The murder of the seventeen-year old Armenian in Moscow and the attack on the secretary of the Armenian Cinema Union should have shocked Armenians living in Armenia and abroad. I’m not obligating both societies to be shocked when I say “should have”; I simply mean to say that the smart members of the society should have reacted to the extremism going on in the country of our strategic ally. They should have reacted just as if the same thing happened in Armenia’s neighboring country Georgia, or our traditional enemy country Turkey.
But the society not only doesn’t react, rather the dear secretary of the Cinema Union hosts a press conference and considers the attack as “xenophobia” and not “Armenophobia”, or let’s say pressure on “Caucasian nations”. It turns out that the Armenian living in Moscow or the Armenian in Moscow for business purposes is not one of the representatives of the nations living in the Southern Caucasus, but simply a normal, human being living in space.
It is considered to be a loss of dignity for Armenians to be compared to Georgians, Abkhazians, citizens of Chechnya and Azerbaijani. The Armenian is ready to discuss the tragic event that has happened to him in the context of the Russian criminal minds. So, xenophobia is something that can be inside anyone, regardless of eye or hair color, a beard or the size and crookedness of the nose.
Armenians’ pro-Russian side and dedication are what make them tend to not focus on the national character. Armenians think that as long as Armenia is Russia’s strategic ally, then our country is safe from being included in the list of undesirable countries. But we must think about what “strategic ally” really means and what “undesirable element” means.
“Strategic allies” are two countries whose economic and political interests coincide, who have something to give to one another in time of war or peace and whose societies understand how important the alliance is. In our case, everything is one-way. Besides the not too assuring guarantees made by the high state officials, there is no Russian source that defines the strategic alliance between Russia and Armenia. Sometimes you get the impression that the Russian society doesn’t even know about such an alliance. If the Russian society doesn’t know that Armenia is Russia’s strategic ally, then how can the so-called skinheads, who get enlisted by the Russian state special services to wipe out the undesirable elements from the country while teenagers, possibly know that? So, who should be the one to explain to those young people that the Caucasian nations are of two types-good and bad and how should he do that? How should the Russian state special services pretend to issue a command to have the mad gang of skinheads decide whether the person with the beard and Caucasian nose coming out of the metro is an Armenian, a Georgian, someone from Chechnya, Azerbaijani or a representative of another Caucasian ethnic group?
The commanders of the skinheads can’t explain to them that Armenia-the homeland of those blacks who gather either in Moscow or another city-has distributed all its important economic resources to Russia in exchange for a debt, that their compatriots make a few speeches and are quickly ready to “lie” to neighboring Georgia, claiming that to be the demand for improvement of the social/economic status of the Armenians living in Javakhk, when they really care more about national interests.
As I already mentioned, these explanations will not help because the skinheads don’t have the time and the opportunity to differentiate. They’re not going to ask “Are you Armenian?” now are they? Even if they do ask, what guarantee is there that some guy by the name of Mamed Mamedov or some Gia Georgadze won’t say yes just to save himself? So, they will be forced to demand identification, but after looking at the identification document how will they be able to go kill them? It will turn out that they are pointing fingers directly at their clients/commanders.
In order to present Russian fascism as native, the skinheads must work at a rapid pace, while the Russian authorities have to come up with ways of showing that what happened was by chance or connect the event with alcoholism and drug addiction widespread in the country.
In order to stop fascism in a country where there are more than two million Armenians, the Armenian society must not condemn the uncertain criminal environment, but rather condemn the crime against the representative of the ethnic group-all with the help of the film director, who was saved by a miracle. Otherwise, it turns out that Armenia not only sold its property to Russia in exchange of debt, created obstacles in Georgia not to pass resolutions based on national interests, but also it is trying to come up with justifications for the clients/commanders of the skinheads.
This really hurts me; what also hurts me is that we have lost our independence. But it doesn’t surprise me because we Armenians are more Russians than the native Russians and we treat ourselves worse than the skinheads. Skinheads can kill ten or perhaps 100 people, while we kill our national dignity.
I wasn’t seeing the portrait of Russian president of V.V. Putin and the country’s symbol on an obsidian tile at the Vernisazh for the first time, but after hearing about these events, I decided to ask the creator/seller:
“Are there any buyers?”
“There are so many,” he said.
“Perhaps Russian tourists or the embassy workers,” I said.
“No, Armenians are mostly the ones buying them. Deputies buy it a lot,” said the creator/seller and started mentioning some names.
“They probably like it,” I said.
“No, I wouldn’t say they like it. They’re most probably afraid,” he said. From that I understood
that I had found the title of my article for this week.