Vahram Martirosyan Վահրամ Մարտիրոսյան

We were third year students and I got to know Samvel Gevorgyan, who used to work in the Radio. My poems and particularly translations, since they stopped publishing my poems at a certain point, were broadcast on radio, and Samvel had seen me on the day of the demonstration that we organized that year. In other words, when I was a third year student, it was the early November of the [19]78, if I remember it correctly, we had learnt that the Genocide memorial in Beirut was blown-up and there was an attack on Bourj Hammoud Armenian district, and we became very angry that they had organized just a Komsomol meeting, and there were formal speeches, pathos, some poems, etc., etc. And me and my friends transformed that meeting into a demonstration. Samvel had seen me during that demonstration and later entrusted me with several banned books, one of which, as far as I remember, was Leo’s “From The Past”, which in fact is an essentially very anti-Dashnak book. But the Soviet rule was not to provide any information that, let’s say, would make a mind work. Let's say, “Armenian History” books were thin books, and I think precisely for the purpose of you not having too much patriotism so as it would not become an obstacle for them. Let’s say “History of USSR” was taught for four years, and we were running through it from prehuman until A.D. 1000 in 20, 30 or 50 pages, so we could reach the year 1000 soon, and the history of Russia would commence, and then we were studying the history of Russia for three and a half or four years. In other words, that Komsomol meeting as well, was like a cover-up, like smoothing, or perhaps they were told from above to organize something like that. Yet, it was not important for us. We did that demonstration and were happy that we were able to organize something like that. Yes, and I took books from Samvel sometimes. Samvel Gevorgyan later became a member of Karabakh Committee, was the Editor-in-Chief of the first registered independent newspaper “Hayk”, and so on, Chairman of a committee of the National Assembly (at the time it was called Supreme Council). Then at one point he showed me a copy of a document, a decree of the USSR Minister of Enlightenment, on introducing Russian as the language of instruction for all professional subjects at the universities starting from September. And that was a great tragedy for us, for me and a small group of my friends, since we were seeing how Armenia was being Russified. Particularly in Yerevan city center, for example, Armenian and Russian were equally heard not because there were tourists or “relocants”, but because the so-called “upper class” of Yerevan or Armenia that mostly lived in Yerevan, believed that Russian was a more important language. Moreover, as an upper class, “a special snowflake”, they had to speak Russian, to send their kids to a Russian school. The number of Russian schools was constantly growing, and bribes and nepotism were utilized to get accepted to Russian schools. I.e., they [Russian schools] were not enough for the people that took the path of assimilation.

I very much liked Rock music since my school years, starting from high school, and there weren’t many records, they were brought from abroad as well, and a record would probably cost approximately 150 Rubles, more or less, and you had to know where to buy it, how to buy it, was not easy to find it. So, you had to buy it from people’s homes, it wasn't sold at stores. But let's say at my time "Beatles" was released in stores, on small flexible records, say 5-6 songs. And when we looked at the covers of those albums, those guys were depicted with long hair, guitars and jeans, probably that image I liked, that image became my role model and not those conveyer-cut Komsomols with box-cut hair, who were, let’s say essentially careerists, since the Komsomol was a stage of making a career, so as then they would be accepted into the ranks of the Party, because if you were not a member of the [Communist] Party, you could only occupy up to a certain position. For example, let’s say the deputy head of a department, but let’s say the head of a department should already be a Party member. It even applied to, say, literary magazines. If I am not mistaken, there was only Aghassi Ayvazyan, who was the editor-in-chief of “Ekran” magazine and was not a party member. All the rest, starting from the position of Responsible Secretary, were Party members. Like that. In other words, that antagonism was due to the fact that there was a smell of the free world from there, and here everything was gray, limited and formal. So, when I said that my parents were orthodox Communists, none of those Komsomols and Party leaders believed in the ideology. For them, it was a path for getting a position and large bribes. Naturally, it caused a rejection in me. And the alternative were the images of the Western world that one could see in rare films with free students, including, let’s say manifestations of protest and clothing, clothing as well.

The “1984”… It recently caught my eye that it was printed in some small quantity during the Soviet period, but I hadn’t heard of it. I had read a photocopied version, a very bad copy, like you would more guess what was written than it was visible. Yet, I was happy that such a book existed, that the Soviet was described like that. However, Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita” was printed in [19]73 along with two other novels, only 10,000 copies for the entire Soviet Union. They gave me to read it in a day, and I considered it anti-Soviet literature, since we thought “how was it possible to describe all that Stalinism, all that Soviet horror, and with such high artistic skill?” In short, that literature rarely reached our hands, and besides, I think it was the month of Brezhnev’s death, it was like a ritual sacrifice, when the leader died, they started to arrest dissidents. Let’s say Edmond Avetyan was taken to a psychiatric clinic at that time, and others, I don’t remember, I think Papayan was also arrested again then… I am not sure, but I do remember that we have heard some names, and like I remember that in the case of Edmond Avetyan they were saying that they found secret literature at his place. Banned literature. Well, we used to call it “secret”, it was not like that literature was about blowing up the Soviet Union. Let’s say it could be that same “1984”, or Solzhenitsyn’s novels, “The Gulag Archipelago”, like that; i.e. it was also dangerous.

They were interrogating… They took us to different rooms. Different investigators interrogated us. They told us that they knew we were going to do a demonstration: “tell us, how it is going to happen, how are you going to do it,” in short, like that. We had decided to take the letters of the Armenian Alphabet to the demonstration, that it would become the symbol of an attack on the language. I tried to speak about it and then pull back, so as I would have said something. Then I saw that they are very skilled: as soon as you say one thing, they pull the second thing out of you, and I stopped answering. I said “I don’t know, I don’t remember anything.” If I am not mistaken, our friends have told some things; i.e. they were saying that “we know everything anyway,” and then as far as I know, they had given a paper for signing. I basically stopped saying anything and no paper… they told us to write down something, I said “if you write down about those letters, I’ll sign, that we thought it would be good if…” However, they did not write that paper and I did not sign.

Samvel Gevorgyan, other people who were better informed, were telling me that I surely had a file in KGB since the school years, which was then transferred to the university. And there were many people who would come and provoke you into some conversations. For instance, I had first heard the name of “Nagorno Karabakh” from that danoschik, an informer, a student from the Department of Oriental Studies, who specifically came to obtain information from me. And he was saying: “and what do you think about Nagorno Karabakh, that those Azerbaijanis are oppressing there, and so on?” Frankly, I don’t know how it turned out, but there was very little talk about that in my environment. Or maybe there was really very little talk, because after all my surroundings were writers, artists… And that’s it, so how did they learn? I believe they have learned from many sources, because later, when we were being interrogated, I saw that they knew an awful lot. There were perhaps very rare segments of our four-month preparatory work that they were not aware of, maybe when there were only three of us, the three musketeers, and there had been no one else at that moment, we had discussed things, and they did not know about that. They knew about everything else.

Also some Soviet jeans appeared at the time when I was a student, but they were made of very poor quality cloth, they were sewn very badly. At some point jeans were imported from Italy and in stores... they would immediately disappear from the stores… They cost 40 Rubles, while the Soviet ones were 15-30, and the ones from abroad 150, up to 250 Rubles, which was twice as expensive as the average salary. Those were brought by so-called akhpars, or they would receive a parcel where it was, or someone would go even to Lebanon, very few went to America, and they brought it from there, and the news would spread that there was a suitcase at someone’s home, if I remember it correctly, or maybe they used different words. And you’d go, let’s say, it could be a very prosperous house, luxuriously furnished, with Czech chandeliers brought from Moscow, so to speak, and let’s say a well-dressed lady with golden rings would open the door and take you in. Then she’d open the suitcase and would say “we have such jeans, this plastic bag of Marlboro for 5 Rubles,” a bag that in America was used to sell a block of [cigarettes], say 10 boxes, for free. Here everything was for sale, starting from those plastic bags. Then bargaining took place, because as a rule everything was very expensive. And if it ended successfully, you bought those jeans.

Being a hippie meant that when everybody had a “box” haircut, you would have long hair. Or at that time it was common to wear red pants from this disgusting fabric called crimplene, and we were wearing jeans. The jeans of a self-respecting hippie had to be worn, that is we used to wear these sides with bath stones, so as they were white, and the rest would be blue. There were no local jeans, the jeans were expensive and from foreign countries, and based on the jeans you wore, i.e. lee, which was a relatively affordable brand, or Levi’s, you were higher or lower in your ranking among the hippies. Yet, for the rest you were a “class enemy”, for them the bad guy was the one with long hair, and they would call names, like “sissy, what time is it?” And after that a fight would break.

At our home, let me put it that way, [people] were orthodox communists. My father, I don’t know since when, my parents were quite old when I was born, and my father was already a communist for 40 years at that time. My mother was not a party member, but was more devoted, she believed in everything that propaganda said. And when we were having serious conversations with my parents, when I was already a student and could express very harsh thoughts towards the political leadership, Brezhnev and co, my mother even once said: “if you say one more word I’ll call Militia to take you away.”