– Mr, Hovhannisyan, your publications show that you are following the ongoing inner political processes.
– I am interested in them to the extent they concern my country, my children, my friends. The title of my recent article in “Literal newspaper” was “Whether booth is necessary or inevitable?” I mean that the presidential elections shall be like a show or booth, so that everyone who wakes up early in the morning nominates his/her candidacy.
– Do you mean concrete candidates such as Serzh Sargsyan, Levon Ter-Petrosyan, Vazgen Manukyan?
– Serzh Sargsyan and Vazgen Manukyan have a right to run since one of them was and the other is prime minister. They have some experience of governing the country. I didn’t mean them. Neither has it concerned Levon Ter-Petrosyan. His case is different. After many years of silence hе has appeared again and it seems that it was not his wish, it seems that he has been convenced to run either by his party members or others. However, this decision on his part is like adventure.
– Levon Ter-Petrosyan has prevented such estimations himself by saying that adventure is not characteristic to his nature.
– I don’t know. We are not such people who may estimate the actions, thinking and logics of other people. We just see what is happening around us, which does not seem to be logical.
– Which candidate do you prefer?
– I can just speak about how I think a candidate should be. First of all, a candidate should be intellectual, Armenian, patriotic, a Cristian who is loyal to the country and to the people, who has a strong will, potential, decision making skills, skills to manage out in difficult situations, who is professional in inner and foreign affairs and prefers the interests of the state.
– Do you think there is such candidate?
– If there is not any, there should be no presidential elections; The voters don’t think in the same manner as in 1970, 1980, 2000. They already have experience, they know that they can be cheated, corrupted, and disoriented. They know that they can struggle against such bad possibilities with the help of their private moral and other merits.
– Indeed the previous elections and especially the recent parliamentary elections have shown that the moral merits of voters are not so high and ranges between 3-5 thousand drams.
– If the society is at the same level, this time the situation will be the same too, however, if it has changed at least a little bit, the mechanism of distributing electoral bribe will not work.
– How can we understand whether the society has changed or not? What are the evaluation criteria?
– It is hard to say. The results will show whether anything has changed or no. If the results are different than during the previous parliamentary elections, it will mean that something has changed.
– The winner of the NA elections was the Armenian Republican Party. Do you mean that if the leader of ARP, Serzh Sargsyan does not win it will mean that something has changed?
– Please don’t inteprete what I said. I said what I said.
– You connected the level of the society’s moral merits with the elections. What about those merits before the elections? What can you say about the society now?
– The moral level of our society is falling, our society is poor and in a difficult situation. The reason is its level, i.e. those values, which they perefer. Please pay attention to the TV companies and newspapers. Who are they and what they show? They are performing cheap humor, shows to make people laugh. In a word, they show cheap, disqualified and nonsense things, which degrades the society. When I watch Armenian host shows, I feel very weak and think how it is possible to stoop to the level of an organgutan (with some small exceptions).
– It seems there is nothing to counterbalance the cheap humor you noted. For example, in Russia they have counterbalance to cheap humor, for exaple they have Zhvanetski. “Culture” TV channel is a counterbalance to those channels which don’t have anything to say.
– If people wanted to listen and understand the right way, they would listen the intelligentsia, which has been showing the right way during many years. No one listens to them since a human being tends to elect the easiest way – they want to laugh and not to be hungry. Bread and show!
– Maybe the words of the intelligentsia are not accessable.
– I was just talking about easy things. That it is. The society does not want to make efforts, it does not want to succeed for one more level. There is no need to blame the society since it is disappointed. Our society reached its conscious culmination only after the movement of 88 and the war of Artsakh. In that period people were advocating the ideal character, thus the people of the ideal always want honesty.
– It is the job of the intelligentsia to struggle for honesty and develop such fair ideas. For example, Chingiz Aytmatov said that the intelligentsia representatives are those people, who feel responsibility for each ongoing dishonourableness. From this view, at least such people are not seen in our society.
– There are several people who are trying to say or make understand something. No use. Let’s take my example. It is a long time I write publications and when a lady sees me in the street and says that she has read my report and likes it very much, I want to say to that lady that I haven’t written it to satisfy her needs in some way, but I have written it to change something in her, make her understand something and not to do what she is doing now.
– Do the books you chose to tralsate tend to making people think? Bulgakov’s “Master and Margarita”, Dostoevski’s “Devils”… I see you have Tolstoy’s book on your table, which you have already translated. Don’t you regret that your translations don’t serve the goals you wanted to reach?
– You are talking about a problem, which makes me worry too. I can’t find a solution either. I have finished Tolstoy’s “Confession” and his diary. It is a very deep book and is full of brilliant ideas. I don’t know who will read it. If I manage to print it, it will be printed in about 1000-2000 copies. It is a water drop in the ocean.
– Do you think that 2000 people will read Tolstoy now?
– It is enough if they read, understand it, keep inside and tell the others. There was time when people said that one should read and give it to friends.
– What about our literature? How interesting is it for foreign translators?
– Hrant Matevosyan.
– Only?
– I could say other names too, but Hrant Matevosyan…
– People are interested to know, especially along with years, what the real purpose of the life is. Have you made any conclusions?
– The life is given to the human being only for loving. It consists of love to our fatherland, relatives, wife, children and our job. I haven’t finished that love so far and now, when I am over 70, I think of some plans since I continue loving. You can’t say that you love just for saying. If you don’t love, damn it, it doesn’t matter. You should show that you can love and that you love. I think I have succeded in it and I am going to pass away with an open heart and clean view.
– There is a prayer book on your table.
– I am an Armenian Christian, I believe, I pray every morning and night, from time to time I go to Church because I think there is some difference between the belief and the Church, however the Church is the God’s house, and every Christian has to be there.