I met Lidia Dolinina in Berdzor. She was working as usual (sweeping the streets) when I tried to talk to her. She agreed with pleasure.
She has lived with her husband Hmayak Sargsyan for 40 years. Her husband was serving in the army in Irkutsk city when they first met. “He is a native of Berdzor. His brother used to live in Baku and we stayed there until the events aimed against Armenians in 1988. On January 19, 1988, when the Armenians began getting tortured, I sent my husband and children to Armenia, while I stayed in Baku temporarily. I’ve experienced all the tortures that the Armenians went through because I had my husband’s last name and the documents of the house were registered with my husband’s last name. They burnt our home, broke the windows; it’s a good thing that my husband had built metal fences at the time or else I would have been killed,”says Mrs. Lidia, who is Russian by nationality.
She was working at the Baku University and her husband was a taxi driver. Her husband died shortly after they moved to Berdzor. Currently, 70-year old Lidia lives with her son and her daughter works as a teacher in a school near the village. Her son is a painter, but works in the communal department of the village community due to the fact that he hasn’t taken art classes and doesn’t know how to speak Russian. “I work as a janitor, earn 20,000 drams a month, my pension is not enough, but what can we do? My husband left us, but told us never to leave Armenia-especially Berdzor. My son is married and has two children, but currently they live in the Tegh village of the Goris region because our home may be destructed. They have promised us a home, we’ll see…His wife really wants to live here,” says. Mrs. Lidia.
Despite the hardships of life, Mrs. Lidia is happy that she is living in Berdzor. “Everyone respects me here; they all pass by and greet me in Russian because they know that I’m Russian. I like it. I communicate with the Russians living here from time to time,” she says.
Fifty-three-year old Venera Yavrumyan moved to Yeghegnadzor from Baku with her family in 1989 and they lived there until 1994. Then they heard that there was rehabilitation in Berdzor. “You can go there and they will provide you with everything,” they told them.
“We came here on May 13, 1994, but they still haven’t provided us with anything. My house is destructed, I have five children, my son is serving in the army, my two daughters are married and they have their children. I am the only one working in the family. I work as a custodian at a night school and my husband is a guard at a gas station. Our monthly salary put together is 35,000 drams and we raise our children with that money. I have been sending letters about the house issue since 1997, but in vain. The roof has a whole, the rain falls in and the wall in the back of the house is destroyed…My main problem is the house. I need a home where I can gather my children and live a normal life,” she says.
The residents of Berdzor are sad when they start talking about the people who have left Berdzor for other places to live. The reasons vary. As stated in the presses recently, one of the reasons is the un-called for behavior of the head of the Karabakh government in solving the issues concerning the residents. But head of the government Hamlet Khachatryan says that the main reason is the people’s laziness and the social conditions.
I tried to find out the real reasons from head of the rehabilitation, refugee and migration department of the Karabakh government Pavel Najaryan. “I consider the accusations of different mass media against the Kashatagh regional authorities as personal accusations. The leader of the government has nothing to do with the people leaving the region. The reason is that rehabilitation was not done correctly years ago and that’s why people have social issues today. There is a level of society that relies on getting help by charities and doesn’t want to do anything on its own, however there are some people in the region who have not only built or reconstructed their own homes, but have also started a business and are actually working. At the present, the government is planning the development program for the Kashatagh region. We have to preserve what we have and keep the rehabilitation program going,” said Mr. Najaryan. It is worth mentioning that the Kashatagh issue was one of the issues that had to be discussed by the Security Council of Nagorno Karabakh.