In 1992 I had a son. The oil stove was constantly sputtering and the soot was sitting on my newborn baby's face. But even in that case, I never regretted becoming a participant of that movement in 1988, because I knew why it was being done. And that's why it hurts now, because our entire biography was nullified.
I would not say that the Armenian SSR authorities were tolerant. I just think what else could they have done? Tanks were brought into the city, the location of the rally was surrounded, the activists of the movement were arrested, and a curfew was established in the country.
In May 1988, Igor Muradyan organized a rally at the Opera Square in support of Karen Demirchyan, after which the new composition of the Karabakh Committee was announced. It excluded Igor Muradyan.
I remember that there was a lot of gossip, which hinted at some deals. At that time, there was a clear separation between the group of the independentists and the people who saw the solution of this issue within the Soviet system. There was talk about treason there. In any case, I was an ordinary participant in the movement and I am not aware of the decision-making and I do not want to appear more informed in retrospect than I was back then.
Almost all the members of the Karabakh Committee had a quarrel at some point. Although Hambardzum Galstyan told me what his father used to say. "You accuse Vano not because he is like that, but because he can be like that, and you are not like that." Already after coming to power, the division and disagreements between them were getting deeper and deeper regarding the way of action and various other issues. I don't remember what brought the Karabakh Committee to that monstrous agreement to kill their former comrade-in-arms (Hambardzum Galstyan). This question took me by surprise, otherwise I would have dug through my archives. Hambardzum had managed to write his memoirs, and he gave them to me to read.
We treated them as superior to us. With their further actions, they simply showed that they are people who are prone to and do make mistakes, can have ambitions, and try to use the power they received in their personal interest. Maybe in that sense, disappointment was inevitable when they were no longer revolutionary leaders, but had power that corrupts a person.
They gathered at the Theater Square of that time and shouted the name of the factory, everyone chanted: “Close it down.” Close the copper-molybdenum one, close this, close that. Then the songwriter Tigran Mansuryan gave a speech and said that the symbol of our identity is Ararat, but today we don't have Ararat because the smog has closed Ararat from our eyes, and some people started shouting “Open up”. They were referring to the view of Mount Ararat, but the others were still chanting “Close it down”, and it sounded like open-close-open-close. You do understand, don't you, that a student did not realize what historical events they were a participant in? I remember more of those kinds of things instead.
"At that time, the members of the Karabakh Committee were demigods for me. Only later did I begin to examine their actions with the eyes of a journalist. Environmental extremism had reached such a point that I entered the square at the May 1st 1989 parade with a "Close down all factories" banner. Now you understand, don't you, how ridiculous it was? At that time, they dragged me and took the poster from my hand. I felt like a hero."
"If someone asked you at that time to clearly articulate why to close all the factories, would you be able to?"
"Gatherings were held in the Writers' Union, where Karine Danielyan, Khachik Stamboltsyan and other prominent environmentalists of the time spoke. They were saying how much those factories were harming human health, and I firmly believed that it was some kind of conspiracy to destroy our genetic pool."
I didn't have very deep knowledge, I just wanted Karabakh to be ours again. I wanted an independent Armenia. If you read the MediaMax article, you will see that I was one of the participants of the first demonstration with the tricolor flag. In September, we went to the village of Musa Ler. I made that quote once again. "If you are young and not revolutionary, then you have no heart, and if you are old and revolutionary, then you have no intelligence." I quoted this in the presence of Vazgen Manukyan and another member of the Karabakh Committee, Aleksan Hakobyan. They were offended, they said that they are still revolutionaries.
There was something related to the Lizin factory in Abovyan. Hambardzum Galstyan later wrote in his memoirs that he was also indignant against the Lizin factory, although he still didn’t know what it was. If the future member of the Karabakh Committee did not know what Lizin is, what do you want from the poor students to understand why we were protesting against that Lizin? Perhaps we thought it was another threat to the genetic pool.
During my student years, I knew of (among the self-published periodicals) "Independence" and "Mashtots", which were published by my friends. Everyone wrote under pseudonyms, but when I read the articles, I could figure out who the author was. I knew "Dashink", which was published by my fellow university student Nairi Hunanyan (one of the main organizers of the terrorist attack on the National Assembly on October 27). At that time, it was not necessarily a periodical, there could be letters on some type of A3 size paper, that's how it was distributed.
Nairi Hunanyan, who was one of the leaders of the student movement, was called to the dean's office because of the "Dashink" self-publishing, then he was arrested along with Bagrat Yesayan, there was also a boy from the Polytechnic University. After that, Bagrat kept saying for a very long time: you went on strike because of us being arrested, and after Nairi was released, you stopped the strike. I remained in prison.
Anna Israyelyan was born on November 4, 1966 in Yerevan. In 1984-1989, she studied at the Journalism Department of the Philology Faculty of Yerevan State University. The student leaders of the Karabakh movement in 1988 were from the Faculty of Philology. Anna was a fourth-year student when the Karabakh movement began, but before that she was an active participant in environmental demonstrations against the backdrop of the Perestroika policy.
After the movement, she became close to the members of the Karabakh Committee and started writing for the first newspapers of the newly independent Armenian press. (The Karabakh commmitee demanded the reunification of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region with the Armenian SSR, the Soviet Socialist Republic of Armenia, butthe general aim the 1988 movement was tp achieve more freedom and independence. The Karabakh Committee included Levon Ter-Petrosyan, the first president of the Republic of Armenia, the first Minister of Internal Affairs of the Republic of Armenia Vano Siradeghyan and others.)
Anna became a correspondent with the official newspaper of the ruling party, and attended party meetings. She was also present at many discussions predetermining the further development of Armenia, witnessing heated discussions and disagreements. Later, in 1993-2018, she worked in the Yerevan office of “Azatutyun” radio station (Radio Liberty). In 1997-2001, she was a correspondent for “Aravot” daily, and from 2011 to now she is the editor of the online version of “Aravot” daily. In her articles and interviews, she continues to talk about the less-known episodes of the Karabakh movement.
