Alone with Myself

Alone with Myself or How to Reach You, Descendants! by Leonid Karakhanovich Hurunts. A posthumous publication of entries from 1975-1982. Translated from the original Russian to English by Learn for Artsakh. 

Part One: An Introduction

An introduction to Hurunts by the various people who knew him.

Foreword from ArmenianHouse

The book is compiled from the author's diary entries. It contains philosophical thoughts about time, country, people; about the “bonfires” in Karabakh, kindled by the colonialist policies of the Azerbaijani government; thoughts about literature. The reader will undoubtedly be interested in excerpts from the writer’s notebook. Choking in the grip of spiritual unfreedom, the truth-seeking fighter did not even dare to dream of the publication of his book. But fate decreed otherwise. 

A foreword from Maya Hurunts, Leonid's daughter, for Learn for Artsakh

More than 40 years have passed since my dad passed away … I remember well how he wrote for future generations, suffering through every page, not even dreaming of publication, at least not anytime in the near future. Many years later, my mother managed to publish his last book, Alone with Myself or How to Reach You, Descendants! This book is essentially the quintessence of the writer’s philosophical thoughts and generalizations, the cry of the soul and pain for his native Karabakh. "There are people like stars. They are not there, but the light continues to go on.” He has not been with us for a long time, but the bright light of his courageous, brave, and honest life warms us, his descendants, and instills faith in justice on our sinful Earth.

A foreword from Armen Igitkhanyan, Leonid's son, for Learn for Artsakh

Hurunts - Looking up close and from afar

He was a man of paradox, a combination of incompatibilities.

Subtle lyricist and brave publicist

In the 60s, the height of the apotheosis of the “Leninist policy of internationalism,” being the special correspondent of the all-Union newspaper Izvestia, Hurunts came to the defense of a front-line friend. Crimean resident Pavel Demidov was not given an apartment in Simferopol - a Crimean Tatar grandmother was discovered in the family. In those years, evicted Stalin’s “traitor peoples”—Tatars, Greeks, Armenians—were prohibited from settling in Crimea. The chief party leader bluntly stated: I would not even give residency to your Armenian Anastas Mikoyan (in those years - head of the USSR government). Leonid Karakhanovich unraveled the illegal corruption system distribution of public housing in Simferopol. In two issues of Izvestia the article “Beggars” was published, after which everyone flew from their positions as city ​​and party authorities of Simferopol. Demidov moved into a new apartment and, apparently touched by such devotion to front-line friendship, he began to study the Armenian language.

Armenian writer writing in Russian

I remember the writer Suren Ayvazyan said: Hurunts, having left his native village, retained the Karabakh language acquired in childhood, never mastered the generally accepted Armenian, but acquired Russian, which became the language of his work. Major Russian writers admired the stylistic nuances of “Guruntsev’s” prose. Having been introduced to the literary classic Yuri Olesha, the aspiring writer Leonid Karakhanovich performed his own piece for the first time. Olesha demanded: more. So many times. He said at the end: the words finish, but the thought continues.

At the Writers' Union of Armenia, William Saroyan reproachfully told Leonid Karakhanovich: “Why aren’t you writing in your native Armenian?” And thus received the answer: “But you as well write in your not-quite-native English.”

Leader of the Karabakh movement, before the start of the “Karabakh movement”

He has been dealing with the Karabakh problem since the early 60s. Residents of native Armenia knew little about the problems of the Karabakh Armenians, Karabakh was not well known, had not yet become a profitable political coin. Our Yerevan apartment was a kind of headquarters, where “walkers” from Karabakh came, where like-minded people gathered: Bagrat Ulubabyan, much later -- Zori Balayan, who moved from Kamchatka and lived with us for the first time.  Leonid Karakhanovich walked on the razor's edge, the Soviet government could easily make a person’s life unbearable by writing them down as dissident enemies. Concerned by numerous letters of appeal to the Kremlin with facts of lawlessness and injustice happening in Karabakh, a Moscow inspector-curator arrived at the Central Committee of Armenia for a “strict conversation.” And even here, Hurunts won. The verdict was this: a fair man who struggles with shortcomings. A safe conduct was obtained. The corrupt collaborationist Karabakh authorities, led by Boris Kevorkov, thought differently. Threats began to be received against Hurunts, and he was secretly banned from entering Stepanakert.

Tenacious mind, deep memory and incredible forgetfulness

Left my mother Larisa Ashotovna Isaakyan in the corridor of the Moscow publishing house “Soviet Writer,” went to his cabinet and forgot about her existence. Mom, having lost patience, called the hotel and heard the cheerful voice of Leonid Karakhanovich: “Lara, where are you?!”

I called Leonid Karakhanovich dad, although we were not related by blood. But, our connection, affection, and love were more than family ties. He knew how to educate without educating, never “stooped down” to sentimentality. I felt his love for me through his gaze, in our confidential conversations, his interest in me and my artistic searches. I valued his opinion and assessments of my actions very much, and he became an example for me when you don’t need to cast aside doubts in order to stand up for the unjustly offended, to be honest in defending your views. He has been gone for many years, but even now, assessing many events, I think about what dad would say. And, it seems to me, I can guess his assessments, since he was always on the side of truth.

Words by novelist Fyodor Abramov1 for Leonid Hurunts' obituary

Leonid Hurunts and death ... What incompatible concepts these are! I remember when I suddenly saw a funeral frame with his name is Literaturnaya Gazeta, I simply didn't believe it! I thought that some monstrous mistake had happened. Leonid Hurunts always amazed me with his infectious youth, if you like, even boyishness, and I often looked at him with a skeptical smile when, with the air of an elderly man, he began to talk about everyday and literary troubles and ordeals, of which many befell his lot. A boy, a gray-haired young man with flaming eyes, a romantic of the 30s, forever in love with life! The same youthfull enthuasiasm, the same souhern temperament raged in his talented novels, stories, and short stories, filled to the brim with kindness, humanity, soft and sly humor. And I, a northerner, recognized my fellow countrymen, my brothers and sisters in his Karabakh peasants. Leonid Hurunts wrote in Russian, but the language of his emotions, the language of his soul, is truly Armenian. His works contain a lot of the sun of Armenia.

1  Fyodor Abramov was a Russian novelist and literary critic. His works often focused on the struggles of the peasant class and he was frequently reprimanded for deviating from Soviet policy on writing.

NECESSARY PREFACE BY ZORI BALAYAN1

In front of me is the manuscript of the book Alone with Yourself by the unforgettable Leonid Hurunts. When the Karabakh movement2 began, Leonid Karakhanovich, whom his friends called exclusively by his last name - Hurunts, was no longer alive. He quietly did his earthly work, fulfilled his great duty, and just as quietly passed away, stepped into immortality, getting rid of excruciating physical and mental suffering. Reading the manuscript, every now and then I caught myself thinking that I clearly heard the muffled voice of a friend. He read many chapters aloud to me on his veranda. Almost the last two dozen of his books were written here. In general, before publication, he liked to read aloud to relatives and friends freshly written chapters of books, the famous Hurunts miniatures.

Leonid Hurunts began writing this book in the mid-seventies. He was then in his seventies, and he was already a seriously ill person. Maybe that's why he was always in a hurry. And more precisely, he worked hard and furiously. With early roosters he got up and worked on his balcony. We lived as neighbors, and every time I passed by his house in the morning I heard the measured sound of a typewriter coming from the balcony. I knew very well: if Hurunts' typewriter does not knock, then the owner, like a real archivist, is putting in order his manuscripts, his unfinished, and if completed, then unpublished books. He often repeated: "Apparently, I will not have time to turn the manuscripts into books, but if I do not put them in order myself, they will wither away as orphans." Stacking carefully, like bricks, orphan manuscripts.

Actually, this extremely sociable person was always alone with himself, with his "orphans." He could not but know that as long as Soviet censorship exists, no one will print, say, such words: "Today is Constitution Day. Guard! We are being deceived again. They pretend that we have a Constitution!" And yet he wrote. Couldn’t not write. For I saw my reader who is waiting with gratitude for the words of one of the courageous Armenian writers Leonid Hurunts: "Each line written honestly today will be perceived by the coming generation as a priceless gift. Hurry up to say this word that can illuminate the hopeless darkness of our days... will be stronger than the power of money." Hurunts indeed, as a prophet, foresaw today. He left us five years before the start of the Karabakh movement. This man with pinpoint accuracy defined the essence and meaning of our misfortune: "A writer deprived of talent, seizing power, can cause irreparable harm to the entire team. Consumed by power, he can easily ruin true talent."

Today, many people, reshaping the history in general and the history of the Karabakh movement in particular, strive by hook or by crook to take their place in it. The true chronicle is not written by populists at rallies. Long before them, in the process of fighting for the salvation of Artsakh, which was already on the brink of the abyss in the mid-seventies, Hurunts became its chronicler. The book Alone with Myself is evidence of this. The party plenum of the Nagorno-Karabakh Regional Committee provoked by Aliyev in March 1975 literally overflowed the patience of the people of Artsakh. And Hurunts decided to himself: “If the writer, at the sight of injustice and cruelty, without thinking about the consequences, rushed into battle, consider him talented. Courage is part of talent.” And the singer of Artsakh rushed into battle. It was in that year, having put aside the work already begun, despising the fear for his own fate, the author took up the book, in which he wrote, “Here we are talking about bonfires that do not unite nations, but divide them. About the newly appeared Nazis, who pursued a policy of oppression of one nation by another, a policy of national discrimination and enmity. About a sinking ship with no distress signals. And all this under the marches of internationalism, under the guise of well-being and the cover of verbal tinsel. These are the fires we want to talk about here. And all this is about Karabakh, small Karabakh, which has so many big enemies.”

Critics called him "the poet of prose.” More than once in Russia I heard from those who personally did not know Hurunts, but after reading an article in the allied press, thought of him as a man with tough fists, as a real fighter. As for the tough fists - a mistake. But as for the fighter, that's for sure. We, his friends, were amazed at the fearless passion with which he whipped Brezhnev and, especially, Suslov, the main ideologist of the country, in his open letters. Picking up the gauntlet thrown to our people by Aliyev, Kevorkov3 and others like them, Leonid Karakhanovich rushed into battle, which lasted for years. He did not give up, even when his heart was already giving out. Bedridden, he wrote his famous Report from a Hospital Bed, finishing off his opponents. Separate pieces from the manuscript of the book were printed in castrated form in our newspapers. They cut the poor Hurunts alive so mercilessly, some critics accused him of "glossing," "varnishing," "rosiness," even "cowardice." In response, we laughed, but I understood how my wise teacher and easily hurt friend was worried.

Only from the manuscript of the book did I learn that Hurunts used to worry and suffer even because of me. Our relations, especially when it came to Karabakh, were sincere to the limit, uncompromising. I have always been against the fact that in open and closed letters about the atrocities of Aliyev and Kevorkov, specific names of the victims who lived and worked in Karabakh, and even more so, held some positions, were given. For it was well known that such letters were forwarded to those against whom the people of Karabakh complained, and the executioners mercilessly took revenge on the victim. Once, after another letter from Hurunts, a real beating of all those whom he intended to save began. More than two decades have passed since then. I already forgot the details. Only from this manuscript did I learn that Hurunts was very worried, that Bagrat Ulubabyan4  and I talked to him, so to speak, heart to heart. And here he was sincere to the end. At the same time, we developed a principle for ourselves: while in Karabakh, do not meet with party and Soviet workers, officials, even if they are relatives. 

Most of the time we worked with the youth in the underground. Facts were more than enough. In Yerevan, walkers from Karabakh came to Hurunts, bringing us specific materials about the situation, about crimes, about the ethnic cleansing of the Armenian population in the region. And all this data soon became the property of the masses. In one of his letters to Moscow (as was often the case, we sent a copy abroad), Leonid Hurunts cited dozens of living examples of unsolved crimes. It was about the killings, which the Azeris used as a means of intimidation. This is the old, tried and tested method of the Turks. Beat your son half to death, rape your daughter, and let the parents know by phone calls or letters that the same thing awaits other children. And then for next to nothing buy a house of an Armenian, built a hundred or two hundred years ago by your grandfather or great-grandfather. Hurunts also wrote about this. In March 1975, immediately after the Kevorkov plenum, Hurunts seriously got down to business with Aliyev and the secretary of the Karabakh Regional Committee. Many reproached him for paying too much attention to his opponents. Like, the more he covers Kevorkov, the more Aliyev will like it. But the stubborn and persistent Hurunts continued his struggle. He perfectly understood that, criticizing such a foster child as Kevorkov, he was hitting his "tough fists" in the solar plexus of the Kremlin.

With his letters - and this is the most important thing - he created public opinion in Armenia, opening the eyes of his compatriots. Listing all the atrocities, from the time of Lenin and Stalin to Bagirov and Aliyev, Hurunts addresses his people: "But we will not pass by such sycophants and liars. Lies have never benefited anyone. We will sound the alarm. There is no harmony in our house. All words about friendship, about unanimity are lies and deceit." The courage of Hurunts was a tangible concept for me. He did not borrow it from another "thaw" or "perestroika." His journalism, paradoxically, reached its peak precisely at the height of the so-called stagnation. He wrote in black and white that he was surprised at Lenin, who could believe in the buffoonery of Ataturk, repainted in the red color of the revolution. True, he was not surprised at Aliyev’s buffoonery; “Aliyev is the same Ataturk5, who has not yet thrown off the communard.” Had the wise and honest Hurunts lived to this day, I think he would not have been surprised by Lenin. However, the value of any public figure is measured by the criteria and realities of his time.

The author of this book, long before the start, I would say, of the effective stage of the Karabakh movement, which is an integral part of the national liberation struggle of the Armenian people, determined that the pan-Turks had practically driven the Karabakh people into a powder magazine and had already set fire to the fuse box. He understood, or rather, foresaw the fact that the war could not be avoided. Moreover, he firmly knew that the question was truly Shakespearian: "To be or not to be." And, being on his deathbed, he wrote lines that amaze us, participants and witnesses of the bloody massacre into which the enemy has drawn: “You even know in advance that your death will not change anything, that the fire along the cord will run further to the powder magazine, threatening to bury under its rubble not only you, but also those who planned to raise this terrible cellar into the air. And I'm crawling, crawling towards this dangerous cord: knock it down at all costs. Put down the fire, no matter what it takes. Go ahead, old man, I promise no chance of victory."

I think that our current troubles began when the revisionists, speculating on the national idea (later, having snickered, they will call it  a "false category"), seized power and immediately set about denying the methods of struggle of the previous generation. At the same time, stigmatizing everyone and everything for the fact that they were naive people and believed in Moscow. I can say with confidence that by 1988 there would have been no Armenians in Karabakh at all, if the Karabakh people themselves had not fought, had not resisted, despising the all-Union Gulag in general, the Azerbaijani one in particular. Each letter, and especially each article published in the allied press about the problems of Karabakh, did its saving work. No matter how naive today, from the height of time, the epistolary methods of struggle may seem, their significance can hardly be overestimated.

After each provocation  organized by the Aliyevs, whether it was the acquittal of the bandits Nabi and Karaev or the trial of the Karabakh intelligentsia, a stream of letters went to Moscow, to which, at the very least, the Kremlin reacted. At least, provocations did not develop. Moreover, Baku began to make excuses, fawning over the Armenians. I remember how they panicked in Kevorkov's camp after Sero Khanzadyan’s famous letter6  to General Secretary Brezhnev, which was widely circulated. It was a special genre of journalism. 

Leonid Hurunts cited in one of his letters addressed to Brezhnev a whole series of egregious cases of discrimination against Armenians in Karabakh. He concluded the letter with the words of the Secretary General: "We have been and remain irreconcilable to any manifestations of national hatred, chauvinism, nationalism." Having received no response from the addressee, the writer took up another letter. Almost repeated the content of the first message. He gave the same quote. But he accompanied it with his commentary: "Words, words! More than once I personally turned to Comrade Brezhnev, pointing out the egregious facts of nationalism in Nagorno-Karabakh. And - complete silence. I did not notice any intransigence towards manifestations of nationalism. All the same optical illusion."

Less than a week later, Hurunts was invited to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Armenia and had a heart-to-heart talk with him. However, the main thing, as it turned out, was worries in Baku. For some time, the outrages perpetrated by the Azeris in Artsakh stopped. The strength of Hurunts lay in the fact that he often wrote about Karabakh in the allied press. It was readily printed by Zvezda, Novy Mir, Friendship of Peoples, Literaturnaya Gazeta, Literaturnaya Rossiya and many other publications. I'm not talking about the books published in Moscow. Sometimes it was not about individual publications on a particular topic, but about entire actions. 

The older generation remembers well how in the late fifties and early sixties the leadership of the Azerbaijan SSR developed a cunning plan to eliminate mulberry gardens in Artsakh. Under the pretext of the fight against alcoholism, mulberry trees began to be cut down. And it is hard to imagine how the fate of Artsakh would have developed then, if not for a series of passionate speeches by Hurunts in the central press. The writer managed to explain to the whole country that the destruction of the mulberry tree in Karabakh is genocide. For mulberry is both silk and golden berries filled with the sun. It includes mulberry jam and mulberry vodka, which replaces an entire pharmacy, and a favorite winter treat for children - dried mulberries. It is oxygen, and firewood, and barrels, and furniture, and a fence, and building materials. This, finally, is the memory of the ancestors and a silent interlocutor. The Azeris knew over what they raised their hand with an ax, which this time replaced the scimitar. 

Fighting  for mulberries, Hurunts believed not only in his own strength, but also in the mulberry tree itself: “Again, they cut down a mulberry tree in the mountains. Again I hear the hated whistle of an ax. Neither beaten nor tormented, no matter how rough the wind rolls around it, it lives, stubbornly and flexibly straightening after each blow. And, like Vietnamese bamboo, it can tell a story full of suffering, and yet - victorious..." For ten years I lived and worked as a doctor in Kamchatka, and during the last years of my stay there I carried on a systematic correspondence with Leonid Hurunts. The distant peninsula was for me a kind of launching pad, from where I started traveling on punts along the seas and rivers. In a word, I was, as they say, easy-going. And when, in one of his letters, Hurunts offered to make a joint trip to our native Karabakh together with Shagen Mkrtchyan, I immediately agreed.

When in the autumn of 1969, at the end of my trip, I was already returning from Karabakh to Kamchatka, all the incredibly long way I caught myself thinking that my life would have been robbed, impoverished, if it were not for the trip along the roads and villages of my homeland. Before that, I knew that there were difficulties, severe difficulties in Artsakh. But I saw a truly agonizing homeland.

As a doctor,  I not only made a social diagnosis in almost every locality, but also determined forecasts that seemed to me more than sad, if not fatal. The railway, which during the war years brought the wounded from the front to Stepanakert, sprouted with grass, because it now ended in Agdam, 25 kilometers from the capital of the NKAO. Sheep farming developed rapidly - at the expense of the pigs. It is not difficult to guess for what purpose this was done. In order to increase the number of Azeris in Karabakh not only at the expense of shepherds, the Armenian Pedagogical Institute was transferred from Baku to Stepanakert, where an Azerbaijani faculty was opened. And the admission of Azeri students began not only from Shushi and Aghdam, but also from Kirovabad and Lankaran, Nakhijevan and Baku, not to mention the influx of pan-Turk preachers disguised as professors and teachers to Stepanakert. 

So,  it was really not difficult to foresee what was waiting for Karabakh in ten or twenty years. Moreover, we had a tragic example before our eyes: the fate of the Armenian Nakhichevan Autonomous Republic, where there were practically no native Armenians left. The same fate was experienced by the huge Armenian historical region of Gardmank, which included the entire neighborhood of Gandzak (Kirovabad), as well as Khanlar, Dashkesan, Shamkhor, Getabek, Tavush, and Kazakh regions. Only Artsakh held out. But she was slowly but surely approaching the edge of the abyss.

And the trouble would not have passed if, at the very precipice of its edge, risking their own lives, the heralds of the Karabakh movement - these Avarayrs7 of the 20th and 21st centuries, the frantic Leonid Hurunts and his associates, saviors of the Armenian people, did not stand like a wall. 

Notes:

1 Zori Balayan is an Armenian writer from the Nagorno-Karabakh region. His work heavily featured and defended the Armenian heritage of Nagorno-Karabakh and Nakhichevan. In 1988, he met with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to discuss the absence of Armenian textbooks in schools and other concerns of the Armenian people of Nagorno-Karabakh. Balayan was targeted several times by the Turks and Azerbaijani-Turks. He was accused of murdering an Azeri child, however the Human Rights Association of Turkey revealed that accusation to be a complete farce. Azerbaijani authorities also tried to incriminate Balayan for involvement in a terrorist operation in Baku - Interpol refuted this. 

2 The Karabakh movement was a national mass movement which swept Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh (also known as Artsakh) from 1988 to 1991 and advocated for the independence of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast, which at the time was populated by an Armenian majority under a Soviet-Azerbaijani jurisdiction. The terms "Karabakh-Armenian" and "Artsakh-Armenian" are sometimes used interchangeably within Armenian texts.

3 Boris Kevorkov was an Armenian man appointed as First Secretary of the NKAO Committee between 1973 and 1988. Unlike his predecessor, however, he was not from Karabakh, and the Armenian community was largely not fond of him. Kevorkov was loyal to Aliyev and Azerbaijan. Hurunts frequently wrote about Kevorkov, labeling him a comprador and a traitor of the oppressed. 

4 Bagrat Ulubabyan was a notable Karabakh-Armenian writer and historian.

5 Mustafa Kemal Ataturk is regarded as the consummator of the Armenian Genocide and the founder of the Republic of Turkey.

6 Sero Khanzadyan was a famous Soviet Armenian novelist who penned a letter to General Secretary Brezhnev detailing the oppression of Karabakh Armenians at the hands of Azerbaijan. The letter was widely reported on by several journals, including the New York Times. The letter can be found below.

7 The battle of Avarayr is one of the most significant in Armenian history. It was fought between Christian Armenia and Sassanid Persia. Armenians won a pyrrhic victory and were thus able to practice Christianity freely. 

SERO KHANZADYAN'S LETTER 

Letter by the novelist Sero Khanzadyan on Mountainous Karabakh addressed to Leonid I. Brezhnev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the U.S.S.R.

Dear Leonid Ilyich,

During the March plenary session of the Mountainous Karabakh Communist Party Regional Committee (1975) everything was done to demean the successes and achievements of socialist Armenia. Things got to point of such desecration that the professed and violent enemy of Soviet Russia–the architect of the massacres of millions of Armenians, Russians, Greeks, Bulgarians, and Assyrians–Talaat Pasha was characterized in the Soviet press (Sovetakan Karabakh, March 23, 1975) merely as an “unpleasant personality.” Such an evaluation was given to the enemy of many peoples and to the person who [more than any other] incited and organized the Genocide of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire.

During that same period many representatives of Soviet Armenia, insulted in their human and national feelings, addressed themselves to you and other responsible authorities, requesting strongly that you condemn the activities of the leadership of the Autonomous Region of Mountainous Karabakh and punish the guilty. As it became clear to us and it became known to us, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union communicated instructions to the party organization in the Autonomous Region with regard to the mistakes that have been tolerated. Passions were eased, particularly when the Central Committee of Armenia’s Communist government conducted informational work among the party organizations trying to avoid all kinds of incidents.

Personally, I have met after the plenary session with the leaderships of the Azerbaijani S.S.R and Mountainous Karabakh. The main purpose of my mission was to avoid all kinds of undesirable reactions which were possible in that extremely heated atmosphere. We were all convinced that similar incidents could no longer occur in or about Mountainous Karabakh. However, all of us were extremely surprised when again today in the current issue of Problems of Peace and Socialism (number 6, 1977), the most widely distributed monthly in the world, considered to be the theoretical and informational publication of the world’s Communist and workers’ parties, published in 32 languages and distributed in 145 countries, I found a discussion of Karabakh, again in the name of the leadership of the Autonomous Region, in which insults addressed to Soviet Armenia. To the natural question as to “Why is Mountainous Karabakh under the jurisdiction of Azerbaijan and not Soviet Armenia from which it is separated by a narrow strip of land?” they answer that although the Karabakh Autonomous Region is close to the Armenian Soviet Republic, nonetheless, the two are separated by high mountains. Such an argument, allow me to say, is not only ridiculous in our century of technology but is also incorrect.

Throughout the century, the historically Armenian Karabakh region has never been separated from the Armenian motherland by these mountains, which are no different from mountains all over the Caucasus; but that is not the most important point. To the question as to whether everyone has consciously accepted this kind of argument as a reason why a historically Armenian region is cut off from the Armenian motherland and incorporated into a newly established Azerbaijani S.S.R. Armenians answer in the following manner: “I would prefer to have a bad life but be united with Armenia.”

I think this statement could be made by every person who has pride, every Russian, Czech, Slovak, Frenchman; every man who loves his fatherland would say that. Every man can state with pride that he has not chosen his fatherland, that he agrees to everything as long as he is attached to his fatherland. The leadership of Autonomous Region of Mountainous Karabakh consider such people “backward” and “people who do not understand” but even that is still nothing. Ultimately, each person understands and interprets his own love toward the fatherland in his own way. Consider that such a statement, “Let me live badly but be united with Armenia,” applies to Soviet Armenia. It is alleged that it is good for an Armenian to live in Azerbaijan and it would be bad for him to live in Soviet Armenia and this is said after the fact that you, dear Leonid, noting the flourishing and rebirth of Armenia, stated: “The people, Communists, non-party members, workers, peasants, and intelligentsia of Armenia have wonderfully brought together the spirit of patriotism with another, no less valued characteristic, the internationalism of the Soviet man.”

I am convinced deeply that they have misled the editorial collective of the monthly Problems of Peace and Socialism, which includes representatives of Communist and workers’ organizations from 53 countries just as they have misled the authors of the article “We Saw the Brotherhood of Nations.” It is incomprehensible that on the eve of the sixtieth anniversary of the establishment of Soviet rule to say throughout the world: “Let me be poor but be part of Soviet Armenia.” Does such a statement correspond to the title of the article published in the monthly, “We Saw the Brotherhood of Nations”?

At a time when we are examining the draft of the new constitution for the U.S.S.R., how is it possible to write in 38 languages and to distribute in 15 countries a statement such as: “The Armenian people of Mountainous Karabakh have obtained statehood within Azerbaijan and that fate they have accepted willingly.” This is a grotesque distortion of historical facts.

The Armenian population of Mountainous Karabakh has never accepted willingly its destiny of today which has meant its separation from the motherland; and such a “destiny” is, in itself, an injustice which must be liquidated because as the great Lenin has said, “Nothing so corrupts or perverts the development and solidification of proletarian class harmony as national injustice.”

Dear Leonid Ilich, this is not the first time that the unresolved problem of Karabakh is disturbing the friendship between the two peoples. You are our hope. We are all hoping that you will finally resolve a question which for more than half a century has embodied injustice. The Armenian region with its over 80 percent Armenian population, Armenian schools, and official Armenian language that is within the boundaries of our great state must be under the jurisdiction of Soviet Socialist Armenia. The just solution of this question will be appreciated by peoples as a new victory of the Leninist nationalities policy.

Sincere Respects,

Sero Khanzadian

Member of the Central Committee of Soviet Union, 1943

Writer and Member of Executive Committee of the Writers’ Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

[Zartonk, Beirut, October 15, 1977]

Part two will begin our journey into Leonid Hurunts' writing and the facts he uncovered regarding the persecution of Artsakh-Armenians. Read it here.