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A Monument For The Just

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  • A Monument For The Just

    A MONUMENT FOR THE JUST

    Mirror Spectator
    Editorial 11-29 Nov

    By Edmond Y. Azadian

    While Armenians around the world are gearing up to commemorate the
    centennial of the Genocide, another calamity in our history must not
    be overlooked: the atrocities perpetrated against our beleaguered
    nation during the Stalin period.

    It would not be historically proper to draw parallels between the
    two tragedies in terms of cause and effect, but the net outcome in
    both cases was the destruction of the creative minds of our people.

    It is ironic that the executioners of history seem to be well versed
    enough in literature, arts and scholarship to be able to pick out
    the cream of the crop and target them for extermination -- or else
    they employ advisors with enough intellectual capacity for this
    grisly selection.

    Talaat Pasha sent to their deaths Daniel Varoujan, Siamanto, Zohrab,
    Yeroukhan, Rouben Zartarian, Telgadintzi, Indra and myriad other
    talents.

    Similary, Stalin and his henchmen targeted literary luminaries such as
    Axel Bakuntz, Yeghishe Charents, Zabel Yessayan, Aghassi Khanjian and
    many others. Recently, a film clip was distributed on the Internet
    citing the names of Armenian victims of Stalin's purges -- and the
    count was raised to 7,000.

    Armenians had barely survived the first genocide of the 20th century,
    after losing their entire leadership and creative geniuses, when they
    succumb yet again to a second calamity under Stalin.

    The occasion for comparing the two tragedies occurred to me on
    November 22 in Yerevan, when I was asked to announce the winner of
    the literature category of the Tekeyan Cultural Association's annual
    literary and artistic contest.

    The winner was a 447-page monumental literary monograph by David
    Gasparyan on the life and works of Gourgen Mahari, whose creative
    life was interrupted at its prime for 17 years when he was exiled to
    Siberia to endure hard labor. Mahari was one writer who bridged the
    two calamities; he was born in Van at the turn of the 20th century
    and soon he was exiled from his native land to be dropped from one
    orphanage to the other in emerging the first Armenian Republic and
    during the early years of Soviet Armenia.

    His life as an exile from his native land and then from Soviet Armenia
    to Siberia is reflected in the entire body of his literary output.

    Despite the suffering and interruptions, he managed to produce an
    impressive amount of poetry and exquisite prose: novels, novellas
    and short stories.

    One of the most punishing periods in Siberia was when he was banned
    from touching pen and paper -- a sadistic punishment for a prolific
    writer.

    In addition to symbolizing the bridge between the two calamities,
    Mahari utilized a new brand of literary language deriving from the
    rich heritage of his Western Armenian roots and building on them with
    the colorful idiom of the Eastern Armenian dialect.

    The writer was also a trailblazer and literary polemist, always in
    search of new paths in literature. His creative career was encouraged
    by his mentor, Yeghishe Charnets. Maybe that was one of the reasons
    that he was accused of being a "terrorist," "nationalist," and a
    "plotter to kill Lavrenti Beria," Stalin's security chief, and
    eventually exiled to Siberia twice.

    Literary competitors also had their role in the his destiny and in
    the loss of Charents, Bakunts, Yessayan and Vahan Totovents, all
    of the latter were accused of being "nationalists," an unpardonable
    crime in the Stalin era. Woody Allen has a very appropriate statement
    regarding the cowardly net of fellow writers. He says, "Intellectuals
    are like the Mafia; they only kill their own."

    All of the exiled and convicted writers and intellectuals were
    exonerated during the later Khrushchov era in the USSR, but for
    many of them, it was too late. Thus, the death of a large crop of
    intellectuals under Stalin's tyranny came to compound our earlier
    losses at the hands of Talaat Pasha.

    Of course, the entire nation laments that monumental loss. But little
    action has been taken by the authorities in Armenia to discover the
    burial sites of Charents or Bakunts.

    Gasparyan, who had written earlier a monumental volume on Charents,
    a literary detective work, has undertaken excavation campaigns on the
    outskirts of Yerevan, where the bodies of two writers are rumored to
    be buried, defying the police ban, but to no avail.

    Some people tend to justify this inaction, arguing that all the
    nationalities of the Soviet empire were subjected to Stalin's terror.

    Even Ukraine's "potato famine" in the 1930s is ranked as a genocide.

    In addition to being Stalin's victims, Armenians suffered some
    300,000 casualties during the Great Patriotic War (World War II)
    against Hitler.

    But what is dissimilar to all other nationalities is that Armenians
    had already experienced a Holocaust -- too big a loss to follow it
    up with a further loss of such magnitude.

    When Poland joined the European Union, its president officially asked
    for additional seats in the European Parliament to represent the 25
    million martyred Poles, killed by Stalin and Hitler.

    Although there was no such provision in the charter of the European
    Union, no one dared to criticize the request.

    On November 22, upon presenting the award to Mr. Gasparyan, I seized
    the opportunity to come up with a proposal, as two government ministers
    were attending the ceremony. Using the formulation of the late poet
    Paruyr Sevak, I said, "I implore you like demanding" that the time
    has come to erect a monument in Armenia commemorating the collective
    loss of the Armenian creative mind during the Stalin era.

    The eve of the Genocide centennial makes the issue that much more
    compelling. A memorial simply named, "A Monument for the Just."



    From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
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