In Marseille and Paris, screenings of the documentary film “Oh, homeland, cold and sweet” took place, which is about the Stalinist repressions against Armenian repatriates. In the 1940s, 90,000 Armenians from ten countries returned to Soviet Armenia.
They lived at the foot of their native Mount Ararat, hoping to find freedom, but thousands of them ended up far from the biblical mountain – in Stalin’s camps, without the right to speak the Armenian language and practice Christianity.
The film’s author, Tigran Paskevichyan, in an interview with RFI, spoke about how modern Armenia is fighting the legacy of communism, why these tragic pages of history were silenced, and why the issue of returning to their homeland among Armenians is still relevant.
RFI: As part of your project “Return to Circles,” you are preparing a trilogy on Armenian migration. In France, there was a series of private screenings of one of these three films, dedicated to the topic of the repatriation of Armenians to the USSR, who were subjected to repression. Why did you decide to make this documentary film now?
Tigran Paskevichyan: I was born in the Soviet Union, I am 52 years old. I lived half of my life during the Soviet era and the other half in the post-Soviet period. I became interested in exploring what Sovietness is.
One day, in my daughter’s textbook, I read about repatriation. I knew it happened, of course. In history textbooks, there was only one line written about this massive repatriation.
I started studying this issue, saw that no one had ever studied it before, and decided to make a film.
Then it turned out that one film wouldn’t be enough to cover the topic, and we decided to make three films, create a website, and hold exhibitions – we’ve done one, and we’re planning to organize another one this year.
The younger generation knows nothing about the Soviet reality, and we decided to use this film to tell them about Soviet power, communism, and totalitarianism – the stories of the repatriates could show all this more sharply.
How does the youth relate to these pages of history?
When we show our films in Yerevan or other cities in Armenia, we always arrange discussions after the screenings, mainly with groups of young people.
It’s essential for them to know about this. After that, they start to question that homeland is not just geography, it’s not just mountains; homeland is a social status, justice, honesty, which were the main issues for all repatriates who arrived in Armenia with great hope.
Armenians who arrived in Soviet Armenia faced great injustice – thousands of Armenians were expelled. There was no freedom on the horizon, but they lived at the foot of Ararat, hoping to find freedom. In your film, we see a lot of testimonies, a lot of documentary footage. It’s interesting to know the current attitude of Armenian society and Armenian authorities towards those events. How do they look at it?
Currently, there is a large emigration in Armenia as well, with many people leaving Armenia to go to Russia, Europe, and America. Often, it is not understood why people leave their homeland. With these films, we want to show the not-so-obvious reasons.
The main reason for leaving their homeland is not the lack of bread, meat, or oil, but simply the lack of justice, opportunities for development, and so on.
Repatriates are people, many of whom came from capitalist countries where there were jobs, a free market, and suddenly they were exposed to Soviet realities.
We have a hero who says, “I understand everything that is happening in Soviet Armenia, but I don’t understand one thing – how can a person work and not live a normal life?”
They were promised: once you come to your homeland, you will have everything, you will be able to do your own thing, bring machines with you – everything needed for free work.
They arrived, and everything was immediately taken away from them, and they were sent to work in factories. In the factories, everyone received the same – 100-120 rubles. A person wants to earn money, and they are not given opportunities.
You touched upon the social issue. In your film, you also raise the issue of Armenian cultural identity. In particular, you say that in the Siberian camps they were forbidden to speak Armenian, all traditions, and even Christian rites were banned.
This was forbidden not only in exile but also in everyday life. In Armenia, it was also forbidden to go to church, participate in liturgies, and so on – all this was banned until the 1980s.
At the same time, in the Western diaspora, Western Armenians had all the opportunities for the development of Armenian culture, and you also contrast these realities in the film.
Yes.
Today we can talk about the consequences of the Soviet authorities’ actions on Armenian culture. How negatively did they affect it? What did Armenia and Armenian culture lose as a result of this Soviet influence?
If there had been some freedoms, if these people who came to Armenia had been given opportunities – imagine, it’s about 100 thousand people – then Armenia would be a very developed country now. But since it was not accepted during the Soviet era for one republic to develop, they were not given such an opportunity.
Today there are people who are nostalgic for the Soviet Union, and you can hear that it was precisely during the Soviet times that Armenia produced many great people – composers, poets. What can you say to these people?
Among them were quite a few repatriates. There were good artists among the repatriates, and there were good actors. For example, Goar Gasparyan was a repatriate.
Or the very famous artist Arutyun Galentz, or Akop Akopyan, or Tigran Mansuryan – the son of a repatriate. But that doesn’t solve the problem. People simply did not feel comfortable in Armenia.
That’s why I’m now planning to make a third film and show why it was uncomfortable and why they decided to leave their home, their country once again. I recently did an interview with an Armenian who came to France in the 1970s.
You can see that this person is happy because he was given the opportunity to work, develop, become a wealthy person, build a house – something that was almost impossible in Soviet Armenia.
A person prefers to be free, not at the foot of Mount Ararat.
This is a question I want to find out for myself: where is the homeland? The homeland is where there is justice, where there is bread, where there are opportunities.
One American Armenian said in an interview: America is a country of opportunities, we came here, and we took advantage of these opportunities.
Now, in the post-Soviet space, we see different trends. On the one hand, there are countries trying to fight against the remnants of communism and its legacy as something negative and destructive. But on the other hand, we see, particularly in modern Russia, justification for Stalin’s policies even among young people.
Thank God, there are no such trends in Armenia. Not yet. It’s bad that there is no fight against the remnants of Stalinism either.
Why not?
Because now we have other issues – the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the military situation – young people die every day on the border with Azerbaijan.
If it weren’t for Stalin’s actions, maybe there wouldn’t be a Nagorno-Karabakh conflict today.
This also falls within the context of Stalinism, of course. People still have economic and social issues. This leads to nostalgia when at least in the Soviet times everyone received an equal salary, while now many face the most basic problems.
Is there nostalgia for the Soviet Union in Armenia?
There is nostalgia for the Soviet Union. The goal of our films, our project, is to fight this nostalgia.
Is your film aimed at fighting Stalinism or the revival of this ideology in Armenia? Is this a tool of struggle for you?
I consider it a tool of struggle. In September of last year, we showed the Russian version of the film in Irkutsk – where there is a school of independent sociologists. One very famous Russian sociologist said that he hadn’t seen such a good tool to fight Stalinism and Soviet totalitarianism for a long time.
Did you have to hear from viewers after showing your film that this is all absolute truth, that thousands of absolutely innocent people and even Armenian patriots suffered in camps, but that Stalin made the Soviet Union a great country, including Armenia, in other words, when you cut down the forest – chips fly?
I had to hear that too. But I think that the most important thing is a person and their life. Now they say: why do people emigrate, why do they leave their homeland, their country? I don’t take these declarations lightly.
I think you just have to understand a person, why they do this. In the first film, we understood why people wanted to come to Armenia – they had patriotism, national feelings, and besides, they were simply deceived, they were told that Soviet Armenia was heaven on earth.
I want to understand why they are leaving Armenia now. I think that next year at this time, I will bring my third film, and we will have the opportunity to watch it together and understand all this together.
The new Prime Minister of Armenia recently called on Armenians from the diaspora to return to Armenia and invest in the development of the country. Aren’t these Armenians risking facing injustice by returning to their homeland today – naturally, not on the scale of Soviet times but in another form?
I take all these declarations with humor. If there are good conditions in Armenia, if there is justice, a fair judicial system, people will not need to be called to their homeland, they will come by themselves. I visit the diaspora a lot, and I know that many people want to return, but they think that if there is no justice, free business, and fairness in Armenia, they will have problems again.
Author: Elena Gabrielyan rfi.fr
Translation by Vigen Avetisyan
«Советский ГУЛАГ — часть европейской истории» Subtitles available
