Living in the Lie

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Living in the Lie: The Armenian Intelligentsia in the Soviet UnionAuthor(s): John W. MasonSource: Oral History, Vol. 33, No. 2, Memory Work (Autumn, 2005), pp. 57-68Published by: Oral History SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40179870.

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LIVING N T H L I E T HRMENI NINTELLIGENN

T H SOVI T UNIONby JohnW Mason

ABSTRACThis article explores the thought-world of the Armenian intelligentsia livingin the Soviet Union from 1920 to 1991 and asks how they perceived theirexistence in a closed, ideologically


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Map of Armenia,from IntouristbookletSowjetarmenienpublished in theUSSR (no date)

critiques of the Soviet system, written mostlyfrom the perspectiveof the 'captivenations' ofeastern Europe. I soon discovered thatArmenia's eventy-year xperienceas a republicof the Soviet Union was quite different. WhenI began teachingan oral history course at theuniversity learned hat the studentsknew littleabout the history of Soviet Armenia in thetwentieth century,so I asked them to conducttheir own interviews with their parents andgrandparents.Fromthese beginningsI later setup a largeroral history project in Yerevanin2001 in which a team of Armenian ournalistsand postgraduates interviewed seventy-sevenrespondentswho had lived in Soviet Armeniafrom1920 to 1991 The fourinterviewsused inthis paperare taken from that project.

At firstIwasworried hatthe lifestory nter-view format would yield little useful informa-tion. After all oral history was unknown toArmeniansandrespondentswere oftenwaryoftelling their life storyto an interlocutorwith atape recorder even when they knew oneanother.Most of theinterviewswere conductedin Armenian, then translatedand transcribedinto English.It was often a new experience ora respondent o talk on serious ssues so openlyfor such a long time (one and a half to twohours). Others were afraid that their storywould reach the present-dayequivalentof theKGB, but for the most part they spoke abouttheir lives with greatcandourand passion.The interviews n thisstudywere conductedalmost tenyearsafterArmeniabecamean inde-

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pendent state in 1991. It is importantto havean idea of the social conditions of present-dayArmenia and to understand that the 1990sstood in a kind of chainreaction to two previ-ous historicalperiodswhich have left a power-ful markon the Armenianpsyche: he centuriesof life under Ottoman rule culminating n thegenocideof 1915;and the Sovietera from 1920to 1991.The history of the Armenian peoplesstretches back 3,000 years, but the definingmoment of their existence n moderntimes wasthe genocideof 1915 at the handsof the Turkskillingan estimatedmillion and a halfArmeni-ans. 5This great crime and perhaps just asimportant, tspersistentdenialbytheTurks,haslefteveryArmenianwith an 'unhealedwound'.6But it should be remembered hat the imageofthe Armenianpeople as a nation of victims hasbeen fostered more by the western Armeniansof the diaspora(especially hose who settledinthe UnitedStates) thanbythe easternArmeni-ans who inhabit present-dayArmenia.7 t haseven been suggested by some historians thatpreservingthe memory of the 1915 genocidehas become a means of keeping the diasporaArmenian dentityalive.8The eastern Armeni-ans, by contrast,alreadyhave a home and it isoften forgottenin the West that the territorialremnants of the Armenian nation were savedfrom certain extinction in 1920 when theEleventh Red Army of the Soviet Unioncrushed an advancing Turkish army.9 n thesameyearArmeniacame under Soviet rule. Incontrast to the 'captive nations' of easternEurope therefore, the Armenians saw theirSoviet rulers as protectors rather thanconquerors and the Republic of Armeniaremained for the next two generations, in thewords of Ronald Suny, a ioyal millet' of theSoviet Union.10This historicalexperiencewasbound to be reflected n the testimonies of our'eastern'Armenianrespondents.Duringseventyyearsof Soviet rule Armeniachanged from being a peasant-based agricul-turalcountryto an urban-based ndustrialoneand this economic progresswas accompaniedby a revivalof Armenianculture and national-ism. In Yerevan the largest statue of Stalin inthe Soviet Union was removed in the early1960s and later replaced by one of 'MotherArmenia'." Yet this outbreak of Armeniannationalism in the 1960s was directed notagainstthe dominantRussians,but againstthetraditional nemy, he Turks.The Soviet Armeniansfirst turned againsttheir masters in Moscow in 1988, when theydemanded the transfer of Nagorno-Karabakh(an autonomousregion within Azerbaijan)toArmenia.12 rmeniaopted for independence n

Mother Armenia,from the Intouristbooklet V\s\\ezL'Armenie,published in theUSSR [no date)

1991 butthe small andlockedrepublicof threeand a half million people suffered a series ofhorrendous problems over the next decade,includingan earthquake which claimed up to100,000 lives), war with Azerbaijan, aneconomic blockade, political corruption andeconomic collapse.15 From 1991 Armeniapresented tself to the worldas an independentrepublicwith a popularlyelected presidentandparliament, ts own armyand all the trappingsof independentstatehood. But its citizens hada different experience; they felt that life inArmenia had become, in the words of NoraDudwick,'. a disturbingmixtureof chaos andauthoritarianism'.14In2001, when the interviews ook place,anestimatedeightyper cent of Armenia'spopula-tion lived belowthe poverty ine (establishedatone US dollar a person per day), the healthsystem had collapsed, pensions were virtuallywiped out and there was a mass exodus ofyoungpeople.15 urrespondentswere boundto

Autumn2005 ORAL HISTORY 59



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Lenin statue beheaded in1992, from My Yerevan, byA Zakoyan, et al, Yerevan,Acnalis, 2002, p 26




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look back on the Sovieterathrough hefilter oftheirpresent-dayives. ButI shallargue hat thereverse process was also at work. In otherwords,ourrespondents'memoriesof theSovietpastshapedhow theyviewedpresent-day,nde-pendentArmeniaof the 1990s. Indeed,I hopeto show that t was thememoriesof theirearlierlives which had the strongerimprint on theirtestimonies.All the respondents were chosen by theinterviewers hemselvesand they all belongedto the intelligentsia n the broadestsense. Withits biastowardsurbanmiddle-class nhabitantsof the capital city this samplemakes no claimto be representative f the Armenianpeople asa whole. In this paper I shall drawon the lifestory interviews with four Armenians, bornbetween 1919 and 1930, who heldresponsiblepositions, respectively, as broadcaster, armyofficer, school inspector,and journalistin theStalinist and post-Stalinist era of the SovietUnion. As membersof the middle echelon ofthe intelligentsia hey were not policy makers,butnor weretheyuncritical onsumersof massSoviet propaganda.The nature of their workbroughtthem into close relationshipwith theCommunistPartyandoften compelledthemtoact as a mouthpiece or the regime'svaluesandgoals.WhenIbeganmyinterviews was interestedin the very question that Havel posed in hisessay:how coulda personbe botha victim anda supporterof the system? Havel's answer isthat everyoneknew at the time that the ideol-ogy of the communist system was based on apackof lies,but that thepriceof publiclyadmit-ting it was too high (for example,loss of liveli-hood, punishment for the family, etc) andthereforethe individual bowed to the greaterpowerof the state andmeeklyput the posterinthe window.Thisanalysisof communistsocietyis based on the assumptionthat the individualself is capableof thinkingand acting indepen-dentlyof the system.Havel concludeslogicallythat the individual iving n thissystemhasonlyone of two choices:'livingthe lie' or 'livingthetruth'.16I soon discovered that posing the questionin thiswaytakes no accountof the personwhomight be a true believer in the communistsystem.Thepersonwho is a convincedcommu-nist simplydoes not fit into Havel'scategories.Of course, the existence of the true believer nthe communist deologyraises urtherquestionsabout the identity of the individual in such asystem. For example, do individuals have asense of themselves and their interests inde-pendentlyof the systemin which they lived?17These are questions about an individual'ssubjectiveunderstandingof himselfor herself

outside the official realm of public ideologywhich, I believe,oralhistory s ideallysuited toinvestigate. I shall classify our respondents'narratives oughly n order of the position theyadopted towards the dominant communistideology,from true believer to outright oppo-nent.TRUE BELIEVERZaven was born in the town of Artik in thenorthern partof Armenia in 1927 of parentswho had fled from the Turkish genocide adecadeearlier.He was a brightpupilandlearntwell from his socialist text books that in allprevious periods of history the majority ofpeople are always poor and the minorityrich.He also sawin his native town thatpeoplewerereceivingfree medical aid, free education andflats free of charge. He hurried to join theCommunistPartywhile stillunder-age sixteen)because of its 'progressive deology'.18He thenwon a scholarship to university, became alecturer in international relations within theCentral Committeeof the Armenian Commu-nist Partyand the firstpoliticalbroadcaster orArmenian elevision.In his work as broadcaster Zaven claimedthat he never spoke from a preparedtext. Heinsisted that he '...was not controlled byanyone'and referred o himself as a 'scientist'who was able to standapart rom conventionalpoliticalfashion.19 ecause he spoke without atexthe believedthat he hadgenuinefreedomtosaywhateverhe liked:

. it is customary o say. thatunder social-ist rule there was an iron curtain on theborder of the Soviet Union... but such acurtain didn't exist for me. I always spokebravely.There was censorship at the timebut [it] never concerned me... I alwaysspoke without notes and I was allowed todo that andafteranalysingmy speechIwastold that I had spoken very boldly, inde-pendently.20Zaven s testimonyreveals the life of a truebeliever in the communistideology, similarinsome ways to that of Lev Kopolev,the model

for Rubin in Solzhenitsyn's The First Circle.21The progressionof his career, rom the time hejoined the Communist Party at the age ofsixteen to his matureyears, is mirrored n theprogressof the SovietUnion itself. He recalledthat the happiestmoment of his life was 9 May1945, when the war ended and he was justfinishing school: 'Our happiness had nobounds... It seemed the victoryhad rescued usand ourwayof life so that thepathto studywasopen for us'.22Like the stages of the cross the




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greatvictoryover fascism n 1945 was followedby a set of familiar achievements in science,industry, ocial welfare and culture n the post-Stalin years.23Zaven's communist world viewhad been formed in his youth and nothing heexperienced hereafter ed him to changeit. Asan Armeniancitizen he felt protected living inthe Soviet empire.As an academicand broad-caster his own private identity was indistin-guishable rom that of his publicSovietpersonaand he felt genuinely free to express his opin-ions becauseon essentials herewas nevergoingto be a clash between the two.When Armeniabecame ndependent n 1991Zaven reacted by denyingit. The war,povertyand chaos of the 1990s only confirmed in hismind the superiorityof the Sovietsystem.ButIbelieve his testimony shows that it was not somuch the realities of the 1990s as the fixityofhis ideologicalmind-setwhich shapedhis viewsof both the presentand thepast.He deniedthatArmenia was independentnow because, as hesaid,'How can a hungryman be independent?'24As forfreedom,he claimed hat theonlytimeinhis life that he was ever forbidden o speakas abroadcaster was after Armenia had becomeindependent. ndeed,Zaven hadinternalised heofficial Sovietideologyto such a degreethat heused words such as 'freedom' and 'indepen-dence' to mean almost the exact opposite ofwhat they normallymean in the post-commu-nist world.25Zaven dentified otallywith the Soviet deol-ogy and was closed to information whichconflicted with his Soviet mind-set. Not onlywas he impervious o information rom outsidethe Soviet Union, but his testimonyrevealed ahighly selective account of Soviet history: nomention was made of the Stalinistrepressionsof the 1930s and 1940s or thesteadystream ofpropagandalies which continued throughoutthe post-Stalin decades. Zaven regarded theSoviet experiment in communism as not onlylegitimatebut laudable.There is no reason toquestion the genuineness of his beliefs. TheSoviet state's monopoly on the socializationprocess affected his political views socompletely that he could not think criticallyabout his situation. The existence of a truebeliever like Zaven puts into question Havel'sanalysisof 'post-totalitarian'ocietybecausehismodel denies that a convincedcommunistcouldactually ive within the communistsystem.Zaven's ife storyalso challengesthe stereo-type of the Armenian as a victim without ahomeland.For Zaven the SovietUnion was notonly 'normal', it was the only place he couldimagine living in, because it was there thatArmenians ike himself hadfound a safe homewithin which they could build their own

successful careers.26 e remainedan Armenianpatriot within the vast multi-national Sovietempire; but because he had already found ahome his self-imagewas far removedfrom theimage of the Armenian as a victim, which thediasporacommunitykeptalivewithvaguecallsfor a returnto the 'homeland'.27BELIEVERSITHRESERVATIONSOurnext two respondents ome closer to fittingHavel'smodel because they showed a capacityto thinkcriticallyabout the communistsystem.But in spite of their reservations, they toobelieved in the fundamentalsoundness of thecommunist system and therefore, like Zaven,felt no need to choose either of Havel'soptions- 'living n the lie' or 'livingthe truth'.Hakob was born in 1919 in a village inKarabakh ndbecausehis fatherhaddiedin thecivil war before his son was born the villagecommittee offered Hakob a free educationforten yearsat a boardingschool, after which hefoughtwith a tankbrigade n WorldWar Two.Hakob was proud of his role in 'setting theworld free of fascism'in 1945 and he remem-bered the years afterwards as a time whenpeople were 'free' and had the opportunitytoimprovetheir lot throughhardwork.28 lectric-ity and naturalgas were installed for the firsttime in buildings in Yerevan and everybody,even children from illiterate families, had thechance to get a free education. OrlandoFigeshas written that'The Sovietsystemwas definedby its belief in science and technology'.29 hiswas certainlyreflected in Hakob'sown father-less familyas he saw his brotherrise to becomean engineer and his sister become a scientist.The Soviet system was for him a meritocracybased on education: Peoplebelievedin knowl-edge. They believed in a better life throughknowledge.'30We can see here, as we saw withZaven, how the 'myth'of progresswas deeplyingrained n Hakob's ife:how industrialisation,scientific educationand the ethic of hard workserved to legitimate he Soviet system.31Hakob'sown careerprogression eflected hesystemhe so admired.After the warhe becamecommander-in-chief f guardtroopsin Yerevanand then in the Khrushchev era he becamedirector of a collective farmin the Echmiadzinregion of Armenia. In both these positionsHakob won manystate awards for his achieve-ments. He was a devoted Communist Partymember and proudly held on to his partymembership after the collapse of the SovietUnion. Hakob was a productof the Stalinyearsand a strong believer in the communist ideol-ogy;but he was also able to step back fromthepropagandamessagesof theregimeandcriticisesome its policies. Perhapspreciselybecause he




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was such an unwavering supporter of thecommunist ideology he was able to straddle aclose line betweenacceptanceand rejectionofthe Stalinist terror and violence in the 1930sand 1940s. He made it clear in the interviewthat in the Stalinyearshe was unaware of theextent of the atrocities committed by theregime.He knew thatfamousArmenianwritersandmany prisonersof war were executed, buthe accepted the regime's official explanationthat theywere 'enemies of the people.'32n the1950s, when Khrushchev denounced Stalin'scrimes, Hakob remarked, 'I felt verybad... deceived and cheated.'"Hakob's disillusionment with the Sovietpropaganda tategrewin the post-Stalinyears,but did nothing to shake his conviction in thesuperiority f socialismas an economicsystem.His testimonyshows that he was able to standboth inside and outside the ideological box,which was the only thought system he everknew.He declared hat'Anti-capitalisthoughtswere implanted in our brainssince birth';yetwhen travel restrictions were lifted in the1960s, he could see for himself that life wasbetter even in EasternEuropeancountrieslikePoland and Hungary.Hakob became increas-ingly sceptical, even contemptuous, of thepropagandahe was fed:

Their Marxism-Leninismpreached to usthat capitalism s a rotten system, that it'sexploitationof manbyman. But when wefound out that in these capitalistcountriespeople ived betterand were freeandhappy,we came to the conclusion that whateverwe were taughtwas wrong....35Still, Hakob's awareness of the lies that hewas being fed did not turn him against theSovietsystem.He was bitterabout the yearsofindependence nd he accusedArmenia's eadersof failing the people and robbing the countryfor their own gain. Nevertheless, his mainregretabout theseventyyearsof Soviet rule wasthat socialismhad neveractuallybeen achieved.Unlike Zaven, Hakob could acknowledgethe atrocitiesof the Stalinyearsand the decep-tions perpetrated during the post-Stalinist

decades. However thesewere almost academicquestions to him because, although he feltdeceived hat he had not been told the truth,henever became disillusioned with the systemitself. Hakob's ife story is one of compromiseandadjustment o the Soviet system. It is alsoa search or a waythrough he thicketof Sovietlies andpropaganda ndin this sense it remindsme of Roy Medvedev'sclassic denunciationofStalinwritten n 1971, LetHistoryJudge.Bothmen felt the need to castigateStalin'scrimesas

Statue of Stalinpictured in Yerevanin 1950, fromZakoyan, et al,My Yerevan,2002, p 149

accidentaldeformities n order to proclaimthebasic soundnessof the Soviet system.36Bythe sectionheadingsI use in this paperIdo not meanto implythatthe population ivingin Soviet Armenia can be divided neatly intobelievers and unbelieversin the official ideol-ogy.Formany peoplebeliefin the official deol-ogy must have co-existed with residualresentment or even hatred of the actualsystem.37This was certainly true for our nextrespondent. Karlen was born in 1920 in avillage in the Ani region of Armenia. Hismother worked as a milkmaid on a collectivefarm and the family lived in a primitive hutwhich they shared with the sheep. WhenKarlen's father died, the family moved toYerevan and he attended the Orjonikidze




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Yerevan StateUniversity,present day,from Armenia,A Country andthe People,7999, p 87.

he had so thoroughlynternalised hekeyvaluesand beliefs of its ideology,even while retaininga critical independence in his thought at thelevel of everydayexistence.OPPONENTOur last respondentdiffers from all the othersin beingtheonlyone whose familywas directlyaffected by the Stalinist repressions of the1930s. As we shallsee, thisexperience,coupledwith the fact that he came from an Armenianfamilywhich was both religious and wealthy,turned him into an implacable enemy of theSoviet system. Arsen was born in 1930 in avillagenear Artashat n the Araratdistrict, theson of a wealthy andownerwho lost everythingin the collectivisationcampaign n 1934:

Everythingwas confiscated.Even the potsof pickles were taken away, can youimagine? I was a child but that dayremained in my memory firmly. One ofthem was sittingon thedivan,his legon thechair and a sheet of paperon his kneesandhe was noting in detail what was taken.46Twoyearslater Arsen s fatherreturnedandwas made to work on a collective farmwhilethe family received one cow as their mainprivatesourceof livelihood.Arsen excelled at school, graduated fromYerevan tateUniversity ndbeganhis life-longcareeras editor and writerfor a youthnewspa-

per called The Pioneer. The Pioneer was a state-ownednewspaperwhose aim was to instil intotheyoungergeneration he valuesand goals ofcommunism.For Arsen this was an agonizing

task becausehe didnot believein thesegoals inthe first place:All the stories had to be of an educationalcharacter.All the heroeswere artificialandhad nothing in common with real life.... Itwas an unanimated literature. We wereconstantly askingthis or that journalisttowrite such material and it wasn't pleasantfor them to write such false stories.47

He admittedthat writersreceivedgood payandenjoyedmanyprivileges n the Sovietyears,but in returntheyhad to writeaccordingto anideological plan:'Certainlynone of the writersbelievedin what theywrote.'48Arsen was unequivocal in his hatred ofcommunismbecausehe believed t wasbasedona denial of basic human freedoms. He neverforgot his childhoodmemoriesof the persecu-tion of his father n the 1930s and the arrestsofhis grandfather and uncle in the 1940s. HecondemnedStalinas an enemyof Armeniaandhe knew that many other people thought thesame way but were too afraidto speak freely:'Wespoke in a low voice so thatnobodycouldhear us, as we knew that spies were every-where.'49Even under the Khrushchev'thaw',when material conditions improved, Arsencontinued to believe that communismwas anabominablesystemwhich ought never to havetaken root in any society.Forhim none of theeconomicandsocialbenefitsbroughtbycommu-nismweighed n the balanceagainst ts recordofviolentpersecution nddenialof basicfreedoms.Equally mportant n shaping Arsen s viewof communism was its hostility towards reli-




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gion.Hegrew up ina devoutlyChristianhouse-hold in a rural area and as he said, '... in theatmosphere f a villageatheismdoesn'twork'.50Fromhis earlylife Arsen had learnedfrom hiswealthy, religious family certain values andbeliefswhich stood at odds with the communistideology. He was the only one of our respon-dents who spokeas thoughhe could have beenone of Havel's ubjects:he remaineduntouchedbythe communistpropaganda ndhadno diffi-culty distinguishingbetween right and wrongand truthand falsity.He alone perceived thathe was 'living n the lie'.CONCLUSIONOral testimony gives us valuable informationabout the private ives of citizens whose voiceshad been hitherto silenced under totalitarianregimes. But as Luisa Passerini reminds us,merely giving voice to those who had beensilenced previouslyby historyis not enough.51We have seen from the first threerespondentsthat some of the most revealingaspectsof theirtestimonies s whattheyleft out of them. Thesesilences, based on self-censorship, had beenpractised or decadesunder Soviet rule and thishabit of mind continuedlong after the systemcollapsed.In accounting for these omissions it isimportant o remember he generation-specificcontent and tone of these narratives.All ourrespondentswere born between the years1919and 1930 and therefore he formativeyearsoftheir lives were spent in the 1930s and 40s.These were also the formative decades of theSoviet Union, when the Stalinist repressionsand the 'Great PatrioticWar'against fascismdefined the Sovietexperiment.For thisgenera-tionthe Soviet deologybore downon them likea heavyweightandtheycould not treat t lightlyeven when they were opposed to it. All ourrespondents onstructed heir narrativeswith aviewtojustifying hemselvesandaccounting orthewaysinwhichtheysurvivedand evenpros-peredthrough his darkperiodof history.Havel's observation- that every person isboth a victim andsupporterof the communistsystem- certainlyapplies to our respondents,but not exactly n the way that he imagined t.The first respondent,Zaven, flatlydenied anyclash of interest between his own private lifeand thepublic deology.The two 'believerswithreservations', Hakob and Karlen, acknowl-edged that the Soviet regime had committedatrocitiesand lied in the past, but this did notlead them to denounce the Soviet system as awhole. They both acquired what VladimirShlapentokhhas calleda 'two-levelmentality',which enableda person to criticise particularpolicies and behaviour of the Soviet regime,

while at the same time accepting the funda-mentals of its ideology.52In the West we are accustomed to empha-sizing the totalitarian aspects of the Sovietsystem.53 ut as the testimonyof our firstthreerespondents shows, some members of theArmenianntelligentsia ocused on theemanci-patoryaspectsof the Stalinistandpost-Stalinistsystem. They adjusted o this systemand madethenecessary ompromises o flourishwithin t.We might even question how many compro-mises they had to make, since it appears thatthey had thoroughly internalized the basicvalues and goals of the system. For them theSoviet Union stood for a positive new orderbased on education, cience,socialmobilityandsocial welfare.Theyhad all risen fromhumblesocialbackgroundso respectablepositionsandnaturally heysaw the Soviet Union as a sortofmodel meritocracy.They dwelt almost exclu-sively on these aspects of the systembecausetheyhadabsorbedthe Soviet ideologicalscriptso totally and because they were beneficiariesof it. They ignoredthe dark,violent repressiveside of the regime, not only because they hadno personalexperienceof it, butmainlybecausetheirpersonal dentityhad been largely ormedby the ideological messages of the regime.PerhapsHavel's thesis has limited applicationto Soviet Armeniansbecause it does not allowfor the fact that the state's monopoly on thesocialization process actuallyhad a powerfuleffect on the belief systemof its subjects.Our respondentswere interviewed ust tenyears after the near-collapseof the Armenianstate andsociety n the 1990s and theappallingsocial conditions of theseyearsmust have rein-forced the rosy retrospectiveview of the SovietUnion that three out of four of themexpressed.However,I would arguethata moreimportantfactor n favourablydisposingmanyArmenianstowards the Soviet Union was the relief andgratitude hattheyfelt livingwithinthe securitynet of the Soviet Union. After all, the Sovietempirehad twice protectedthe tinyArmeniannation fromforeign occupation: irst, from theTurks n 1920 and second from the Germans(and hence almost certainly from the Turksagain) in 1945.

The testimoniesusedin thispaper,while notclaimingto be representativeof the Armenianintelligentsiaas a whole, do point to a differentway of experiencingand remembering ife in atotalitariancommunist society from the morewell-knowneasternEuropeanwritingsof dissi-dents such as CzeslawMiloszand VaclavHavel,forexample,who likeSolzhenitsyn,damned heSoviet systemcategoricallybecause ts ideologywas based on lies. Armenians ived within theSoviet Union almost from its inception for




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seventy-oneyears,not theforty-fiveyearsexpe-rienced by the eastern European countries.Because of their geographical position andearlierexperienceof oppression, he Armenianswere bound to view their Soviet masters in adifferent light from the Poles, Czechs and

Hungarians. believethat oraltestimony,whichtaps into new sources of privateopinion, cantell us much about the Soviet experimentas itwas perceived by subjects who lived in thelesserknownrepublicsof the Soviet Unionsuchas Armenia.NOTES1 . VaclavHavel,ThePowerof thePowerless,Armonk,NY:AAESharpe, 1985, p 45.2. Havel, 1985, p 45.3. Havel, 1985, p 56.4. Havel, 1985, p 535. See RG Hovannisianed)TheArmenianGenocide inPerspective,New Brunswick, J:Transactionoob, 1987.6. Quoted inC Walker,Armenia,TheSurvivalof a Nation,New York: t Martin's ress,1990,p 13.7. See DMiller nd LTMiller, urvivors:nOralHistory f the ArmenianGenocide,Berkeley,CA: Universityf CaliforniaPress,1993 andj Pascal,'APeopleKilledTwice',GuardianWeekend, 27 January 001 , pp 33-39.8. See M Mazower,'TheG-Word',LondonReviewof Books,8 February 00 1 pp 19-2 19. VahaknDadrian,TheHistory f the ArmenianGenocide, Oxford:BerghahnBoob, p 360.10* Quoted in N Dudwick, Armenia:paradiseregainedor lost?' n IBremmer nd RTaras eds)New States,New Politics:Buildinghe Post-SovietNations,Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress, 1997, p 481.1 1 RSuny, SovietArmenia'n RHovannisian,TheArmenianPeoplefromAncient oModernTimes, ol II,New York: tMartin's ress,1997,p 371 . See also RSuny,LookingTowardArarat,ArmenianModernHistory,Bloomington:ndianaUniversityress, 1993, pp 133-191 and MaryAAatossian, heImpact f SovietPoliciesonArmenia,Leiden:EJBrill,1962.1 2. On thecomplicatedproblem f Nagorno-Karabakh ee N Dudwick,Nagorno-Karabakhand the Politics f Sovereignty'n RSuny ed)Transcaucasia, ationalism nd Social Change:Essayson theHistory f Armenia,AzerbaijanandGeorgia,AnnArbor:MichiganSlavicPublications,996.1 3. SeeJ RAAasih nd RO Krikorian,rmenia

at theCrossroads,Amsterdam:HarwoodAcademicPublishers, 999, pp 1-94.14. N Dudwick,Political ransformationnPoshCommunist rmenia:Imagesand Realities'n KDawishaand B Parrotteds)Conflict,Cleavageand Change inCentralAsia and theCaucasus,Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityress,1997,p69.1 5. Masih and Krikorian,999, p 87.1 6. Havel, 1985, pp 64-67. 1have drawnextensively n SimonTormey'srilliantanalysisofHavel'sessay inMakingSense of Tyranny,Manchester:ManchesterUniversityress,1995,pp 133-166.1 7. SeeJ Hellbeck, FashioningheStalinistSoul: he Diaryof Stepan Podlubnyi193 11939)', JahrbucherurGeschichteOsteuropas,vol44, 1996, pp 456-463.1 8* Interview ithZaven(pseudonym)ecordedby LilitMiribian,25 February 001 , p 5.1 9. Interview ithZaven,p 3.20. Interview ithZaven, p 9.21 See LevKopelev,TheEducation f a TrueBeliever,New York:Harper nd Row, 1980.22. Interview ithZaven,p 15.23* See StephanKotkin'sdepictionof the SovietUnionunderStalinas embodyingall the elementsof 'progressivemodernity'nMagneticMountain,Stalinism s a Civilisation, erkeley:UniversityfCaliforniaPress,1995, pp 1-25.24. Interview ithZaven,p 7.25. Fora good discussionnthisjournalf howthe same words used inthedifferentontextsofthecommunistnd post-communistorldscanhave differentmeanings,see RSchendler,TheyMade the Freedom orThemselves:PopularInterpretationsf PostCommunist iscoursentheCzech Republic',OralHistory, ol29, no 2,2001, pp 73-82.26. Fora recentstudyof the Soviet Unionas a'normal'society,see VShlapentokh,A NormalTotalitarianSociety,Armonk,NY:M ESharpe,2000.

27. Suny,1993, pp 213-230.28. Interview ith Hakob(pseudonym)recordedby NickieLazarian, May 2001 , p 7.29. O Figes,Natasha'sDance:A CulturalHistory f Russia,London:AllanLane,2002, p512.30. Interview ithHakob. p 7.31 On thesignificanceof mythsnlifestoriessee JeanPeneff, Mythsn Life tories'n RSamueland PThompsoneds),MythsWe LiveBy,London:Routledge,1990, pp 36-45.32* Interview ithHakob,p 1 133. Interview ithHakob,p 12.34. Interview ithHakob,p 15.35* Interview ithHakob,p 14.36. See RMedvedev,LetHistoryudge, NewYork:Knopf,1970.37. See Kotkin, 995, pp 225-230.38. Interview ith Karlen(pseudonym)ecordedby ShushanKachyan,9 April2001 , p 2.39. Interview ithKarlen, p 2-3.40. Interview ithKarlen, 7.41 Interview ithKarlen, 3.42. Interview ithKarlen, 5.43. Interview ithKarlen, 3.44. Interview ithKarlen, 10.45. Interview ithKarlen, 8.46. Interview ithArsen(pseudonym)ecordedby LevonGevorgyan,April2001 , p 147. Interview ithArsen,p 9.48. Interview ithArsen,p 9.49. Interview ithArsen,p 1 150. Interview ithArsen,p 17.51 LouisaPasserinied)MemoryandTotalitarianism,ew York:OxfordUniversityPress, 1992, p 12.52. Shlapentokh,001 , pp 128-1 30.53. See, forexample,M Malia, TheSovietTragedy: Historyf SocialismnRussia, 917-1991, New York: reePress,1994 and S

Courtoised)TheBlackBookof Communism:Crimes,Terror,epression, ambridge,Mass:HarvardUniversityress,1999.

68 ORAL HISTORYAutumn005

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Living in the Lie