The famous main monument of Yerevan, the main monument of Armenia, holds a terrible secret of creation. This is the monument to all monuments, if you don’t know. And the story is funny and spooky. And figuratively. What a great metaphor for the entire post-Soviet space! A strong woman with a sword in her hand is either unsheathing or unsheathing, you seem. It is 54 meters tall and flies over the city.
So it’s not what it seems. Until 1962, he was a great Joseph Vissarionovich. And until now, under the skirt covered with a giant shield, the remaining legs, hooves and tail of Stalin were hidden.
Well, why not a metaphor!
He was here until he was 62. And when there were Soviet parades and evening fireworks, the figure of the Caucasian god lit up with ominous cannon flames. And plunged into darkness again. Then again, the gigantic evil ancient god Stalin emerged from the darkness with each new barrage. In 1953, the Demon’s rule ended, but it remained over Yerevan for another ten years. He was thrown out after a prayer in 1962 and nothing remains of him. Nothing? After a creative competition, “Mother Armenia”, “Mayr Aistan” were erected on the old plinth, the pedestal was old, the statue was new, and the dimensions of the Ana were restored to preserve the proportions of the monuments. according to the shoe and the eye from the old idol… This story tells a lot about the mysteries of the post-Soviet countries.
The Moscow-Yerevan plane flies for three and a half hours, right? Something painfully long. Longer distance flights take less time. Why is that, I wonder, and then I forget. While I was flying, locked without tools, I read Vasily Grossman’s story about Armenia. I learn that the “ultra-modern” (in 1961!) IL-18 plane flew from Moscow to Yerevan in three and a half hours. And a modern (in 2022) winged chute flies from Moscow to Yerevan – the same number. What, no progress? What is a slow plane? Everyone around is asking. Thought goes no further. They don’t guess.
Two and two cannot be added. They don’t pay attention to what’s important. They don’t see the little things. Save intellectual energy.
I pay an extra 10 Euros to fly where I choose, I pay an extra 10 Euros to fly in the front where it swings less, I pay an extra 10 Euros to get myself a harmful seat in the back. screaming boy beats methodically and painfully (and we remember how this behavior ends in the movie “Titan”), I pay an extra 10 euros for a place where a completely drunk uncle without pants drinks directly from his throat, he listens to heavy metal, he is not afraid, does not take long, nothing is annoying. Of course, this age-old method of avoiding disappointments and fears works flawlessly on my neighbor, heavy metal in her ears, flowery panties on her slender hips, sleeping on my shoulder. One more second, and I’ll make one of two equally good decisions: I’ll ask for a portion of the drink, or I’ll switch places.
How did they get him on board? It seems like it’s enough to swell to death so you don’t care about everybody and everybody doesn’t care about you. No one from the airline employees can see you so that no one can see you. Everything is the same: they don’t pay attention, they don’t add two and two, they save energy, they’re half asleep, they only react to “keep their back upright”. And try not to.
My new neighbor is sober, reading Grossman’s text over his shoulder. Wow, that route was three and a half hours on those planes in 1961.
-So these were slow planes!
That’s why I say slow.
– What surprised you?
“Nothing surprises me.
But the assistant professor idiot decided to explain.
– And why now three and a half hours for the fast ones?
“It’s not three-thirty now. It’s half-a-half now, well, two hours.
– Yes?
– We only fly around Ukraine. What, don’t you know?
– No, I’m quite aware of it. But I didn’t put two and two together in my head.
We do not understand the obvious. We don’t multiply two by two. There is not enough interest. This is how we protect ourselves from something. So we’re getting ready for something. For some important purpose that will never come, half asleep. Why this saving of intellectual and emotional powers.
I was always very tired. From childhood. I was tired in the first minutes of my life and forever. As a kid, I had 333 relatively honest ways to cheat the routine and not change my pajamas in the morning or evening.
Is there anything that can cheer you up somehow, Olesya asks, and I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. Olesya helps us find characters for a movie about refugees from Azerbaijan in Yerevan. She is also a refugee, a girl with a Ukrainian and Armenian surname. They wanted to make a movie about Baku traditions and nostalgia. And a movie is coming out about the fate of a refugee. In all countries, all the time, the same thing. Olesya came to Armenia in 1990 at the age of 13. She speaks Armenian, but prefers Russian she.
– And what, it does not bother the Russian people here?
– On the contrary, it’s great here, they show a lot here. If you start speaking Russian, someone will always say: it’s nice to show off. Looks like a human forsyth.
We sit on Moscow Square, where the main film festival of Armenia is held at the Moscow cinema – no, not Golden Moscow, but Golden Apricot – opposite the Stanislavsky Russian Theater, Pushkin Street comes here, and even the cafe is called Moscafe. Nobody cancels anything. No one grimaced when they heard him speak Russian. Russians are loved here. Well, it’s happening. The Russian Empire supported the Armenians in all the Russo-Turkish and Russo-Persian wars. True, Stalin solved the Caucasian problem mainly at the expense of Armenia, and the Karabakh problem has its roots. Although the heroes of my film Baku Armenians do not blame Stalin, of course they love Stalin, they blame Gorbachev.
True, it was Gorbi who presided over the Central Committee of the RCP (b) at a meeting of the Caucasus Bureau in 1921, when it was decided to include Karabakh in Azerbaijan, it was true, it was Gorbi who massacred people in Sumgait.
The only fault of this foreigner among themselves is that he cannot pronounce the word “Azerbaijan”. But words are a bad thing. They take revenge on those who do not know how to respect themselves.
Olesya does not like to speak Armenian very much. Armenian is associated with his youth trauma. They came here in the 90s, they were strangers among themselves, the country had no idea what a refugee was, how to integrate them into the local culture. Now wake anyone up at night: say “refugee” and he will begin to show empathy before he regains consciousness. And then … who knew that. There was war, the country was under siege. And so the decision was made. Yes, that’s right – pretending there are no refugees.
They were not taught Armenian, they were not provided with housing. The teacher never asked Olesya in the lessons, no matter how she was prepared, and only at the end, when she got very tired, she put it in front of the whole class and gave hard-to-read passages in Armenian. He read – the class laughed out loud. Such “containment”. Time has passed since then. Olesya, a confident beautiful woman living in London, speaks four languages fluently and prefers Russian to others. “The dentist pulled out a healthy tooth for me because I’m from Baku,” he said casually. But I never listen to such stories. Let Sigmund Freud listen.
But he almost always speaks Russian. I see that they are well received. Full of Russians, mostly Muscovites. There are many people fleeing from Tel Aviv to Yerevan and Tbilisi. As they say in the old KVN: “You are a Jew, but I could not.” Here, those who could not come and those who came here learned the trio of local colonial words: hello, goodbye, thank you. And they speak Russian quite comfortably.
We are in Yerevan. +37 here. in the shade. +47 in the sun. He will have to work. It turns out that this is always the case in August. I could have known this beforehand. But he didn’t know. Energy-saving.
Refugees have lived here for thirty years in hostels with no water, no heating, no shower and a toilet shared by the entire floor, then in 2019 they finally managed to get a certificate of housing. The certificate weighed $23,000. Almost nothing could be bought with this money in 1919, but somehow they bought it. Therefore, today all the dormitories are empty, people have left. Baku life is no longer here. We seem to be late. In fact, they were not late.
There were some who were quite unlucky. They fell into various bureaucratic fraudulent traps and were not given certificates. And so, two years ago, two lonely 80-year-old women, whom everyone forgets, stayed in the whole hostel, which was filled with the sad life of visiting people. Resistant, timid, cheerful, natural. This breed is long gone. She was my grandmother. He lived a difficult life. Previously, other (except hard) life was not given.
Grandmothers make a funny couple – one rude, the other funny. They fled Baku as they were. On a cargo plane, as long as they don’t touch the kids. Their husbands died a long time ago, the children went to Russia, where they stayed on the stone floor, which was hot in the summer and icy in the winter, without heating. They are like old firs stabbed to death in the old house by the cherry orchard residents who fell in love with them. Sometimes journalists come here. For the sake of brilliance, journalists put grandmother Ira (she asks to call herself Irochka) on the bare floor. Why?! How can I know why, if they ask, then it is necessary.
Even the horse rider can give if he wants. The Holy Fathers wrote. If they ask, it means it was needed for some reason. And it’s sitting on the ground. Irochka is one of the simple ones, she was a cashier there, she worked in a factory here. True, he had a three-room apartment there, which he did not like to remember.
Baku Armenians, refugees from Soviet Azerbaijan, blame Gorbi for their troubles. He said “Azebarzhan” like this and went down in history with this clumsy word – how can we solve the Armenian-Azerbaijani problem here. Azebarzhanskaya. So I didn’t find out. Energy-saving.
– Who is to blame for your troubles, Irochka? (Awaiting a familiar answer about Gorby).
– I! – suddenly famous, defiant and wildly ironic answers Irochka. – How do I know who’s guilty? Who is guilty here?
I’m leaving after I manage to find out that there is a chance. It turns out that the rights of refugees have been grossly violated, and Firs is likely to receive a certificate.
The plane was delayed for three hours. I’m starting to get angry, but I remember how Irochka flew here in a cargo plane, and it seemed like her happiness. And I stop getting angry.
The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the editors’ position.
Source: Gazeta
