“I asked them: “Had I brought a copy of ‘Eugene Onegin’ published in Armenia, would you have seized it, too? I was given the answer: “Yes”, told Rzayev”.375
The underlying reasons for such line of conduct are quite explicable. Feelings of tolerance and sympathy are in the first place based on knowledge and sufficient information on the subject. The presence of production is an indication of a demiurgic core, and if the commodity is of quality into the bargain, this is bound to develop some sort of a liking or at least a positive attitude to the manufacturing country or nation. For instance, high-quality machinery and equipment from Germany, French perfumes or Chinese silks impact to some extent the country’s recognizability and perception of its citizens in a positive light. The availability of Armenian wares on the shelves of Azerbaijani shops is detrimental to the propagandized image of a hungry and decaying country that is far from any constructive endeavor and void of any capacity for production.
This is the reason for waging a war on Armenian goods and their subsequent destruction for show. To explain the underlying reasons to their consumers, a myth of “food and goods terrorism” is concocted as it is best taken up by the masses, with its potential of affecting everyone. The real purpose behind this clamor in news reports is not an attempt to protect the population from food or goods terrorism. Here, a series of other objectives are pursued:
• preventing the recognizability and emergence of the image of creative Armenians;
• barring the potential dissemination of alternative sources of information;
• intimidating population and whipping up armenophobia as it instills fear and distrust and results in a hatred which can be later exploited by the authorities to advance their agenda;
• producing a conspiracy theory to consolidate the society in the face of a common enemy.
The subversive role of Armenians purported to account for the existence of social problems in Azerbaijan links not only to the issue of Karabakh but is traced back further into history: “Armenians used to spend a lifetime hatching out nefarious schemes to destroy Azeri Turks and did harm even in the happy Soviet times”.
It appears that goods manufactured in the Soviet period carried a far-reaching agenda of causing harm many years later.
The Azerbaijani website Vesti.az: The point is that from the mid-1960s, our republic saw the beginning of the mass construction of 9-storey residential panel buildings and a series of frame stone housing. The USSR Gossnab (State Supplies of the USSR) supplied the Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan with passenger elevators produced by… a plant in Spitak. As early as in 1960s, far-sighted Armenians of Spitak knew that the outbreak of a bloody war between the two peoples over Nagorno-Karabakh was near and were out to cause mischief. The consignment of elevators manufactured for the Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan had deliberately induced manufacturing defects. That is why the residents of the capital city who live in 9-storey panel residential blocks to this day continue to be plagued by these elevators. And we, in our ingratitude, put the blame for this on the management of the elevator maintenance services and public utilities of our capital city.376
Insights into history with a cryptographic slant toward conspiracy theory deserve a special highlight.
Azerbaijan has seen a litany of figures who seek to find reasons explaining the overt and covert Armenian perfidy stemming from some innate traits attributed to ethnic Armenians. Attempts to produce evidence in support of above-stated qualities ascribed to all Armenians without exception took the course of unveiling conspiracy theories, cyphers as well as an occult impact on Azerbaijanis.
Newspaper Vyshka (Watchtower) № 20 (19664) dated 06.1.2007: It would have never occurred to any Azerbaijani who consumed back in 1981 Polyus ice cream produced by the Refrigerator Plant of Baku that it represented a direct reference to Armenian organizations – Artsakh, Dashnaktsutyun, Gnchak, Krunk, ASALA and Miatsum – and that Armenians exchanged information using the products of this very plant. <…> The wrapping paper of the ice cream features 4 colors. The symbols inside and outside the outline of the figure 8 can be deciphered as follows. The blue outline of a shark inside the figure 8 – <…> and the figure itself betokens a plan to seize 8 regions of Nagorno-Karabakh (Shusha, Lachin, Kelbajar, Qubadli, Zangilan, Jabrayil, Fizuli and Agdam) in addition to Agdere, Khojaly and Khojavend. <…> While brown colors joining the band on both ends is none other than firmly anchored boots of the Russian soldiers who help Armenians in seizing the Azerbaijani lands as far as the Iranian border.377
A. Aliyev, Azerbaijani psychologist, affirms that the people of Azerbaijan turn into a society of schizophrenics, with 80 percent of the country’s population facing serious mental problems. Schizophrenia and dementia are the main threats to Azerbaijan. According to the psychologist, the scale of these ailments shows a total incidence, and the society is facing the risk of undergoing genetic mutation. Apart from this, the number of persons suffering from a depression and various neurotic disorders has spiked amid an ever growing rate of divorces, childless marriages and suicides. Also, the society is simply overflowing with aggression.378
The causality of the ongoing social destruction is identified through the string of concepts Armenians – Azerbaijanis – separatism – occupation and is based on the juxtaposition of the presumed characteristics of both groups.
Apart from the “food terrorism”, against which the authorities of Azerbaijan are waging an unequal fight, some representatives of the intellectual community have exposed a “genetic terror” unleashed by Armenians in as early as 1950s. Specifically, Shohrat Eldaniz, the editor-in-chief of Yeni Yekenchi newspaper and at the same time the editor-in-chief of the Internet television channel Kаnаlm5.tv confirmed the prevalence of disruptive social phenomena and after giving the matter a lengthy thought, came to the conclusion that the blame for this lies with Armenians who had mounted a campaign of “genetic terror” against the people of Azerbaijan. To put it otherwise, Armenians have used some pharmaceutical compound to corrupt the gene of the Azerbaijanis who had presumably possessed qualities listed above.
Shohrat Eldaniz, editor-in-chief of Yeni Yekenchi newspaper, chief editor of Kаnаl5. tv: What do you think is going on? Why the seed of our people decays and breaks down? Why there is an increasing level of cruelty, indifference and insensibility? I have reflected a lot examining and studying numerous articles and researches. Apart from a single consideration, nothing sensible came to my mind. There is information that the human body contains codes for over 400 healthy genes. Such concepts as ‘homeland’, ‘love for your land’, ‘moral integrity’, ‘consciousness’ linked to ethnic roots as well as ‘morality’, ‘honor’, ‘kindness’, ‘courage’, ‘heroism’, ‘bravery’, ‘selflessness’, etc. are governed by these genetic codes.
As early as in 1951, in Moscow under Mikoyan’s wing, Professor Edik Sardaryan, the head of Armenian scientists379 voiced at a meeting presided by him “an apprehension over the gene pool of the Azerbaijani nation” and confessed that “if this gene pool continues to develop any further, there will be a risk of Azerbaijanis turning into a dominant force in the Caucasus”. This is how the activities of Armenian scientists aimed at damaging and corrupting the healthy genetic code of Azerbaijanis started in Kremlin.