Life and Freedom. The autobiography of the former president of Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh
my life.
I still remember our first family road trip to the Black Sea in our Moskvitch[2] car in great detail. We camped overnight in tents right on the beach. The sea, of course, left the strongest impression. Unlike our mountain creeks, it was so warm that our parents couldn't lure us out of the water. It was there that I learned how to snorkel pretty well, too.
Children spent most of their time in the streets back then. In the summer, we woke up early, raced to the river, and spent entire days there swimming, fishing, and playing. No one remembers most of our games nowadays; they are long forgotten. I loved to hike and often took a tent to the mountains with my brother or friends. I explored our famous canyon in Shushi far and wide. I knew all the trails and secluded places, climbed in all the caves, and could easily spend the night in the mountains, without a tent even.
In the winter, we entertained ourselves primarily with ice skating and skiing. Oh, how we loved when it snowed! Of course, no one had mountain skis back then, so we would take wide soldier's skis, install homemade heel holders, climb to the highest hill and zoom down the slope.
It snowed a lot, and the snow stayed. In those days, they didn't spray salt to melt the ice, so all the streets would practically turn into ice rinks. City buses had to use tire chains to keep from skidding on the ice. As the buses sputtered slowly up the hills to the upper part of town, we, on our ice skates, would cling to their backs to hitch a ride, then rush back down once they had reached the top. Our ice skates, snegourkey[3] as we called them, were very different from those of today: nothing more than two steel blades tied to the soles of our snow boots with shoelaces.
Our family lived in a stone house that my grandfather built back in his day. I remember how we would apply a coat of red lead paint to the roof every summer to keep it from rusting. The house was rebuilt several times: initially, there was only one room, but over time two more rooms as well as a veranda and a basement were added. I can still clearly see the old photographs of my grandfather, grandmother, and great-grandfather hanging on the walls. To me, as a child, the house seemed enormous. Many years later, I was surprised to see how small it was in reality. The house survived the war, but it was demolished later; I discovered a construction site there not long ago. The orchard that my grandfather started had disappeared too.
That orchard was my father's pride and joy. A prominent agronomist, he loved his profession. Three immense mulberry trees hugged our house, and we, as children, climbed them all the time and ate their sweet, ripe mulberries. The grownups made mulberry molasses. And vodka, of course. To this day, if I do have vodka, it tends to be mulberry vodka.
There were six of us living together: my parents, my grandmother, my brother Valera, me, and our sister Ivetta – my stepsister from my father's first marriage – who was a college student. After finishing her studies, she continued to work in Armenia, but later moved to Moscow where she got married.
Valera and I shared a room. Being only two years apart, we used to fight a lot as kids – over unimportant stuff, of course. As the younger brother, I was feisty and didn't want to give in on anything. And then, suddenly, Valera grew up and became big and strong; he matured, and at that point, our relationship had transformed. The fights stopped, and a friendship that would span our entire lives began.
We also had family secrets. One of them – my father's story – I found out only as an adult.
My grandfather lived in Baku. When the Turks entered Baku in 1918, and the Armenian pogroms began, my eight-year-old father was separated from his parents. In a crowd of escapees, he ended up on a ferry across the Caspian Sea to Central Asia. Despite the chaos of a revolution, civil war, absence of government, and civil unrest everywhere, my grandparents and their daughters survived and finally reached Karabakh. My father, wandering around for a long time as a homeless child, somehow ended up in Tashkent. He got lucky – he and many other homeless children were taken in by a wealthy Armenian. The children worked for him, and in exchange, he fed them, even sent them to school, effectively saving them.
My grandmother didn't lose hope of finding her child all those years. Order was gradually restored in the country, and the regular mail service began working again. My grandmother's brother, who had gained an influential position in the local police force – he headed its anti-banditry division – was able to find my father, who had been lost six years earlier, and return him to Stepanakert. My father was already 14 years old at that time. My grandmother was ashamed that she had lost her child and forbade my father to talk about it. And we didn't know. We did, however, notice things here and there. For instance, my father's close friend from Tashkent visited us every year. "Who is this friend of yours? Why do you have a friend in Tashkent?" we asked, but our father never answered. Later, we found out that they worked together for that rich Armenian in Tashkent.
Another secret was about my grandfather.
I never met him; he died before I was born. Once, I came across a man in our ancestral village who said he knew my grandfather – "Reverend Sarkis" – very well. I asked him why he was calling my grandfather "Reverend." "Well, of course," he said, "your grandfather was the last priest in our region!" As it turned out, when my grandfather – a literate man – came back to Karabakh after fleeing the Baku pogroms, he was offered the opportunity to become a priest. Being literate was not common then. My grandfather agreed and served until the late 1920s, before the last church was shut down. Even though my father grew up a devoted communist, his application to join the Communist Party was denied for a long time based on his family history. My father took it to heart, and even after many years, he didn't feel comfortable talking about it with us.
My paternal grandmother had a stern demeanor – I never saw her smile. A priest's widow, she didn't believe in God. My brother and I sometimes teased her, "Grandma, they told us at school that God exists!" She would wave her hands at us and ask us not to talk nonsense. She never punished us, but we always listened to her, most likely sensing her inner strength and toughness. Our grandmother had three children: her eldest son – my father – and two daughters. The husband of one of her daughters died in World War II, and she lived with her son in Baku. My grandmother's younger daughter lived with her family in Stepanakert, not too far away from us. The younger daughter died early and unexpectedly while I was away serving in the army. Precisely a year after her daughter's death, my grandmother made a suicide attempt by taking too many sleeping pills. When she came to at the hospital, she explained, "I shouldn't have lived longer than my daughter."
In our family, the adults never fought and never raised their voices. My mom lived peacefully with her mother-in-law. Perhaps they sorted things out between them when the children couldn't see them? I don't think so; we lived in a happy home. My mom kept our household together. Strong-willed, strict to a degree, and practical, she defined our household order, kept track of our family expenses, and took care of our upbringing. She was responsible for everything that had to do with our education. I remember that my older brother had difficulty waking up early in the morning. I would be up before the alarm clock, but Valera had to be dragged out of his bed. Mother would wake him up, and he would mumble, half asleep, "Mom, please, one more minute… one more second…" And here she might raise her voice a bit.
The primary source of conflict between my mother and me was the music classes. Her distant nephew played the violin, and my mother's dream was that I would learn to play a musical instrument. When I was in the first grade, she sent me to music school, but I was embarrassed to carry the violin and hated it with a passion. When I walked with it outside, my ears burnt and I wanted the ground to swallow me up. I suffered for the first two years but found