Karen Hakobyan Կարեն Հակոբյան

I have two memories related to the start of Perestroika; i.e. two facts regarding its start for me. One is the [19]86 famous speech of Garbachov, which started to be discussed as far as I know in April, where a new text suddenly appeared and we started talking about it being an unexpected text. It was probably at the Plenum of the Communist Party, it was not a congress, but a plenum, and that speech marked the beginning of a new text, of changes. And it was felt even in the air: teachers were worried, people’s excitement and anxiety went hand in hand, because they didn't know what would happen next. For me it started from a very specific event, which was called “Gathering of Perestroika Activists”. I can easily say that I am a Perestroika product, because the Gathering of Perestroika Activists was held in Artek in 1988, and participation in it was a big event, and for the first time I appeared in Artek, and it was a dream in those years: usually one appeared in Artek via nepotism or money or such kinds of things. As for me, after school I was called to Raffi school to present druzhina’s plans, and I went excitedly, it was about 5-6 in the evening, I went on stage, I spoke about the reforms of the druzhina council, what we want to do, etc., and suddenly I noticed a strange excitement in the eyes of the audience, and then I was told that I was going to Artek, that I was elected. There were about 7-8 of us from different schools of 26 Commissars [District], I assume the best candidates were called. And I came home, I knocked on the door, mom opened the door, very angry about my whereabouts, as there were no mobile phones back then and I came home very late, and when she opened the door I said excitedly: “I am going to Artek!” My mother answered very sadly: “Wait, let’s see what happens to this world, what Artek?”, because it was [19]88, and some things had already started. And that summer I left for the Gathering of Perestroika Activists, where the reforms were starting.

That thing, that they were not national, but were open and changed, now when looking back… I understand that “Hope” was an interesting organization exactly like that. It included the national, it had accommodated it, the national was present in its content, but it also stayed very uni… international. The international was very important. In other words, you could not… This “Aryan” thing could not appear in our process, yes. Internationalism was still very important. The links with other countries where you could be presented with your culture, but would also not say that “my culture is the only one, the unique one and the rest of you should still learn to reach to us.” Like this, that content was not there.

You know what was for sure? There was one thing for sure that I remember it in myself: are we radical enough or are we still compromising? Because at that same time things were happening in the republic, for example Stamboltsyan, Manucharyan, but especially Stamboltsyan, there was another anti-Russian movement which included the ban on Russian schools, those who received Russian education were considered the bearers of that other, Moscow ideology; and there was that moment which of course you thought about, but in any case you were still reforming an organization that was formed by Moscow. Did you get it [asking the interviewer- HAZARASHEN]? We did not separate as for example the Baltic Republics risked to do. We still stayed cooperating within the organization. We made reforms but we did not blow up the organization. Perhaps there was that moment, that worry: Are you national? Did you really demonstrate your patriotism as much as you could? That question was there. Of course, probably I ask myself that question until now. Where is patriotism complete, or is it?

The Tenth Gathering was the last Gathering of the All-Union Pioneer Organization named after Lenin. It was changed after that and did not have the same name anymore and was not the same organization. If I remember it correctly, the Baltic states told that they did not want to stay within the organization anymore right there. That was too radical for us and we were in that discussion: should we do the same or not? Georgia was much more self-confident in its manifestation. Then, I think Georgia was also different in that they made their flag identical with the flag of their state. And that was still Georgia that had changed the flag once more. Georgia was very excited with its anti-Moscowness, but there was the Abkhazia-Ossetia issue that we knew of. And that’s why, let’s say, we were not that much identifying [with them]. We understood each other very well, that we were separating from the all-union organization and did not want to… We were on the same positions with Georgia, to change the name, but stay in the organization. Moldova, their organization was called “Vatra”, Moldova was quite the same; i.e. you know, we were able to form a text among us, i.e. “the others”, to agree on clauses with each other, and then present these clauses in the plenary, so as to not demand contradicting things. In other words, that diplomatic moment of forming the same platform, the same opinion, so as our national organizations would have an opportunity to stay with their names, their languages and as a national organization, for that to work we tried to make our texts identical, to agree on it and then to bring it for the approval of the plenary, so as there would not be contradictions there.

Surprisingly, the processes in Armenia, Georgia, Baltic states and Moldova happened at the same time, but were not coordinated with each other. And I believe we understand why. Because in all those places anti-Moscow, anti-Soviet processes had already commenced, and the independence process also had kicked off. The republics were raising various national issues and were trying to present the distortions of the revolution, of Bolsheviks and other such things differently. And it also included [the notion] that the youth-adolescents’ organization of Armenia could not bear the name of Lenin. This was already ruled out. A similar process was happening in Georgia, and it was historic. It was historic in that Moscow came to the gathering, the 10th gathering was in the summer of 1990, and Moscow came to the gathering with ready-made texts; i.e. the Charter was already printed out in advance, yes, everything, and the leader that should… everything, how one comes ready that you should only vote, confirm and leave. However, our positions, the positions of the delegations from those republics, changed the course of the meeting. Changed the course of the meeting and the decision, because democracy had been announced, glasnost had been announced, perestroika was a reality, and they could not say “no, now it will not happen.” The game was real.

And I… There was a decision making body in that gathering, and there was one kid and one adult per a republic in that body, and I was presenting Armenia [there]. And we were like 8 people and several adults. It was then decided that Lenin’s name is taken out… In short, several historical things took place in 10th Pineers’ Gathering, which became a different thing, with a different name, and we came back with those changes. I also consider this a Perestroika achievement, and… What do I want to remember? That is very important… I was telling with excitement how we were going to lead and how everything was going to change, when an older friend of mine, comrade Tamara, who was a pineer squad leader in our school and we are very close until now… Tamara and I were having a walk in Artek and Tamara was saying: “that is not possible, how could that happen?” I was saying: “how it is not possible? We are the ones to make the change, we the children,” etc… “What will you do?”; “How it will be?”, and so on. We were having this conversation, and I got angry and was saying angrily։ “of course we will do it, of course it will work out”, when we came and saw that several floors of ours, where Armenians and Georgians were staying together, candles were lighted, and everybody was praying on their knees. They were praying, Arman Babajanyan was singing “The Our Father”, moreover, Komitas’s one, and Armenians and Georgians were praying together; we were stunned. And thus Tamara was convinced, she understood, that the change had already happened and it was not possible to stop, because to pray the Lord’s Prayer on children’s initiative in a pioneer gathering, it was impossible to even imagine. It was during that same gathering, when they were making a reportage for “Vremya”, and of course I made sure to appear in the camera to greet my close ones. What I want to say is that in parallel Moscow was still trying to show that nothing had changed, but the changes were already unstoppable.

It was the first time that Karabakh had joined the Armenian delegation to go for the all-union gathering of pioneers, and we went together. We met at Zvartnots airport, and an entire delegation from Karabakh joint us, and then we went together. And in Artek we created a separate pavilion for Armenia, each country had one, where we were presenting the Karabakh Question, we were already presenting our new symbols, and everybody was coming to listen, because Armenians were presenting in a completely different way what a youth organization could be; and the word “Pioneria” was not there anymore, there were new symbols and our flag was also already different, everything… And Karabakh was presented with Armenia, and Azerbaijan was presented… there were quite far from us, they put them in a different camp, so that we would not suddenly see each other and beat each other, since the issues were very tense.

Yes, I believe that we were in that sense typical of the families of those years. My father had participated in the student movements of the sixties, which had resulted in building Tsitsernakaberd, and we knew those stories. Not in detail, but we knew, because when they would gather with friends, with classmates, such stories would be heard there, and my understanding is that they had also done some serious stuff then. And the issue of Western Armenia was always present at our home, the dad would always buy all the books. It was not like I was reading them, but it was always spoken about it, because my father’s side is Frang, and that ergir, Alashkert, was always there, such things were always spoken. Grandpa on my mother’s side was a victim of Stalin’s repressions, and that pain was always heard, and already during those perestroika years, it was clear to me what had happened. It was during perestroika years, when these two sisters, i.e. this grandpa’s two daughters, went to KGB and looked at the files, and had then suddenly found out that their father was executed exactly at that year, while they had been waiting for their father’s return for years. And I very clearly remember that pain… it was common [to think] that “The Communist Party took our father,” yes, they perceived it that way.

We got involved in the processes of the Karabakh Movement at once, since those were parallel processes. So, the Perestroika had announced self-governance, glasnost, these two theses. We took Glasnost as it was, that we should have our newspaper, our radio, and we should write the truth. Those… I don’t want to say journalists, but reporters were formed, so to say people who would report directly from the school, from the classes. But in addition to that, we had also formed… our class was different in that we, a group of children, had decided to create our newspaper. And that newspaper of ours coincided with the entrance of Russian tanks into Yerevan, and I think a curfew was either going to be introduced or was already introduced, and we decided to take interviews from the soldiers, next to the tanks. And of course our parents did not know. And we were going, we did not have a recorder, we had nothing, we were taking pen and paper and started to ask and write down: “Why did you come?” “What were you told when you were coming?”, and so on. Then we were making an article out of it in a form of an interview and wanted to publish. This wanted-to-publish came to the stage that we printed the newspaper in the summer, about a year after that, probably in the summer, using lead types, secretly, in the Nor Hatchn Diamond Factory, where we went one day, after asking here and there about a place which had a typography, and we printed a very serious newspaper and named it “In a Word”. We were looking for a title for a really long time. The first copy was a handwritten version, for the class, for the school, then there was the printed version, and it was probably already [19]90 or [19]89, no we were still in the last class, I was registered, I was actually the first official editor-in-chief, the non-disclosure agreement exists, that you should [do] like this, there were different things, it was still Soviet [Union], and I was a chief editor of newspaper at the age of 16, I was very excited and very confident that it should be exactly like that.

We were changing many things. We were creating our newspaper, where we published about our school routine, we had decided to stage a performance on our own, we had got in touch with Kiev ourselves and were trying to go to a festival. [Our] parents did not know about it. Several things like that happened, since we took very seriously autonomy as a phenomenon. And with Druzhina’s Council we also got to study the budget. I went to the Ministry, back then to the Minister of Enlightenment, and I found out that 20,000 Rubles were transferred to our school to create a new sports area, but sports area was not created, and I came to my headmaster and addressed those questions to her: “where is the money?” A very interesting thing happened. Of course, the headmaster immediately got angry, she understood that she could not solve the issue alone, she could not raise her voice, that the phenomena got more complicated than it seemed to her, and she tried to organize a discussion around it, and the discussion was more complicated, because it was already a matter of Komsomol. Later I was also the Secretary of Komsomol, and Komsomol Committee gathered and started to raise all the issues in front of the headmaster, and the headmaster suddenly understood that I was not alone, it was not only my ambition and was not a lie, and a generation of perestroika was being formed, and we were very excitedly trying to self-govern our school, our school routine, our school budget.

It was exciting, very exciting time. And for me, it remains very exciting and revolutionary to take specific actions at that age, still in the Soviet Union, it gives something great, and strength to fight the systems later, since we have witnessed how an entire system was deconstructed. For me, Perestroika was revolutionary as well, since that same Lenin, who was “in you and me” in our songs… suddenly Ogonyok started publishing a series of articles on corruption and distortion, different opinion on Lenin and revolution, and suddenly Bukharin's case was again covered, or other cases, and also they started writing about Stalinist repressions, and also pre-Stalin ones. Interesting things were written then. And we reached a class at school, where the history teacher said: “Karen will tell it better,” because I had bought a copy of “The Reader of the History of the CPSU”, which was published already at the time of Perestroika, and I had read it, and I my knowledge about what had happened during those years was greater and riskier than the teacher’s, and I was telling with excitement, and I was making a change.

Look, the camp, in fact the camp and the organizers had probably received an order from Politburo, that it was perestroika, you too should do something, pioneria should be transformed, but they still did not believe that children themselves could participate in writing the text; and they had gathered children, had selected those children from all over the Soviet [Union], active, interesting… Yet, they had brought older Komsomols, so as the kids would live there, sing, dance, have rest in Artek, and a group of adults would sit down and decide the methodology and decide the reforms on behalf of them. What did happen? In any case, we in our druzhina, like later during the gathering in Armenia, the Gathering of Perestroika Activists provided us with an opportunity to not obey, we formed… our Druzhina Council itself decided about its daily activities, we changed many things, we opposed both Artek leadership and our group leaders, and our daily routine took a different path. Discussions, contests, our daily routine, we took it into our own hands. I don't think we were given a text to work on at that time, otherwise we could have done it, but there was no such process at that time. Maybe the head of our Druzhina Council participated. With him, he was the head and I was his deputy, I was in correspondence with that guy for many years, and the correspondence was around that. We shared with each other: and what happened at your school after that? What did change? Disappointments, etc… We wrote such serious texts, yes. That much happened, we took our context into our own hands and started to decide our daily routine, including the maintenance of Artek’s canteen, the groups were divided… In short, we were managing the space. Before that the territory was not ruled by the children of Artek. It was still very active for you, i.e. horizontal, everything was created for you to feel very good and independent, but not to the extent of deciding your daily routine.

Only now I understand how different we were. Because even Artek Group Leaders, there was a moment, when I remember Group Leaders said angrily: “You! Perestroishiks!” Because all the procedures, laws, logics were messed up and suddenly democracy was in the hands of children, and we were managing our daily life. And there as well, we had done some perestroika things. Self-governance became a reality, we quickly formed new ideas among our peers and started to demand that it became a reality. That was the beginning of perestroika for me, that specific event.