Beginning in previous two editions
The change of power that was being planned was not going to be anything like “October 27”. The average partisans of the traditional political party used to tell me that there will be no bloodshed and that there may be one victim at the most. Time would pass before I would realize that that one victim would be the main target for “October 27”.
In 1994 or 1995 (as far as I can remember, but it may be found in the archives), at the end of the “02” police news of the Internal Affairs Ministry a report was unexpectedly shown telling about the visit of Vano Siradeghyan, Vazgen Sargsyan and Hrant Matevosyan to the crypt of the Arshakuni dynast located at Ambert. It was strange and incomprehensive to see such a report at the end of the news hour, especially since judging from the look of the news anchor and the direct speeches of the heroes, it was a meeting of three prose writers and not one prose-writer and two ministers. If my memory serves me right, they were talking about remodeling the Arshakunis’ crypt, renovating the territory and similar things.
The report seemed strange not only because they were not in the right place, but because during those days everyone was talking about the tense relations between Vano Siradeghyan and Vazgen Sargsyan. Rumor had it that there had been debates between the two ministers after the ceasefire and that that had something to do with their break-up. According to different sources, being the correspondent of the backline during the war, Vano Siradeghyan had become the defender of the new bourgeoisie, while Vazgen Sargsyan believed that the men who had fought on the military fronts had to be the owners of public property.
Of course, nothing goes on without fire, but could the relations between the two pillars of power be that tense in order to exclude compromise? The information regarding the tense relations was spread and generalized among the public. Taxi drivers all the way to different ranking functionaries were telling about events that had taken place in this or that restaurant as if they were actual witnesses, claiming that Vano’s bodyguards and Vazgen’s bodyguards had started a big fight and that it had led up to the point when the two had started attacking each other. “Vazgen gave a blow to Vano,” claim the storytellers, but then it turned out that they had not witnessed all that, rather they had heard it from somebody.
It would be clear later why the three prose-writers had gone all the way to Ambert. The crypt of the Arshakunis was not the best spot to conduct literary debates. They had reached that high peak in order for everybody to see them, to show that there can be no debates and they have nothing against each other and never will, especially when someone like Hrant Matevosyan was standing in between them. It would later be clear the change of power plan. Vazgen Sargsyan was murdered in a dark and mysterious way. The public and Vazgen’s colleagues were under the influence of the rumors going around in the city and were suspecting Vano Siradeghyan. The Minister of Internal Affairs was removed from office, arrested and taken to jail and amid all that chaos, as my acquaintances from the traditional political party said, the seizure of one of two state institutions was becoming a small, technical problem for the men who had fought in Khojalu and Shushi. The power was smoothly passing on to the ARF.
The meeting in Ambert was not only a step taken against this plan, but also the start of real compromises which, although gave positive results at that moment, however we can’t say that they benefited the regulation of the political system later on.
The debate between Vazgen Sargsyan and Vano Siradeghyan, if it really existed as such, was a debate of the parallel societies formed during the war. The soldiers had to return home and the Defense Minister would have something to give them and in order to prevent them from confiscating what they would receive, Vano Siradeghyan made compromises since he was in favor of a market economy.
During that time, all of this was interpreted as the obsession of two “monsters” to accumulate the riches and eternally keep power with that money, but nobody noticed the underground flow of water that would eventually spill out and flood the political system of Armenia. That was the flow of victory which was perhaps supposed to be perceived as the land defender brotherhood and was then supposed to be formed into an organization with the combined efforts of the Republican Party founded after the formation of the Armenian Army.
The model of distributing the property to those who deserved it had to become an evil not only for the state and society, but also for those who deserved it because the majority of them had to starve, while the minority had to work.
To be continued…