Living in The Lie

Oral History Society
Living in the Lie: The Armenian Intelligentsia in the Soviet Union Author(s): John W. Mason Source: Oral History, Vol. 33, No. 2, Memory Work (Autumn, 2005), pp. 57-68 Published by: Oral History Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40179870 . Accessed: 01/04/2014 03:52
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LIVING
THE
IN
THE
LIE:
THE
IN ARMENIAN INTELLIGENT
SOVIET UNION
by John W Mason
This article explores the thought-world of the Armenian intelligentsia living in the Soviet Union from 1920 to 1991 and asks how they perceived their existence in a closed, ideologically<:harged society which demanded unquestioning conformity to its goals and values. Using Vaclav Havel's essay, The Power of the Powerless', written in 1978, as a reference point, the article examines the basic question: how can a person be both a victim and a supporter of the communist system? Based on life story interviews with four Armenian professionals, born between 1919 and 1930, the article looks at the myths that sustained their lives and how the Soviet system gained legitimacy from its greatest potential critics, the intelligentsia.
Because the regime is captive to its own lies, it must falsify everything.... Individuals need not believe all these mystifications, but they must behave as though they did, or they must tolerate them in silence.. . .For this reason, however,they must live within a lie. ' In his famous essay, 'The Power of the Powerless', written in 1978, the Czech dissiwho dent, VaclavHavel,tells of the greengrocer puts a poster with the slogan, 'Workersof the world, unite!', in his front window. He puts the sign in the window, not necessarilybecause he believes in the message but because he knows therecould be troubleif he refuses. Havel goes on to say that the sign helps the greengrocerto conceal his rather base motives for hiding Fromthis behindthe grandfacade of ideology.2 simple example the author develops his argument against the 'post-totalitarian' system of communism,under which he lived. This system is based on an ideology which touchespeoplein everyaspect of their lives and providesthem with the illusion that they are in harmonywith the human order.Imagineif one day the greengrocer snaps and decides to removethe sign from the window.What are the consequences? He not only breaksthe rules of the game, he exposes it as a game, because in Havel's words, 'living in the lie can constitute The system the system only if it is universal'.3 can only work as long as everyone accepts it and it will only break when individuals reach into their own consciousness and conscience and reject it. The line of conflict between what Havel calls the 'aimsof life' and the 'aimsof the system' therefore runs through each person because everyone is both a victim and a supporterof the system.4 Havel'scritiqueof the Soviet system stands in a line of powerful existential denunciations of mid-twentiethcenturycommunist totalitarianism from CzeslawMilosz'sTheCaptiveMind to Alexander Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago. When I went to teach at YerevanState LinguisticUniversityin Armeniaas a Fulbright Scholar in 2000/01 I was imbued with these
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Autumn2005 ORAL HISTORY 57
Map of Armenia, from Intourist booklet Sowjetarmenien published in the USSR (no date)
critiques of the Soviet system, written mostly from the perspectiveof the 'captivenations' of eastern Europe. I soon discovered that Armenia's seventy-year experienceas a republic of the Soviet Union was quite different.When I began teaching an oral history course at the universityI learnedthat the studentsknew little about the history of Soviet Armenia in the twentieth century,so I asked them to conduct their own interviews with their parents and Fromthese beginningsI later set grandparents. up a larger oral history project in Yerevan in 2001 in which a team of Armenianjournalists and postgraduates interviewed seventy-seven respondents who had lived in Soviet Armenia from 1920 to 199 1. The four interviewsused in this paper are taken from that project.
At first I was worriedthat the life storyinterview format would yield little useful information. After all oral history was unknown to Armeniansand respondentswere often waryof telling their life story to an interlocutorwith a tape recorder even when they knew one another.Most of the interviewswere conducted in Armenian, then translated and transcribed into English. It was often a new experiencefor a respondentto talk on seriousissues so openly for such a long time (one and a half to two hours). Others were afraid that their story would reach the present-dayequivalent of the KGB, but for the most part they spoke about their lives with great candourand passion. The interviewsin this studywere conducted almost ten yearsafterArmeniabecamean inde-
58 ORAL HISTORY Autumn2005
pendent state in 1991. It is importantto have an idea of the social conditions of present-day Armenia and to understand that the 1990s stood in a kind of chain reaction to two previous historicalperiods which have left a powerful markon the Armenianpsyche:the centuries of life under Ottoman rule culminatingin the genocideof 19 15; and the Soviet era from 1920 to 1991. The history of the Armenian peoples stretches back 3,000 years, but the defining momentof theirexistence in moderntimes was the genocide of 1915 at the hands of the Turks killingan estimatedmillion and a half Armenians. 5This great crime and perhaps just as its persistentdenialby the Turks,has important, left everyArmenianwith an 'unhealedwound'.6 But it should be rememberedthat the image of the Armenianpeople as a nation of victims has been fostered more by the western Armenians of the diaspora(especiallythose who settled in the United States) than by the easternArmenians who inhabit present-dayArmenia.7It has even been suggested by some historians that preserving the memory of the 1915 genocide has become a means of keeping the diaspora Armenianidentity alive.8The eastern Armenians, by contrast, alreadyhave a home and it is often forgotten in the West that the territorial remnants of the Armenian nation were saved from certain extinction in 1920 when the Eleventh Red Army of the Soviet Union crushed an advancing Turkish army.9In the same year Armeniacame under Soviet rule. In contrast to the 'captive nations' of eastern Europe therefore, the Armenians saw their Soviet rulers as protectors rather than conquerors and the Republic of Armenia remainedfor the next two generations, in the words of Ronald Suny, a ioyal millet' of the Soviet Union.10 This historical experience was bound to be reflectedin the testimonies of our 'eastern'Armenianrespondents. Duringseventyyearsof Soviet rule Armenia changed from being a peasant-based agricultural countryto an urban-basedindustrialone and this economic progress was accompanied by a revivalof Armenianculture and nationalism. In Yerevanthe largest statue of Stalin in the Soviet Union was removed in the early 1960s and later replaced by one of 'Mother Armenia'." Yet this outbreak of Armenian nationalism in the 1960s was directed not againstthe dominantRussians,but against the traditionalenemy,the Turks. The Soviet Armenians first turned against their masters in Moscow in 1988, when they demanded the transfer of Nagorno-Karabakh (an autonomous region within Azerbaijan)to Armenia.12 Armeniaopted for independencein
Mother Armenia, from the Intourist booklet V\s\\ez L'Armenie, published in the USSR [no date)
1991 but the small landlockedrepublicof three and a half million people suffered a series of horrendous problems over the next decade, including an earthquake(which claimed up to 100,000 lives), war with Azerbaijan, an economic blockade, political corruption and economic collapse.15 From 1991 Armenia presenteditself to the world as an independent republicwith a popularlyelected presidentand parliament,its own armyand all the trappings of independent statehood. But its citizens had a different experience; they felt that life in Armenia had become, in the words of Nora ' Dudwick, . . .a disturbingmixtureof chaos and authoritarianism'.14 In 2001, when the interviewstook place, an estimatedeighty per cent of Armenia'spopulation lived below the povertyline (establishedat one US dollar a person per day), the health system had collapsed, pensions were virtually wiped out and there was a mass exodus of Our respondentswere bound to young people.15
Lenin statue beheaded in 1992, from My Yerevan, by A Zakoyan, et al, Yerevan, Acnalis, 2002, p 26
look backon the Soviet era throughthe filterof lives. But I shallarguethat the theirpresent-day reverse process was also at work. In other memoriesof the Soviet words,our respondents' indepast shapedhow they viewed present-day, pendent Armeniaof the 1990s. Indeed, I hope to show that it was the memoriesof theirearlier lives which had the stronger imprint on their testimonies. All the respondents were chosen by the interviewersthemselves and they all belonged to the intelligentsiain the broadestsense. With its bias towardsurbanmiddle-classinhabitants of the capital city this sample makes no claim of the Armenianpeople as to be representative a whole. In this paper I shall draw on the life story interviews with four Armenians, born between 1919 and 1930, who held responsible positions, respectively, as broadcaster, army officer, school inspector, and journalist in the Stalinist and post-Stalinist era of the Soviet Union. As members of the middle echelon of the intelligentsiathey were not policy makers, but nor were they uncriticalconsumersof mass Soviet propaganda.The nature of their work brought them into close relationshipwith the CommunistPartyand often compelledthem to act as a mouthpiecefor the regime'svalues and goals. When I beganmy interviewsI was interested in the very question that Havel posed in his essay:how could a person be both a victim and a supporter of the system? Havel's answer is that everyone knew at the time that the ideology of the communist system was based on a packof lies, but that the priceof publiclyadmitting it was too high (for example, loss of livelihood, punishment for the family, etc) and therefore the individual bowed to the greater power of the state and meeklyput the poster in the window.This analysisof communistsociety is based on the assumptionthat the individual self is capable of thinkingand acting independently of the system. Havel concludes logically that the individuallivingin this systemhas only one of two choices: 'livingthe lie' or 'livingthe truth'.16 I soon discovered that posing the question in this way takes no account of the person who might be a true believer in the communist system.The personwho is a convincedcommunist simplydoes not fit into Havel'scategories. Of course, the existence of the true believerin the communistideologyraisesfurtherquestions about the identity of the individual in such a system. For example, do individuals have a sense of themselves and their interests independentlyof the system in which they lived?17 These are questions about an individual's subjectiveunderstandingof himself or herself
outside the official realm of public ideology which, I believe, oral historyis ideallysuited to investigate. I shall classify our respondents' narrativesroughlyin orderof the position they adopted towards the dominant communist ideology, from true believer to outright opponent.
TRUE BELIEVER
Zaven was born in the town of Artik in the northern part of Armenia in 1927 of parents who had fled from the Turkish genocide a decade earlier.He was a brightpupil and learnt well from his socialist text books that in all previous periods of history the majority of people are always poor and the minorityrich. He also saw in his nativetown that people were receiving free medical aid, free education and flats free of charge. He hurried to join the CommunistPartywhile still under-age(sixteen) He then because of its 'progressiveideology'.18 won a scholarship to university, became a lecturer in international relations within the CentralCommittee of the ArmenianCommunist Partyand the first political broadcasterfor Armeniantelevision. In his work as broadcasterZaven claimed that he never spoke from a preparedtext. He insisted that he '...was not controlled by anyone' and referredto himself as a 'scientist' who was able to stand apartfrom conventional Because he spoke without a political fashion.19 text he believedthat he had genuinefreedomto say whateverhe liked: . . .it is customaryto say.. .that under socialist rule there was an iron curtain on the border of the Soviet Union... but such a curtain didn't exist for me. I always spoke bravely.There was censorship at the time but [it] never concerned me... I always spoke without notes and I was allowed to do that and afteranalysingmy speech I was told that I had spoken very boldly, independently.20 Zaven's testimony reveals the life of a true believer in the communist ideology, similar in some ways to that of Lev Kopolev, the model for Rubin in Solzhenitsyn's The First Circle.21 The progressionof his career,from the time he joined the Communist Party at the age of sixteen to his mature years, is mirroredin the progressof the Soviet Union itself. He recalled that the happiestmoment of his life was 9 May 1945, when the war ended and he was just finishing school: 'Our happiness had no bounds... It seemed the victory had rescued us and our way of life so that the path to studywas Like the stages of the cross the open for us'.22
greatvictoryover fascismin 1945 was followed by a set of familiar achievements in science, industry,social welfare and culture in the postStalin years.23 Zaven's communist world view had been formed in his youth and nothing he experiencedthereafterled him to change it. As an Armeniancitizen he felt protected living in the Soviet empire. As an academic and broadcaster his own private identity was indistinguishablefrom that of his public Soviet persona and he felt genuinely free to express his opinions becauseon essentialstherewas nevergoing to be a clash between the two. When Armeniabecameindependentin 1991 Zaven reacted by denying it. The war, poverty and chaos of the 1990s only confirmed in his mind the superiorityof the Soviet system. But I believe his testimony shows that it was not so much the realities of the 1990s as the fixity of his ideologicalmind-setwhich shapedhis views of both the presentand the past. He denied that Armeniawas independentnow because, as he said, 'How can a hungryman be independent?'24 As for freedom,he claimedthat the only time in his life that he was ever forbiddento speak as a broadcaster was after Armenia had become the independent.Indeed,Zavenhad internalised official Soviet ideology to such a degree that he used words such as 'freedom' and 'independence' to mean almost the exact opposite of what they normallymean in the post-communist world.25 Zavenidentifiedtotallywith the Sovietideology and was closed to information which conflicted with his Soviet mind-set. Not only was he imperviousto informationfrom outside the Soviet Union, but his testimony revealeda highly selective account of Soviet history: no mention was made of the Stalinist repressions of the 1930s and 1940s or the steady streamof propaganda lies which continued throughout the post-Stalin decades. Zaven regarded the Soviet experiment in communism as not only legitimate but laudable. There is no reason to question the genuineness of his beliefs. The Soviet state's monopoly on the socialization process affected his political views so completely that he could not think critically about his situation. The existence of a true believer like Zaven puts into question Havel's analysisof 'post-totalitarian' society becausehis model denies that a convincedcommunistcould actuallylive within the communistsystem. Zaven'slife story also challengesthe stereotype of the Armenian as a victim without a homeland.For Zaven the Soviet Union was not only 'normal', it was the only place he could imagine living in, because it was there that Armenianslike himself had found a safe home within which they could build their own
successful careers.26 He remainedan Armenian patriot within the vast multi-national Soviet empire; but because he had already found a home his self-imagewas far removed from the image of the Armenianas a victim, which the diasporacommunitykept alive with vague calls for a returnto the 'homeland'.27
WITHRESERVATIONS BELIEVERS
Our next two respondentscome closer to fitting Havel'smodel because they showed a capacity to think criticallyabout the communistsystem. But in spite of their reservations, they too believed in the fundamental soundness of the communist system and therefore, like Zaven, felt no need to choose either of Havel'soptions - 'living in the lie' or 'living the truth'. Hakob was born in 1919 in a village in Karabakh and becausehis fatherhad died in the civil war before his son was born the village committee offered Hakob a free education for ten years at a boarding school, after which he fought with a tank brigadein WorldWarTwo. Hakob was proud of his role in 'setting the world free of fascism' in 1945 and he remembered the years afterwards as a time when people were 'free' and had the opportunityto Electricimprovetheir lot throughhardwork.28 ity and natural gas were installed for the first time in buildings in Yerevan and everybody, even children from illiterate families, had the chance to get a free education. Orlando Figes has writtenthat 'The Soviet systemwas defined This by its belief in science and technology'.29 was certainlyreflected in Hakob'sown fatherless familyas he saw his brotherrise to become an engineer and his sister become a scientist. The Soviet system was for him a meritocracy based on education:'People believed in knowledge. They believed in a better life through We can see here, as we saw with knowledge.'30 Zaven, how the 'myth' of progress was deeply ingrainedin Hakob'slife: how industrialisation, scientific education and the ethic of hard work served to legitimatethe Soviet system.31 Hakob'sown careerprogression reflectedthe system he so admired.After the war he became commander-in-chief of guardtroops in Yerevan and then in the Khrushchev era he became directorof a collective farm in the Echmiadzin region of Armenia. In both these positions Hakob won many state awards for his achievements. He was a devoted Communist Party member and proudly held on to his party membership after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Hakobwas a productof the Stalinyears and a strong believer in the communist ideology; but he was also able to step back from the propaganda messagesof the regimeand criticise some its policies. Perhapspreciselybecause he
was such an unwavering supporter of the communist ideology he was able to straddle a close line between acceptanceand rejectionof the Stalinist terror and violence in the 1930s and 1940s. He made it clear in the interview that in the Stalin years he was unawareof the extent of the atrocities committed by the regime.He knew that famousArmenianwriters and many prisonersof war were executed, but he accepted the regime's official explanation In the that they were 'enemies of the people.'32 1950s, when Khrushchev denounced Stalin's crimes, Hakob remarked, 'I felt very bad...deceived and cheated.'" Hakob's disillusionment with the Soviet propagandastate grew in the post-Stalinyears, but did nothing to shake his conviction in the of socialismas an economic system. superiority His testimonyshows that he was able to stand both inside and outside the ideological box, which was the only thought system he ever knew.He declaredthat 'Anti-capitalist thoughts were implanted in our brains since birth'; yet when travel restrictions were lifted in the 1960s, he could see for himself that life was better even in EasternEuropeancountries like Poland and Hungary.Hakob became increasingly sceptical, even contemptuous, of the propagandahe was fed: Their Marxism-Leninism preached to us that capitalism is a rotten system, that it's exploitationof man by man.. .But when we found out that in these capitalistcountries people lived betterand were free and happy, we came to the conclusion that whatever we were taughtwas wrong....35 Still, Hakob's awareness of the lies that he was being fed did not turn him against the Soviet system. He was bitterabout the yearsof and he accusedArmenia's leaders independence of failing the people and robbing the country for their own gain. Nevertheless, his main regretaboutthe seventyyearsof Sovietrulewas thatsocialismhad neveractuallybeen achieved. Unlike Zaven, Hakob could acknowledge the atrocitiesof the Stalin yearsand the deceptions perpetrated during the post-Stalinist decades. However these were almost academic questions to him because, although he felt deceivedthat he had not been told the truth,he never became disillusioned with the system itself. Hakob'slife story is one of compromise and adjustmentto the Soviet system. It is also a searchfor a way throughthe thicketof Soviet lies and propaganda and in this sense it reminds me of Roy Medvedev'sclassic denunciationof Stalinwrittenin 1971, Let HistoryJudge.Both men felt the need to castigateStalin'scrimes as
accidentaldeformitiesin order to proclaimthe basic soundness of the Soviet system.36 By the section headings I use in this paper I do not mean to implythat the populationliving in Soviet Armenia can be divided neatly into believers and unbelievers in the official ideology. Formanypeople belief in the officialideology must have co-existed with residual resentment or even hatred of the actual This was certainly true for our next system.37 respondent. Karlen was born in 1920 in a village in the Ani region of Armenia. His mother worked as a milkmaid on a collective farm and the family lived in a primitive hut which they shared with the sheep. When Karlen's father died, the family moved to Yerevan and he attended the Orjonikidze
Statue of Stalin pictured in Yerevan in 1950, from Zakoyan, et al, My Yerevan,
2002, p 149
School where therewas a committeeof security who spied on severalof his friendsand arrested them for anti-Sovietactivities.Karlenknew that one careless word could have put him under suspicionand this shapedhis view of the Stalin I felt a hatredtowardsStalinyears:'Personally ism. It was such a system that nobody could resist it... regardlessof your status you had to be devoted to it.'38 Fromthe middle of the war years, however, he began to view the Soviet system in a more positive light. As we have seen, for this generation the war againstfascismwas a crucialfactor in legitimizing the Soviet system. Karlen enjoyed belonging to a multi-nationalempire where all nationalgroups were treatedequally, 'universal'values were respected and the state guaranteedeveryonea livelihood: I could go whereverI wanted in the Soviet Union. ..you were a man, a world war and you were worthyof respect. participant Then people were absolutely free in the areas of work and education... the state took careof them. Everyonecould receivea and highereducationfree. Besides, primary the right to live was protected and supported by the state. So I think that in that despotism there were very good things.39 In the late 1940s Karlen became head teacher in a village school and then regional inspector of education where he headed a propagandagroup which organised seminars and lectures on the basics of Marxism-Leninism. He admittedthat he had to be very careful about what he said and how he acted in this work and these constraints put him in a false position: We followed our heads. As I am more democraticand free thinkingin my character so in my essence I ignoredthis ideology. From the inside only I was an opponent. I was against these values but nobody could express his thinkingand feelings.40 Karlen said it was an 'awful thing' to live under a regime that did not allow free speech and he called the Soviet electoral system a 'mockery' because it did not allow man's 'natural' wish to express his own views and The personalityin an atmosphereof freedom.41 role of the presswas to promotethe goals of the state, not question the party ideology. 'It was intolerablefor us this compulsoryway of thinking', he said, but by 'us' he meant the intelliKarlen,nevertheless,believedthat the gentsia.42 Soviet system worked well for the majorityof
the people becauseit was guided by social laws which were strictly enforced and were perceived by everyone as fair: '...these rules were very human and well elaboratedrelating to education, social welfare and employment and I think the system from this viewpointwas wonderful.'43 Karlen's ambivalence towards the Soviet system was partly a function of the different jobs he held in his long career.He disliked the ideological pressuresplaced on him as head of a propagandagroup and before that as editor of a village newspaper, but as director of a teacher training institute he flourished. Work was the crucial activity in the life of a Soviet citizen and Karlenloved it: We found our happinessin work.. . .We had regular holidays, going to sanatoria on holiday vouchers that were given to us by the authorities.It was organisedvery well. It means that our work was appreciated greatly by the state. We had opportunities to enjoy our free time and I travelled all over the Soviet Union.44 Looking back from the year 2001 on his busyworkinglife and happyfamilyexistencein the Soviet era, he called it a 'normal way of life'.45 Karlenexpressedgreaterreservationsabout the Soviet regimethanthe two previousrespondents and it is clear from his testimonythat he held on to an areaof privatethoughtwhich was precious to him and stood in opposition to the public ideology. And yet, as we have seen, althoughKarlenhated Stalinism,he would not attackthe Soviet systemas such becauseit validated his life's work as an educatorand propagandist. He hated the mind conformityof the ideology,but his hatredwas not strong enough to lessen his admiration for the system itself with which he was so closely identified. Karlen'stestimony seems on the surface to fit Havel'smodel of the person who knows that the regime is built on lies, but still continues to support it, either out of fear or in the knowledge that to oppose it openly would demand unacceptable sacrifices from him. And yet a Karlensaid naggingdoubt remains.Everything suggests that he abhorred the propaganda excesses of the Soviet state, but not the ideology itself. In other words, he would claim that the regimelied, not that it was builton lies. This kind of hedging is not allowed for in Havel's straightforward'lie' versus 'truth' dichotomy. Speaking ten years after the collapse of the Soviet Union Karlenwould have no reason to hesitate in condemning the Soviet system. Yet he refused to speak against the system because
the key values he had so thoroughly internalised and beliefs of its ideology,even while retaining a critical independence in his thought at the level of everydayexistence. OPPONENT Our last respondentdiffers from all the others in being the only one whose familywas directly affected by the Stalinist repressions of the 1930s. As we shall see, this experience,coupled with the fact that he came from an Armenian family which was both religious and wealthy, turned him into an implacable enemy of the Soviet system. Arsen was born in 1930 in a village near Artashatin the Araratdistrict, the son of a wealthylandownerwho lost everything in the collectivisationcampaignin 1934: Everythingwas confiscated. Even the pots of pickles were taken away, can you imagine? I was a child but that day remained in my memory firmly. One of themwas sittingon the divan,his leg on the chairand a sheet of paperon his knees and he was noting in detail what was taken.46 Two years later Arsen's father returnedand was made to work on a collective farm while the family received one cow as their main privatesource of livelihood. Arsen excelled at school, graduated from and beganhis life-long Yerevan StateUniversity careeras editor and writerfor a youth newspaper called The Pioneer. The Pioneer was a state-
task becausehe did not believe in these goals in the first place: All the stories had to be of an educational All the heroes were artificialand character. had nothing in common with real life.... It was an unanimated literature. We were constantly asking this or that journalistto write such material and it wasn't pleasant for them to write such false stories.47 He admittedthat writers received good pay and enjoyedmanyprivilegesin the Soviet years, but in returnthey had to write accordingto an ideological plan: 'Certainlynone of the writers believed in what they wrote.'48 Arsen was unequivocal in his hatred of communismbecausehe believedit was basedon a denial of basic human freedoms. He never forgot his childhood memories of the persecution of his fatherin the 1930s and the arrestsof his grandfather and uncle in the 1940s. He condemnedStalin as an enemy of Armeniaand he knew that many other people thought the same way but were too afraid to speak freely: 'We spoke in a low voice so that nobody could hear us, as we knew that spies were everyEven under the Khrushchev 'thaw', where.'49 when material conditions improved, Arsen continued to believe that communism was an abominablesystem which ought never to have taken root in any society. For him none of the economicand socialbenefitsbroughtby communism weighedin the balanceagainstits recordof and denialof basicfreedoms. violentpersecution Equally important in shaping Arsen's view of communism was its hostility towards reli-
Yerevan State University, present day, from Armenia, A Country and the People, 7999, p 87.
owned newspaperwhose aim was to instil into the youngergenerationthe values and goals of communism.For Arsen this was an agonizing
housegion. He grew up in a devoutlyChristian hold in a rural area and as he said, '... in the atmosphereof a villageatheismdoesn'twork'.50 Fromhis early life Arsen had learnedfrom his wealthy, religious family certain values and beliefswhich stood at odds with the communist ideology. He was the only one of our respondents who spoke as though he could have been one of Havel'ssubjects:he remaineduntouched and had no diffiby the communistpropaganda culty distinguishingbetween right and wrong and truth and falsity. He alone perceived that he was 'livingin the lie'. CONCLUSION Oral testimony gives us valuable information about the privatelives of citizens whose voices had been hitherto silenced under totalitarian regimes. But as Luisa Passerini reminds us, merely giving voice to those who had been silenced previouslyby history is not enough.51 We have seen from the first three respondents that some of the most revealingaspects of their testimoniesis what they left out of them. These silences, based on self-censorship, had been practisedfor decadesunderSoviet rule and this habit of mind continued long after the system collapsed. In accounting for these omissions it is importantto rememberthe generation-specific content and tone of these narratives. All our respondentswere born between the years 1919 and 1930 and thereforethe formativeyears of their lives were spent in the 1930s and 40s. These were also the formative decades of the Soviet Union, when the Stalinist repressions and the 'Great PatrioticWar' against fascism defined the Soviet experiment.For this generation the Sovietideologyboredown on them like a heavyweightand theycould not treatit lightly even when they were opposed to it. All our with a respondentsconstructedtheirnarratives themselvesand accountingfor view to justifying the ways in which they survivedand even prospered throughthis darkperiod of history. Havel's observation - that every person is both a victim and supporterof the communist system - certainlyapplies to our respondents, but not exactly in the way that he imaginedit. The first respondent,Zaven, flatly denied any clash of interest between his own private life and the publicideology.The two 'believerswith reservations', Hakob and Karlen, acknowledged that the Soviet regime had committed atrocitiesand lied in the past, but this did not lead them to denounce the Soviet system as a whole. They both acquired what Vladimir Shlapentokhhas called a 'two-levelmentality', which enabled a person to criticise particular policies and behaviour of the Soviet regime,
while at the same time accepting the fundamentals of its ideology.52 In the West we are accustomed to emphasizing the totalitarian aspects of the Soviet But as the testimonyof our first three system.53 respondents shows, some members of the Armenianintelligentsiafocused on the emancipatoryaspects of the Stalinistand post-Stalinist system. They adjustedto this system and made the necessarycompromisesto flourishwithin it. We might even question how many compromises they had to make, since it appears that they had thoroughly internalized the basic values and goals of the system. For them the Soviet Union stood for a positive new order basedon education,science, social mobilityand social welfare. They had all risen from humble social backgrounds to respectablepositionsand naturallythey saw the Soviet Union as a sort of model meritocracy.They dwelt almost exclusively on these aspects of the system because they had absorbedthe Soviet ideological script so totally and because they were beneficiaries of it. They ignored the dark, violent repressive side of the regime, not only because they had no personalexperienceof it, but mainlybecause their personalidentityhad been largelyformed by the ideological messages of the regime. Perhaps Havel's thesis has limited application to Soviet Armeniansbecause it does not allow for the fact that the state's monopoly on the socialization process actually had a powerful effect on the belief system of its subjects. Our respondentswere interviewedjust ten years after the near-collapseof the Armenian state and society in the 1990s and the appalling social conditionsof these yearsmust have reinforced the rosy retrospectiveview of the Soviet Union that three out of four of them expressed. However,I would argue that a more important factorin favourably disposingmanyArmenians towards the Soviet Union was the relief and gratitudethat they felt livingwithin the security net of the Soviet Union. After all, the Soviet empire had twice protected the tiny Armenian nation from foreign occupation:first, from the Turksin 1920 and second from the Germans (and hence almost certainly from the Turks again) in 1945. The testimoniesused in this paper,while not claiming to be representativeof the Armenian intelligentsiaas a whole, do point to a different way of experiencingand rememberinglife in a totalitariancommunist society from the more well-knowneasternEuropeanwritingsof dissidents such as CzeslawMiloszand VaclavHavel, for example,who like Solzhenitsyn, damnedthe Soviet systemcategorically becauseits ideology was based on lies. Armenianslived within the Soviet Union almost from its inception for
seventy-oneyears,not the forty-fiveyearsexperienced by the eastern European countries. Because of their geographical position and earlierexperienceof oppression,the Armenians were bound to view their Soviet masters in a different light from the Poles, Czechs and NOTES
1 . VaclavHavel, ThePowerof the Powerless, NY:AA E Sharpe, 1985, p 45. Armonk, 2. Havel, 1985, p 45. 3. Havel, 1985, p 56. 4. Havel, 1985, p 53 5. See RG Hovannisian (ed) TheArmenian Genocide in Perspective, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Boob, 1987. 6. Quoted in C Walker,Armenia,TheSurvival of a Nation, New York: St Martin's Press, 1990, p 13. and LT Miller, An 7. See D Miller Survivors: Oral History of theArmenian Genocide, CA: University of California Press, Berkeley, 1993 andj Pascal, 'A People Killed Twice', GuardianWeekend, 27 January2001 , pp 3339. 8. See M Mazower, 'TheG-Word',London Reviewof Books, 8 February 200 1, pp 19-2 1. 9. Vahakn of theArmenian Dadrian,TheHistory Genocide, Oxford:Berghahn Boob, p 360. 10* Quoted in N Dudwick,'Armenia: paradise and RTaras(eds) regainedor lost?'in I Bremmer New States,New Politics: the Post-Soviet Building Nations, Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity Press, 1997, p 481. 1 1 RSuny,'SovietArmenia' in RHovannisian, TheArmenian Ancientto Modern People from vol II,New York: St Martin's Times, Press, 1997, Toward Ararat, p 371 . See also RSuny,Looking Armeniain Modern History, Indiana Bloomington: Press, 1993, pp 133-191 and Mary University TheImpact of SovietPolicieson AAatossian, Armenia,Leiden: EJ Brill,1962. 1 2. On the complicatedproblemof NagornoKarabakh see N Dudwick,'Nagorno-Karabakh in RSuny(ed) and the Politics of Sovereignty' Nationalism and Social Change: Transcaucasia, of Armenia,Azerbaijanand Essayson the History Georgia, AnnArbor: MichiganSlavic 1996. Publications, 1 3. SeeJ RAAasih and RO Krikorian, Armenia
which I believethat oral testimony, Hungarians. taps into new sources of private opinion, can tell us much about the Soviet experimentas it was perceived by subjects who lived in the lesserknownrepublicsof the SovietUnionsuch as Armenia.
27. Suny, 1993, pp 213-230. with Hakob (pseudonym) 28. Interview recordedby Nickie Lazarian,1 May 2001 , p 7. 29. O Figes, Natasha'sDance: A Cultural AllanLane,2002, p of Russia,London: History 512. with Hakob. p 7. 30. Interview 31 On the significanceof mythsin lifestories Stories'in RSamuel see Jean Peneff,'Mythsin Life and P Thompson (eds),MythsWe Live By, London: Routledge,1990, pp 36-45. with Hakob, p 1 1. 32* Interview with Hakob, p 12. 33. Interview with Hakob, p 15. 34. Interview with Hakob, p 14. 35* Interview 36. See RMedvedev, Let Judge, New History York: Knopf,1970. 37. See Kotkin, 1995, pp 225-230. with Karlen recorded 38. Interview (pseudonym) by ShushanKachyan,9 April2001 , p 2. with Karlen, 39. Interview pp 2-3. with Karlen, 40. Interview p 7. with Karlen, 41 Interview p 3. with Karlen, 42. Interview p 5. with Karlen, 43. Interview p 3. with Karlen, 44. Interview p 10. with Karlen, 45. Interview p 8. withArsen(pseudonym) recorded 46. Interview by Levon Gevorgyan,April2001 , p 1. withArsen,p 9. 47. Interview withArsen,p 9. 48. Interview withArsen,p 1 1. 49. Interview withArsen,p 17. 50. Interview 51 Louisa Passerini (ed)Memoryand OxfordUniversity New York: Totalitarianism, Press, 1992, p 12. 2001 , pp 128-1 30. 52. Shlapentokh, 53. See, forexample,M Malia, TheSoviet 1917A History of Socialismin Russia, Tragedy: FreePress,1994 and S 1991, New York: Courtois (ed) TheBlackBookof Communism: Crimes,Terror, Repression, Cambridge,Mass: Harvard Press,1999. University
at the Crossroads, Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1999, pp 1-94. in Posh Transformation 14. N Dudwick,'Political in K Communist Armenia: Imagesand Realities' Dawishaand B Parrott (eds) Conflict,Cleavage Asia and the Caucasus, and Change in Central Press, 1997, Cambridge:CambridgeUniversity p69. 1999, p 87. 1 5. Masih and Krikorian, 1 6. Havel, 1985, pp 64-67. 1have drawn on SimonTormey's brilliant extensively analysisof Havel'sessay in MakingSense of Tyranny, Manchester: ManchesterUniversity Press, 1995, pp 133-166. 1 7. SeeJ Hellbeck,'Fashioning the Stalinist Soul:the Diaryof Stepan Podlubnyi (193 11939)', Jahrbucher furGeschichteOsteuropas, vol 44, 1996, pp 456-463. withZaven (pseudonym) 1 8* Interview recorded 2001 , p 5. Miribian,25 February by Lilit withZaven, p 3. 1 9. Interview withZaven, p 9. 20. Interview of a True 21 See LevKopelev,TheEducation Believer,New York: Harperand Row, 1980. withZaven, p 15. 22. Interview 23* See StephanKotkin's depictionof the Soviet UnionunderStalinas embodyingall the elements in MagneticMountain, of 'progressive modernity' Stalinism as a Civilisation, of Berkeley: University California Press, 1995, pp 1-25. withZaven, p 7. 24. Interview 25. Fora good discussionin thisjournal of how the same words used in the different contextsof the communist and post-communist worldscan have different 'They meanings,see RSchendler, Made the FreedomforThemselves: Popular of PostCommunist Discoursein the Interpretations Czech Republic', Oral History, vol 29, no 2, 2001, pp 73-82. 26. Fora recentstudyof the SovietUnionas a A Normal 'normal' society,see V Shlapentokh, Totalitarian NY:M E Sharpe, Society,Armonk, 2000.
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Living in The Lie

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Statue of Stalin pictured in Yerevan in 1950, from Zakoyan, et al, My Yerevan,

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