Oshin Eghiazaryan is a happy and optimistic person. His hobbies and optimistic expectations have no limits. He hates the word “culture” and says that “culture is the death of arts”. If I could speak to Oshin more, I am sure I would learn much more from him… But this was enough to find out how original he was. He hasn’t a TV set in his apartment, but there isn’t lack of information for him. I felt like in a museum when I entered his apartment. Oshin has collected pieces of arts for about 30 years. He has bought pictures and antique things from a lot of countries of the world. He also said jokingly that “he had stolen some of those things”. He has a lot of antique things of different kinds. And now he collects portraits of Lenin and Stalin. Oshin is also interested in bee breeding. He breeds bees. He spends all his time on architecture, theatre, cinema, bee breeding, cooking, etc. He is very good in the kitchen. His imagination helps him to make so tasty dishes that sometimes his friends advise him to found his own restaurant. We can say that Oshin does everything. Sometimes his friends are surprised to learn that Oshin has undertaken some things again. Oshin told us how one of his friends had been surprised to learn that Oshin had taken part in Armenian cartoon production. “During those bad times in 90s I was in France and created about 100 vacancies here in Armenia. I decided to be involved in cartoon production. I founded “Yants” production and started to help Armenian cartoon makers with some materials. I have invested much money in this field and sent a lot of materials to Armenia. But to tell you frankly this field didn’t develop so well in Armenia as I expected”, -said Oshin. He has also worked in film industry, but this time not with Armenians, but with the son of famous film producer Ford Copola. “I used to be his “CCQ film” art director. This film was shown at Kann festival. I remember: it was too cold here and there was no electricity then, but our staff walked on red carpets in Kann. I didn’t care about that I wasn’t there, because it was good here”, -said Oshin laughing. After living in France for a long period Oshin moved to Armenia about 4-5 years ago and now he lives here. He likes it in Armenia. “I liked it in Europe in 1969-80 very much, because it was arts boom there. But in 80s this boom stopped”. We asked Oshin what made him stay in Armenia and he answered: “There is arts potential in Armenia. Armenia will become a community without arts and it will not be pleasant to live in that community. In this case I may leave Armenia and go back”.
Armenia, Karabakh, Javakhk, “Shen” and Oshin
It is already 16 years that Oshin works in Karabakh, Armenia and Javakhk. A lot of people know him as a representative of “Shen” NGO, which was one of the first NGOs in Armenia. “I was in Armenia first in 1988, during the earthquake to help people. I got acquainted with groups that came to help from Javakhk and Karabakh. In 4-5 days when I realized that we couldn’t help them and it was out of our hands, we started to work in Karabakh”, -said Oshin. In 1989 Oshin led discussions with the authorities of Karabakh in order to register international NGOs in Karabakh so they could help people there. Here we met the head of “Shen” NGO Armenian representation office and started to cooperate with him. As a result of this Oshin has founded organizations like this in France, the USA, Georgia, Javakhk and Karabakh.
Although now they have targeted Karabakh and Javakhk, but Oshin remembers that they made serious activities to help people in some remote villages of Armenia during the war period: “During the war period we made construction works there. Citizens of Azerbaijan were surprised and got angry to learn that we were building buildings during the war. They were collapsing our construction facilities, but we were making new ones instead of the old ones. This was a psychological attack for them and hope for Armenians. Due to this no one left these villages during the war period”. Oshin and “Shen” have helped more than 130 Armenian villages. “We shouldn’t speak about Armenia, because we have done a lot of things here”, -said Oshin. As for Karabakh, we started to make our activities there just twenty days after Lachin was seized. “We constructed the bridge of Berdadzor. Then we tried to work in Shoushi. We had planned to make serious constructions there but they took these territories from us in three months. We went back to Lachin and made our activities there”.
Now Oshin has returned to Shoushi and they are making some reconstruction on a temple. “A lot of representatives of our intelligentsia have blamed me in connection with this temple, as well as Aliev has blamed me. Citizens of Azerbaijan were complaining why Armenians were making changes on their temple, and Armenians were complaining why we were making reconstruction on this temple but not on a church. Anyway we are making constructions. I don’t know what is going to happen later, maybe this will be a religious place to visit for interest, I don’t know”, -said Oshin. The temple will be reconstructed without any architectural changes.
Now they implement another program in Karabakh: they give computers to schools in village communities. “Children from village communities must see that there are computers in their villages where they can learn how to use it, but not to go to Stepanakert to use a computer”, -said Oshin. He is also planning to found a new youth’s center in Karabakh. Particularly he wants to found hotels where young people can stay for 5-6 dollars per day, which is 30-40 dollars cheaper than the existing prices.
Four years ago Oshin made a decision to carry out their activities in Javakhk. They started their activities from Gandza village, which according to him was in very bad conditions. They spent 25 k dollars to reconstruct the hospital of Gandza. Later they sent medicines to this hospital every year. “Now we have some small programs in Georgia. We applied Internet connection in Javakhk and helped them with radio antennas. We help TV companies too. We have founded a dental clinic and now make reconstruction works in Javakhk. In a word, we work now”. The only purpose of these works is to stop people leaving Karabakh and Javakhk, we want to make them stay there. And as Oshin said they wanted them “to live a modern life, but not to stay far from everything”.
This is not the end of Oshin’s activities. Concerning what he has done he says: “This is not philanthropy, but responsibility. I think if someone is able but doesn’t do anything, this is something treacherous”.