Among those who care enough for their country to strive to gain some minimal level of political literacy, virtually anyone who supported the revolution now lives in shame and regret. Even the lucky few who could claim to have opposed it at the time now regret not having done more to have prevented it. Regardless of where we stood at the time, it’s fair to say that almost all of us who can claim to truly care for the country in any meaningful and constructive way now have a more positive view of the previous authorities than we did back then.
Looking back, there are many things that I find frustrating about the administrations of Robert Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan, and in almost every case, the cause of my frustration is usually the exact opposite of what most thought the real problem was at the time. While most considered the two leaders self-serving authoritarian dictators, looking back, in addition to their unjustifiable pursuit of democracy and civil liberties, the main problem seems to have been the fact that these two men strived to maintain certain virtues and to adhere to certain codes of honor while leading a country facing war and under siege by domestic agents of the enemy who operated by an entirely different set of values.
I was reminded of this again this week during several different instances, as the two former presidents moved along the campaign trail, in their struggle to wrest control of the government from the traitors currently seemingly determined to eradicate the country. The first instance came during Serzh Sargsyan’s emotional response to the scandalous revelation that the government is still holding on to hundreds of bodies of martyred soldiers and storing them like one would store piles of garbage.
One of the most repeated reactions to the video was that this seemingly highly genuine emotional outburst may have been the most extensively Serzh Sargsyan has ever mentioned his war time experience during his three decades in the public eye. It was a stark reminder to most about how the man has refused to exploit his military experiences in order to advance his political fortunes.
This reminded me of the revelation two years ago on the anniversary of the Liberation of Shushi that Robert Kocharyan had been a participant in the battle as a common soldier. His detachment was tasked with the less glorious task of securing the road connecting Shushi to Berdzor, in order to cut off the Azerbaijani reinforcements that were expected to arrive. Those reinforcements, however, never arrived. As usual, the revelation was not made by Robert Kocharyan nor anyone from his camp.
This was par for the course for the man who kept his wife and children in Stepanakert during the siege of Stepanakert- reading to his children while the bombs fell on the city- just to maintain morale among citizens. It was at this time that his wife was injured from enemy shells. It was also around this time that his brother’s hands were permanently mutilated during battle. Unfortunately, he didn’t find it necessary to bring much public attention to any of this during his presidency or even thereafter. Now I ask you to please compare this to the behavior of the leader of the Azerbaijani regime of Yerevan throughout the recent war and the reports of the time his family members spent in Canada.
While this code of honor may seem maddening to many of us, it is surprisingly and frustratingly widespread among those we trusted with the stewardship of our country. Many wonder how it is that the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, the party that time and time again makes the biggest sacrifices for the country, has to prove its loyalty and defend itself from the accusations made by local Azerbaijani agents.
Perhaps the biggest contribution to this is its strict resistance to exploiting its battlefield sacrifices, and the rigid limitations it places on its combat volunteers in their ability to photograph and publicize their time in uniform. This is based on the belief that the uniform is sacred and cannot be used for self promotion. Before he was an excommunicated domestic terrorist advancing the agenda of the Republic of Turkey, “selfiedayi” Jirayr Sefilian first began facing problems with the party leadership over this issue.
Unfortunately, while such a code of honor may be admirable and even necessary in a psychologically healthier and more mature society and in a country with much stronger national security institutions, it seems like madness in a highly politically immature society that was under a multipronged disinformation siege meant to cripple its defenses and break its fighting spirit. It is difficult to believe that these men decided to adhere to such a code in a country so riddled with foreign agents and a society that seemed to have no limits in its insatiable thirst for lies and tabloids.
I personally can’t think of any example that better highlights the ills of our society than when at the height of the revolution, on April 23rd, the military evading, military defaming, camo wearing leader of the Azerbaijani regime of Yerevan brought a man on stage who was introduced as the grandfather of martyred Hero of Artsakh Robert Abajyan. The man would go on to explain how his grandson had come to him in a dream and had asked him to go on and participate in the protests.
The only problem was that this man was not Robert Abajyan’s grandfather. The real Mr. Abajyan watched the events unfold in shock and sadness from the television in his living room. And the most disheartening point: Armenian society saw nothing in the controversy that was worthy of pause or self evaluation.
And this was the society that Kocharyan and Sargsyan thought to prioritize a code of honor for.
Sadly, even after their earlier experiences, neither of these men nor their family members seemed to want to change course. We were reminded of this again today when Levon Kocharyan decided to publicize a video of himself during the recent war. He only found it necessary to do so because of the personal attack made against him on the campaign trail regarding this topic by the leader of the Azerbaijani regime of Yerevan.
Had it not been for that personal attack, this video would have likely never the light of day. I personally did not have access to the internet after the first few days of the war, so forgive me if I’m mistaken, but from what I understand, only a single news release was made at the start of the war regarding Levon’s intention to participate.
Now I ask you to compare this to the disrgraceful circus that was the son and wife of the leader of the Azerbaijani regime of Yerevan, during the war. Who could forget when the members of the ruling government and even the wife of the aforementioned regime leader began spreading a story about how the son of their leader had been injured in battle after being the only one at his frontline post to refuse to abandon his position under bombardment.
Of course stolen valor by itself wasn’t enough dishonor for these people. They also had to make sure to include an attack on the dignity and honor of actual soldiers. Government members were forced to become silent on the matter- with his mother deleting her facebook post- only after it was announced that there was no hospitalization record of the son. Perhaps the hospital staff had just had a hard time in identifying the young man after his invigorating post battle eyebrow wax.
Sadly, there is no shortage of these maddening examples. In recent years, I was mistaken in my belief that there wasn’t much critical information left regarding the Armenian political landscape that I wasn’t already aware of. Because the very same Levon Kocharyan provided me with one such piece of information two years ago when he found it necessary to publicize photographs of his military service during the presidency of his father.
These photos only saw the light of day because, during the 2018 campaign trail, the very same leader of the Azerbaijani regime of Yerevan decided to claim that his son was the first son of a leader of Armenia to serve in the Armed Forces (Serzh Sargsyan doesn’t have any sons).
Had the aforementioned regime leader not decided to retreat to his one and only ability, making false hateful sensationalist attacks, this piece of information would likely never have become public. Speaking to several friends who I consider experts on the political affairs of Armenia, almost none were aware that Levon Kocharyan had served in the Armenian Armed Forces.
For some reason, Robert Kocharyan never found it necessary to exploit his son’s service for political gain. Now I ask you to please compare that to the circus that was the military service of the son of the leader of the Azerbaijani regime of Yerevan.
Sadly, these baffling acts of self-censorship and silence were not limited to the military field. For twenty years, Robert Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan had done what Levon Ter-Petrosyan and his minions such as the aforementioned regime leader had claimed was impossible: develop and advance the Armenian economy while firmly holding on to Artsakh.
In any psychologically sane and morally healthy society- in any other country for that matter- there was nothing newsworthy here: not only had the two men led the struggle for the liberation of those territories and had then prevented its betrayal, but they were also native to the region. Of course, they had the region’s best intentions in their hearts.
However, Armenia was no morally healthy society. And therefore in the vacuum of morals and honor, the dishonorable prospered. And in the process, defying all logic, those who we knew were financed by institutions and nations whose intended goal was the fall of Artsakh, convinced Armenian society that the two natives of the mountainous regions who had led its liberation were now planning its handover.
Sadly what was going on behind closed doors could not have been more different. Around the same time that Armenians around the world were demonstrating the depths of their immorality as they cheered the cold-blooded murder of police officers by the goons of the Turkish terrorist Jirayr Sefilyan, Serzh Sargsyan was fighting the diplomatic war for all that we held sacred.
One only can wonder what the leader of the Azerbaijani regime of Yerevan said when he was made the same offer.
“Alexander, listen to me, listen to me, I cannot do this. Why? Because these seven regions- they were conquered by five thousand boys who gave their lives for it.”
Unfortunately, Serzh Sargsyan never found it necessary to try to publicize and exploit such sentiments for political gain. Their inherent worth and sacredness was in the fact that they were not being said for public approval. However, he didn’t seem to understand that they were many servants of the enemy who were more than willing to make such statements in public- even if they had very different plans in private.
Despite not ceding an inch to the demands of his Russian and Belarusian counterparts, Serzh Sargsyan would go on to complete that summer of diplomatic battles by securing the Russian delivery of the 9K720 Iskander ballistic missile system, the BM-30 Smerch multi-launch rocket system, TOS-1A thermobaric multi-rocket launcher, the Tor-M2KM air defense system, the BUK-M1-2 air defense system, and Avtobaza radio jamming system.
Serzh Sargsyan never found it necessary to explain how Armenia was acquiring Russian weapons whose actual market values could not possibly be met by the Armenian state budget expenditures. Let alone that they were being acquired while repelling Russian diplomatic demands.
After all, these weapons weren’t meant for public relations points like say a crippling $130 million dollar purchase of four rocketless, bareboned fighter jets in a conflict where the Azerbaijani Mig-29s had virtually never left the ground. These weapons were to be added to the arsenal of the armed forces of the nation that had defeated Azerbaijan in four days during the April War.
Only for four years to pass and for the Iskandar to go unused in war before being used on Shushi, and for the Armenian people to then claim that these lands were signed away long ago by Serzh Sargsyan and Robert Kocharyan.
I can go on and on. I can explain in detail that according to those with access to the closest thing Serzh Sargsyan has to an inner circle, Serzh Sargsyan has not spoken to his own brother since 2011. But that he chose to take the hate upon himself rather than publicize his family affairs and bring dishonor to it.
Or that a long, long time ago Robert Kocharyan stated that there were things about the Poghos Poghosyan affair that if they were to be made public, public opinion of the incident would shift drastically. But that it would not be honorable to accuse a man who was no longer present to defend himself, and therefore he was done discussing the incident.
However, the gist of it is this: as mere mortals these men surely have human weaknesses and character flaws and are bound to have made mistakes in their thirty years in the public eye.
However, their biggest shortcoming seems to have been the fact they were bound by a code of honor while their country faced an onslaught by those who had none.