If our heart and consciousness are imbued with the idea of a strong and invincible homeland, tomorrow’s Armenia cannot be powerless and unhappy.
Never and nowhere without a spiritual homeland!
There are no great and small nations. There are only members of the human family with equal rights.
In our century, and especially in our days, nothing weakens the spirit and the ability of nations to resist as much as the fatal hope that some external forces will decide their fate rather their own efforts.
To look for the reasons for their past defeats, to obliterate the instructions of history again and again, and then, undergoing a new catastrophe, to relearn the lessons of history – this is the fate of short-sighted nations.
How forgetful, weak, and unhappy people are. If a nation forgets its history, then it’s ignorant and worthy of punishment. Never, neither in the centuries of the national kingdom nor at the time when Armenia was called the “second kingdom of the Persians”, has the spirit of courage in the Armenians weakened.
It is true, however, that during these long centuries, there have been occasions when the Armenians – for internal reasons – haven’t been able to take full advantage of this spirit. That is the tragedy of our people.
Armenians do not know their history – more precisely, they do not know how to use their history. This is the source of their misfortunes. They are not familiar with their courageous, heroic past, and therefore, to the delight of the enemies of their existence, they believe in anything but not in the power of their own right hand.
Therefore, they are for the most part defeatists. For them, Mamikonyan of Avarayr was more a martyr or saint than a warrior and hero.
Ignorant in his own history, the Armenian knows nothing or almost nothing about the traditional military talents and great military feats of his kind and therefore does not rely on his own right hand, does not believe in his own future.
He does not know that for centuries, the Armenian courage has played the role of a lightning rod for the Armenian country, preventing and neutralizing many external dangers. I have often had the misfortune of listening to Armenian teachers teaching national history, and I have pained for our younger generation.
A dead man with dead words speaks of the dead. History for him is a soulless scheme rather a trembling heart. He possesses fragmentary knowledge about a particular period of our history, remembers dry events, dates, names, but no more.
He is soulless and does not put his soul into his lessons. With the same mood, he speaks of Tigran the Great and Vest Sargis. In short, the story he teaches is not a creative experience but soulless archaeology, for he lacks a treasured sense of national pride.
A history teacher should be primarily a patriot. If he is not like that, then his place is not at a school. Furthermore, he has no moral right to pick up the Holy Book of the life of our family.
Garegin Nzhdeh
