During his interview with one of the newspapers of St. Petersburg, philosopher, and poet Ruben Angaladayan gave a pretty interesting description of Armenia, Armenians and our national culture. We present to you the interview.
– I would like to dedicate this interview to the ethno-state issues of your Homeland-Armenia. Let’s try and characterize Armenia, Armenians and the Armenian culture.
– There are some things in your question that are closely connected to one another and I would like to answer in order. The people of a nation have two courses to take in analyzing. In other words, how they really are and how they imagine themselves to be. We often see how the self-evaluation of a society or ethnic group does not correspond to the evaluations given by the world…For example, we often hear that Russians are not united, they are lazy and like to do nothing. That is not a correct opinion. For Russians, the strongest link in the family-people-state circle is the state and the weakest link is the family. Everyone is of the opinion that Armenians are united as one. I don’t really share that opinion because the weakest link for Armenians is the state and the strongest is the family.
There are also two viewpoints in Armenian reality. The first one is the following:
“We are so hard-working, talented and successful. We want to do many things, but others bother us and don’t let us fully express ourselves…This means that the life isn’t fair.” By reading the nation’s history, you get the impression that invaders and barbarians were the ones responsible for all the obstacles that the Armenian people have faced. Now they blame our own authorities and not the people. Armenians don’t realize that the people are also guilty. That is not right. True, there were barbarians and invaders, but the state was weak, the people were weak and could not fight for keeping its independence and strengthening the state.
There is another point of view: For example, “We have a high reputation in the world; see how they love us, how Armenian intellectuals reach the top. We have so many talented and famous painters, composers and architects working for other nations. We have so many political figures and scientists…” Then they present a list of famous last names. We are talking about the past and present. The lists go on and on…However, we must draw our attention to the most important factor: the greats are not born every day and if they have expressed themselves to the people, then that means that they have passed a certain limit…We give the best that we have to others and remain without them. When we lose the best, the rest just fall in the lowest category. In other words, we choose the cleanest not from the “sterile” or the worst from the cleanest, but rather from the half-dirty. We don’t search for intellectuals and smart people from all the intellectuals as a whole, but rather we select unintelligent people.
Now I will talk about culture. When talking about the history of culture, we pay more attention to the national cultural values rather than just the achievements of this or that artist. For example, how much has our culture grown ever since Aznavour appeared in the field?-as much as when Jak Brell or Frank Sinatra came onto the scene. Basically, it hasn’t grown that much. Who cares if famous marine artist Ayvazovski was Armenian if we still can’t prepare studies about his art and tie his world vision with our culture to this day? We still can’t understand where his art originated from. After all, ethnicity is not the most important, but rather the artistic mentality…Diurer was Hungarian by nationality and El Greco was Greek, but how much of an influence did each have on Hungarian and Greek culture respectively? I can answer that question by telling you that they have had as much influence as they have had on other cultures and nothing more than that. We have to understand that because there are many examples like this…
We Armenians, on the other hand, feel excited if we get a chance to get photographed next to Aznavour or Cher. However, neither the money, nor detailed analysis, nor patience, nor intellectuality is enough to turn our artists into internationally famous artists. Money is spent on minor things and on second hand creations. We can’t even learn from other nations.
One time I was having dinner with a Russian businessman in California. We started talking about culture and he asked me about someone, if I knew him or not, and what I thought about him. I said yes, I do. The Russian businessman said that he sends an “x” amount of money to that man who lives in St. Petersburg every month. His brother likes some writer’s books and also sends an “x” amount of money to that writer. They send money to good, but not that famous, intellectuals. I asked him how he and his brother chose which artist to send money to. His answer was simple: he said that they simply want to do something for Russian culture and they have asked the professionals who are involved in that. Those people have advised them to do what they do. The businessman and his brother have met with the intellectuals and have decided to help them out. As for us, the “new” Armenians, second hand painters, writers, actors, architects and composers grow so much until the rich become uneducated. Unfortunately, this also refers to our current authorities who are also part of the “new” Armenians. Why do average artists grow? The reason is that their creations and lifestyles, their complementary art is understood by the large businessmen both in Armenia and abroad. This also refers to the authorities.
Way back in the 19th century, famous Armenian painter Hakob Hovnatanyan (he also studied in Petersburg like Ayvazovski) used to paint the portraits of Armenian rich men, deputy officials and merchants. But when everyone started to photograph, he was forced to leave Tbilisi and moved to Tehran. This meant that the elite Armenian society of Tbilisi was interested in seeing the portraits of the people they knew and not the high quality art of Hovnatanyan.
– During the past 10-15 years, tens of monuments were beautifying the historical center of Tbilisi. There are some interesting monuments, but there are also bad ones. How is it in Yerevan?
– It’s bad. To this day, we don’t want to grasp the concept of how Yerevan must look like; where and when a monument must be put up and whose monument. I can bring up an example. Andranik is our national hero who fought for our independence, but must we really have his statue in the capital city of Armenia?-no. The capital city is the image of the country. Andranik did not behave himself, so to speak, during the first years of the First Republic of Armenia and did not help in getting Armenia back on its feet and left the Homeland when the people needed him the most. But he still remains a national hero and the people have a right to put a statue in his memory anywhere, but not in the capital city.
Another example: We have the statue of Griboyedov the poet in Yerevan, when what we really should have is the statue of Griboyedov the diplomat. We don’t have to focus on just putting up a statue, but we must choose the right place. This is how we must evaluate the artist and national hero with what he has done for the country and as a human being. We are still not ready for that kind of analysis or choosing. We are not a real nation yet to give a certain approach. We are only proud of being a nation that survived the hardships and we show our pride for this or that artist or scientific achievement. Recalling the past experiences that we have gone through as a people and a state bother us more than help us. We really have no experience, if you want to know the truth. That also refers to what we call going back to our national roots.
– But we all know that Armenians love their Homeland, they are proud of their history and culture.
– Great nations idolize the average artists; they turn them into classical artists for the rest of the world to see. But people like Armenians are still not able to present their genius artists on a high level neither to the nation nor the world. But we are compared to the best judging from the product that we give to the cultural market. It is amazing to see Armenians appreciate others’ tastes, opinions, and accept the praise of others. But the same Armenian that is Western oriented wants to “save” Armenia (this is a syndrome left behind from the Genocide; there are no such syndromes),do something for the country, he truly loves his Homeland but only at the emotional level. True, there are people in each new generation who really understand the problems that the country is facing, some look at the problems as theoreticians and analysts, some look at it practically. In the 19th century, there was a famous Armenian analyst of national life and chief editor of “Mshak” newspaper Artsruni, we had oil industrialist and famous benefactor Mantashow in the beginning of the 20th century, etc. However this is going on today too. For example, president of the “Union of Armenians of Russia” and well-known businessman Ara Abrahamyan doesn’t have the slightest idea of what it means to be the leader of a union or a businessman. Another businessman that goes by the name of Ruben Vartanyan, who was the one that took the initiative of creating the “Armenia 2020” project, also has no idea of what he is supposed to do. He is making the same mistakes that others make by trying to help Armenia. Vartanyan was not able to find people with a lot of capital or people that could help him out in the right way; although there were professionals from different fields and there was even an analysis. However, those professionals didn’t fully understand the problems that they were dealing with because they were judging based on personal impressions or conducting a MENTAL analysis. They were picturing the country, the nation and society as a tourist looks from the window of a bus. That is why they could not conduct studies of the problems. As a matter of fact, the biggest defect that we have is that we are not able to get together as one and change reality. In other words, we don’t see the reality, even though we all know what we are going after-a prosperous Armenia.
In the end, I would like to say something that I have noticed. I am surprised to see that nobody from the “Armenia 2020” project asked for my help. After all, I have been involved in ethno-state issues for almost 25 years now.
To be continued