I observed audiences in London and Toronto, in Rotterdam and Santander, when Moscow democrats would make appearances. It was a collision of free minds (the listeners) with minds obsessed (the speakers). The audience listened with polite attention, but also with a growing conviction that the two sides — despite the fact that both consider themselves democrats — move in different worlds, that the listeners are pondering how to increase their comfort and satisfaction in life, whereas the speakers are preoccupied with seeking an answer to the question posed by Solzhenitsyn: How did we get into this quagmire (that is, into communism)?
During the first half of the trip, Leonid P. tries to persuade me that if Trotsky had listened more to his advisers, he would have had a chance of winning against Stalin. Unfortunately, Trotsky was very conceited, sure of himself, petulant even. This turned people against him, even though there were still many who were prepared to lay down their life for him. Let us suppose for a moment that Trotsky had won. What would have happened then? I say that I don’t know. “You don’t know?” He becomes animated. “This is something worth discussing!”
• • •
DURING THE SECOND HALF of the trip my neighbor wonders about whether or not Armenia will secede from the Imperium. As a democrat he approves of separation; as a Muscovite he would prefer that it did not come to that. It would be best, he says, if one could succeed in driving out the Communists and thoroughly democratizing everything. He waxes enthusiastic over this idea, but just in case asks what I think of it.
I reply that, honestly, I do not believe one can democratize an imperium that was created through hundreds of years of conquest and annexation. It is not the time to reach back to examples as distant as those of Rome or even Turkey. Let us take a more recent case, one with which I am familiar from personal experience — Iran in the seventies. The revolution against the shah was a democratic movement, a liberal movement, directed against a police dictatorship. But Iran was a multinational state, governed by the Persians, who ruled over the Arab, Azeri, Baluchi, Kurdish, and other minorities living within its borders. Now these oppressed nations, hearing that someone is talking about democracy in Tehran, immediately translated that slogan into their slogan of independence, immediately wanted to detach themselves and create their own states! Iran is in danger of disintegrating, of losing several important provinces, of being reduced to the status of an amputee state. And it is just then that Greater Persian nationalism finds its voice; its custodians — the Shiite clergy with Ayatollah Khomeini at the forefront — assume full power; the word “democracy” vanishes from banners; and the revolution ends with a series of bloody anti-Azeri, anti-Kurdish, et cetera, expeditions and with the victory of authoritarian rule. Iran’s borders remain unchanged. Finally — I am winding up to the finish, for we are already starting our descent — there exists an insurmountable contradiction between the rigid and peremptory nature of imperium and the elastic and tolerant nature of democracy. The ethnic minorities inhabiting an imperium will take advantage of the slightest whiff of democracy to tear themselves away, make themselves independent, make themselves autonomous. For them, there is one response to the slogan “Democracy”—freedom. Freedom understood as detachment. This of course provokes objections on the part of the ruling majority, which, in order to maintain its privileged position, is ready to resort to the use of force, to authoritarian solutions.
NO SOONER do the wheels of the plane touch the ground than the three hundred passengers aboard the large, heavy AN-86, as though they have been administered an electrical shock, bolt from their seats and amid bellows of joy, elbowing and pushing one another, rush to the exit! But we are only at the start of the runway; the airplane is still careering forward; the fuselage is swaying and rocking; the wheels are bouncing; the shock absorbers are thudding; the stewardesses are shouting, pleading, and threatening; they are trying to push people back into their seats by force, but it’s useless; their efforts are in vain; no one can restrain this crowd any longer; an elemental force has stirred them and seized control of the situation.
Happily we somehow manage to reach the terminal, the steps are rolled up, and then — a new attack of madness, for my fellow passengers, skipping steps, do not so much walk down as fall to the asphalt, and then, loaded down with bags, baskets, bundles, run to the airport building, where a dense, tightly packed, feverish crowd is already waiting for them, and now both of these fired up, vibrating, quivering human throngs throw themselves upon each other with such force, fury, and demonic possession that I observe the scene spellbound. There is no end to the pulling, the hugging, the tussling, the cheering.
Armenians! They must be together. They search for one another the world over, and — the tragic paradox of their fate — the more their diaspora expands and dissipates away, the greater their mutual longing for one another, their desire and need to be together. Only after one understands this characteristic of Armenian nature can one appreciate how painful a thorn for them is the matter of Nagorno-Karabakh — to live a dozen or so kilometers from one another and yet not to be able to be together! An eternal splinter, an eternal wound, an eternal stigma.
• • •
MY ARMENIAN guardian angel, Valery Vartanian, extracts me by some miracle from this crowd and drives me to town, to an apartment full of people (they live in large families here) gathered around a large, spacious table set with all types of food — meats, breads, cheeses, onions, pili-pili, greens of all sorts, and also cakes, sweets, bottles of wine and cognac. But it was always this way here. Is there anything new? What’s new is that children now enter the room and with great emotion, even a sort of dogged determination, sing a song about the fedayeen. The young fedayeen are the heroes of the day, the young men who, without regard for their own lives, will go fight for the freedom of Nagorno-Karabakh.
Yes, now I understand that I have arrived in another Armenia, in an Armenia with fedayeen. This otherness, moreover, has many aspects and forms, as anyone, like me, visiting Yerevan after many years away, will notice.
First — from a small and sleepy one-horse town it has grown into a large city. A busy, noisy, colorful city, very Oriental. It is as if we were in Damascus, in Istanbul, in Tehran. The bazaars are crowded, the streets teem with cars that go where they please, and only one traffic ordinance is in force: the one responsible is the one who hits. A cacophony of horns: everyone, absolutely everyone, is honking, as if to confirm in this way that they are in fact driving. Here and there new bars are opening up, places selling shish kebabs, little restaurants. Shouts, calls, quarrels, haggling, gesticulating. Chaos. Countries such as this react to any political thaw with increased chaos (which is often irritating, but also gives a flavor to life). An odor, difficult to define, of an Eastern city, clouds of dust, malarial dogs in the squares, heat, airlessness — and, here and there, on the sidewalks, against walls, inside gateways, under trees, shreds of restorative, cool shade.