sen_Vahan

Hi, everybody! I do not think that one can find some phobia or other crap in Rubo's posts. He is giving right things about the subject. Armenians though should act politically not just in discussions. That's why i am thinking it is too much attention to jews in this forum. They do not deserve that. Vahan

Arpa jan, 100 % agree with you. But anyway me and you and millions of others work,study or live outside Armenia today.. how one can solve this problem?.. What do we need to learn and do? In my opinion, one cannot be happy if not in his/her country. How can we become happy?.. Vahan

Arpa jan, As I remeber it was Silva Kapoutikyan's poem. i do not remember the full text unfortunately.

Bolorid Znund' shnorhavor, tgerk!!! Arorgutyun ev erkar tarineri kyank! Misht hagorak linek amen inchum.. Vahan

"What happened to Egypt? I am no history buff but I thought they had a great civilization before Jesus showed up!!! The chinese seemed to do fine as well. What about the Inkas in South America? Didn't they have an advanced civilization with "modern"-type cities where they all got along fine? Are you telling me there were no morlas and ethics before God and Jesus showed up with the Bible about 2000 years ago? I agree that the Church has had a strong influence on the development of science in Europe in the past centuries. It makes sense ... they had the money and science aint cheap!!! But the likes of Aristotle, Plato, Pythagoras, etc etc didn't do too bad without Christianity either. Oh and should we turn this thread into the "immoral" things that the church has done? How many witches did they burn? How many scientists did they destroy ... those who dared to say the Earth was round ... those who dared to say we revolved around the Sun? Those who dared to say evolution can and does happenThe "church" may have helped science a lot but I am SURE it did more BAD than GOOD " Sip, you contradict yourself many times. First of all, all these civilizations mentioned by you were "religious". At least they had pantheon of Gods. Christianity is only one of the religions on the Earth. And why do you mix two separate things such as the belief in God and the Church?? Church is an institution which obviously consists of people! Me and you can live in the same society (and we actually do now) , and you may not believe in God but I can. Are you going to tell me that you will be more civilized that me? Belief in God is a deep feeling and it does not depend on how civilized or educated one is. One may believe in God or not - that is the religious freedom. Vahan

es vor chkarogaza. bayz fonter unem haykakan, piti vor hnaravor liner:(

"I was stuck in traffic today in 107 degree (F not C ) weather so of course I started wondering randomly again ... Is "freedom of religion" trully possible in a civilized society? " Sip jan, why did you start to think about such terrible things in a traffic?... Didn't you have some water there?... by the way, i do not understand why a civilized society should not have a religion? I am lost.. It sounds brave but why do you think so? What is then a civilized society?

Trerk gan, Hoyakap gorts e!!! Shnorhakalutyun! Vahan

Hi, everybody! You covered so many things that I do not even know wher to start from or continue. Anyway, i would like to post what i am thinking about being armenian. As i understand this problem, there two things that should be pointed out - 1)do we want just to remain armenians and keep somehow the culture or 2)we want something more that that - to build a strong country and LIVE in that country. If we need the first choice then we can probably exist for another 100, 200 or more years - "vyaloe sushestvovanie", constantly being assimilated in Diaspora. In this case, in order to "live longer" children should learn the language first. i may seem to be very trivial but i guess LANGUAGE is the first and most important thing for a nation. Do many Diasporan armenians know the language? Certainly, not. And sometimes i think whether we have our "own face" if much of us, especially those representing armenian communities and organizations, do not speak armenian. how sad it may be but when i visited russia this summer and met a lot of armenian families there I observed a common thing - armenian-speaking parents speak, and i would say try to speak, russian with their children. It is a sort of popular to speak in russian with the kids. Obviously, they will not know their own language and will be sooner or later assimilated. So, i cannot make a conclusion yet but I am very pessimistic about keeping the identity in this way. If we prefer the second way then , in my opinion, we should start with round-way relations with Armenia. Diasporas help Armenia (as they do now) and She helps Diasporas. And here a step that could be very realistically made is creating TV channels in Armenian as was mentioned several times by TB. There are many other things that might be done as well and i would like people to discuss this. i think Diasporan Armenians may raise this problem and it wouldl be solved in the near future. Ok, i am getting lost when I start thinking about this... Too many things to mention and discuss and i will come back to that later. By the way, guys, does anybody know whether there is an armenian library in the US one can borrow books in armenian online? I tried to check them out using interlibrary loans from Ann Arbor and MSU but there is still no answer. Maybe there is some university that has rich fonds? Thank you, Vahan

Skeanheads in Russia (Krasnodarski kray and Moscow) made some pogroms this year celebrating the date of birth of Hitler. Actually, people in Moscow say that more than 10 people were killed in Moscow those days and among them armenians and azeris. There was also a destruction of an armenian cemetary in Krasnodar. Unfortunately, massmedia did not report everything about that...

we are Armenians. this is a fact we cannot change. an authentic human being does not reject or deny his ancestry. an Armenian pretending to be an Italian or Russian cannot be an authentic huma being. to be authentic! this may not be a good enough reason for some but it is good enough for me. Hopeit will be good enough for others but if it isn't, no matter. we must all choose our own path! -------------------- ara baliozian Dear Ara, How can we be authentic if the majority lives outside the homeland. Many armenian children born each year in various countries and what is sad - most of them do not speak the language, do not know much about the history and at the same time speak the language of the host country and follow the laws and traditions of that country. When I first came to the US a year ago I was surprised that almost all the armenian guys born in America I met did not know the language, have never been in Armenia,etc. This is sad. Vahan

Traditions are changing, Hagarag, so do armenians. i am not talking about the traditionalism but about keeping the culture. And as you know culture may not be kept without the language. How do you think armenians in diasporas could preserve the language and not forget it?

I have a question: Do you think the word SOCIETY can be used for what we have in Armenia today? What is the structure of that society in Armenia if it exists? And do we have that in Diaspora? In the case of Diaspora I mean the structure of Armenian Community - does it exist? And a second question: Dear Ara, have you ever been to Armenia? Sorry, but I really do not know whether you did. Thank you, Vahan

How about khorovaz?

Aralsk?? There is Aral'skoe more but I do not think Aral has something to do with Araks. Maybe I did not get something but in my opinion Harut is right saying that it was a wrong translation from Russian.

"My guess is it was an assertion of our despise of our neighbors to the east and south and our europhilia. It still goes on. It is no secret that Armenians have alway looked to the west as our soulmates and our model of civilization and rejected our immediate neighbors as backward savages. " Our neighbours considered us a progressive community in their countries(though not always showed that). Europe was the most progressive part of the world for a long time, and the Europhilia of Armenians is understandable. By the way, if you mean the times of early Christianity then there could not be europhilia. "Regardless of what anybody says our conversion to Christianity and declaring it as state religion had very little to do with religion (I am not convinced that Armenians are really Christian in the strictest sense)." Usually countries accept state religions for mainly political reasons. But the reasons may be purely political only for some time after which a new religion may bring much progress.And show me a real Christian nation, please. "It was a contest with Rome which was fast moving to accept Chrsitianiny. Our move was strictly a political one, we beat the Romans as the first Christian nation, but sadly, even that did not enamor us to the Romans and the West who betrayed us time after time. They are still doing it. When will we ever learn?" True. But what is strange or unusual here? Russia that accepted Christianity from Byzantine also had a lot of serious conflicts with Byzantine. "Another reason why we chose Christianity while our neigbors chose more marshall religions is it suited our pacifistic and non aggressive character while the more warlike Persians, Arabs and others chose Islam because Christianity did not suit their culture of conquest and pillage. The Turks' case is living proof of that." Christianity may also be a "religion of conquest". Russia accepted it and became one of the strongest countries in the world. There are many other examples. And do have an idea what would happen if Armenians did not accept the Christianity in that surrounding?

"The daughter of a famous Armenian writer calls me from Italy and informs me that writing for Armenians is a waste of time. I don't have the heart to tell her that I have been told that many times, beginning with my father when I was fourteen and my mother almost every day." An Armenian writer, when he starts writing, tries to focus on the problems of the nation. Am I right? I think that's natural for the writer to worry about the problems in the society but I do not understand why all the Armenian writers do ONLY that? I do not know (or maybe do not remember... .) an Armenian writer-philosopher as Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, etc. Where this come from? We cannot thing big if our writers/intellectuals focus only on the national problems. "One reason I go on writing for Armenians is that during the last three decades that I have been writing, I have made so many enemies who have done their utmost to silence me that I hate to give up the idea of reminding them as often as I can that they have been and continue to be sources of inspiration to me." So, then we are also a source of inspiration for you... I am glad to know that! Please, do not consider us as your enemies and we do not try to silince you.

"I also wanted to make a remark on the subject of all the nations that “took our land, and we didn’t take theirs.” I think you might’ve forgotten to develop on the subject of the Byzantine. In my strong opinion Byzantine has been the most vicious enemy of Armenia, and we owe Byzantine for the distraction of Armenia for more than a millennium to come. Arabs, Persians and, especially the Turks, have been sort of an inertia put in motion by the Byzantine Empire and the nation representing it, if any. I think it is important to recognize it (btw, I find remarkable one of the best hidden pages of the Armenian history, which is the rebellion of our compatriots in the 9th century and the establishment of de-facto independence for about a century in both sides of the Byzantine-Arab demarcation line)." Many non-Armenian historians mention the Armenian-Byzantine relations. What is important is that they consider Armnia to be a part of the Empire. Moreover, there were Byzantine Kings of Armenian origin. Did some of them do something for Armenia? Is that possible that they were even worse? If you think Tigran was not a strong King (and I agree) then Armenia has never had its own empire. More than 3000 years of history and not a single empire. I guess we can only be a part of an empire or a strong country. A peacful nation cannot have a strong blossoming country under its own rulers. I do hope we have the future but the long Armenian history tells me another thing. When an Armenian gets some political power (for example, Byzantine Kings of Armorigin) he becomes loyal TO HIS COUNTRY. Stupid Armenian loyalty.

"It was Stalin who divided ARmenia into 3 parts ok not Azeris. Read history." If you ask me, Arine jan, I will certainly do that... "If Azeri politicians were better than ARmenian politicans, then you wouldn't meet any Azeris in Moscow. Read the news. " Do I need to read the news? I am spending my vacations in Moscow and can meet them every single day and get the first-hand information.

"... but then they start wanting to date me, i don't know why. I can't even count how many times the same thing happenes. Everytime someone finds out my last name, they always know that I'm ARmenian "which is great cuase then they say stuff like "I didn't know that Armenian girls are so beautiful"" Wonderful!!! Arine jan, now they know that Armenian girls are really beautiful!

"Just because he's ancestors were from Persia doesn't make him Azeri. If he is Azeri then he's a Turk, since there was no "Azeri" nation before 1918. They are just as dumb as the Turks." ??? Imagine that there is such a nation. I am in Moscow now and I meet them sometimes even more than Russians here... How could dumb people get Nakhijevan and Artsax? And tell me whose political leaders are stronger - Armenian or Azeri? " During the Soviet Union Russians, Ukrainians & ARmenians were the only people active in science, arts, literature." How about Belorus?... "I'm not saying that others didn't do anything but those 3 were the smartest. & don't forget that Armenia had the 3rd best Academy of Sciences in the whole Soviet Union, after Russia then Ukraine." Yeah, but today, unfortunately, those 3 Academies are worse than for example Polish. And the Armenian Academy of Sciences is now the 1st. But this time in a list of the worst Academies.

One Iranian girl from U of M Ann Arbor told me something about Armenians in Iran when she got to know that I am from Armenia. "Oh, wow, you are from Armenia? There is a lot of Armenians in Iran. There are those presenting the interests of the community in Iran, different newspapers in Armenian language..." Moreover, there is no discrimination against them as Christians. Vahan

Hey, guys! I think Jivan is making more improvises than others. In my opinion, Vache, who was probably the best of the best, was a more conservative player. By the way, I was in EtnoFest in Moscow a week ago, and Jivan was one of the performers there. That was great! And what is interesting that I saw only a few Armenians there... I did not even know that he plays Zurna too.

Hagarag, If you want us to marry Jews (sorry, but I would prefer to consider myself as a smart Armenian... please think that much of us then will have the problem in their families. What kind of problems? Many guys have success because their Jewish wives sleep with proper persons in time. No? Just take the Bible and read it carefully and see what very well known Jewish fathers did in Egypt, for example. If you think that there is something that a Jewish wife can and an Armenian cannot you are wrong. And if you want to assimilate Jews outside Armenia you are again wrong. Vahan

Dear Ara Baliozian, Unfortunately, I could not feel whether or not you were ironic in this response but I hope you were not. No, I am in touch with broadminded Armenians as well as with many others. I meet a lot of Armenians from Homeland, Russia, US, France,... and I would say that the majority is not AGAINST Turks, do not consider them bloodthirsty barbarians. It is my observation. The problem is that much time passed and new generations DO NOT even know that much about the Genocide. Is that good? I am not sure. But I know that Turkish state likes that very much and keeping this problem unresolved they may have a success because people tend to forget things and it is natural. The Armenian side may vice versa keep this problem alive using, for example, a propaganda which may or may not be "good". But what else one can do now? I did not see the Genocide neither my parents. I was born and grew up in Erevan during the Soviet period and I saw Armenian attitude to Turks. Now I meet Turks and understand that their attitude was even worse. But what is the greatest problem for me is that Armenians have the WORST attitude to their compatriots. Young Turks are also not AGAINST Armenians as well as we are not against them. The problem to be solved is IN OUR people and their relations with each other. Vahan