise for me, that Farida Mammadova, a Ph.D. student of Yuzbashyan focusing on Caucasian Albanian and Armenian studies, should defend her Ph.D. in Baku. And we were already familiar with her main points. We even thought that someone should attend the Ph.D. defense in Baku, and they went. And we wrote objections regarding that anti – scientific, pseudo-scientific work, and it resulted in HAC not approving it. And it was not the Karabakh Movement yet, but it was very close, it was the year [19]87, I can’t tell it precisely, but it was probably even [19]86. Anyways, in 1987 the problem was being discussed that while we were “asleep” and silent, while we were keeping political correctness, Azerbaijan was constantly changing historiography, falsifying it, commissioning many publications, including Russian translations of Armenian authors with completely absurd commentary.

When perestroika started and the freedom of speech was not so much banned, not directly under the threat to be caught by the KGB, our discussions started to change from anecdotes, teasing, sarcasm to discussing the actions we could. These also became daily discussions. It’s not like you sit and plan about starting a movement against, but at least you can talk about that. And when that happens you start to transfer knowledge. For example, Arthur was mostly telling us about Karabakh, and when I look at the [archival] documents today, I realize how little we knew about the issue at the time… When in [19]88 Gorbachev suddenly said that all these years, during the entire Soviet period, no leader of Armenia had set foot in Karabakh, yes, it became knowledge for the people of the Soviet Union, but for us the knowledge was much deeper, and suddenly they had discovered it. But now I see that in all those years signed letters and documents from 2500 people were sent from Karabakh and Armenia about severe oppressions on the national ground in Karabakh. Those documents exist.

I don’t recall any specific incident, but in my student years there were gatherings. Those mostly took place in the building of the Department of Physics. For example, to watch the slides that the famous Claude Moutafian had shot in Cilicia. That presentation was not simply a presentation, it was something bigger, it was a platform where the people who were there could talk about many topics like the Genocide and Karabakh issue. But I did not take part in those. What I knew were mostly vague gossips. For example, I knew that someone from my department had participated in a presentation. I don’t even think those things were somewhat secret, but those were lasting gatherings, regular gatherings around certain interests. Probably they were important and interesting, and a significant number of participants of those gatherings later became activists of the Karabakh movement, and, yes, there were such discussions among those people, but I was never part of it.

If we leave the political life aside, I think this is a familiar phenomenon to many, at that time for me it was a part of everyday life, but it can be said that starting from 1991, throughout [19]91, [19]95, [19]96, there was a drastic change in the life of the population of Armenia, which had no electricity, no gas, no running water, no elevator, and in the houses the children were frozen, a sip of water was frozen, and children did not play because they had no place to warm up, and this was a phase of life when no one was grumbling. I don’t know why, it’s hard for me to understand why. Everyone seemed to accept that this was a sacrifice made for the sake of your country, for the sake of your people. I am generalizing this now. My husband also died in those years, and that was in January of 1992, and that too was a kind of your portion of the sacrifice in that period of your life. But it is a very subjective phenomenon, of course.

Well, I won’t remember how the Karabakh Committee was formed. Probably it was in Spring, but I don’t remember well… Of course we knew almost everyone, all the members of the Karabakh Committee, we were in touch with all of them. I know one thing, because we knew almost everyone in the committee, and were in the process… My participation was very passive, it was passive as far as me and some of my friends just wanted to help with the texts and wording. Generally, we were on the same page in terms of our thinking, so there was no need to dictate, but it was necessary to work on texts. It was about the things to be said from the podium, to be published, also about the answers for the journalists, about preparing some wording that would be usable. It did not mean that those were used exactly as they were, since each and every one of them was a standalone individual, good or bad. Secondly, it was not always the questions that we were prepared for, but we were trying to diversify the possible answers so as to somehow help the people on the podium, even though we did not always know them.