Iam not going to write my diary twice; you will face everything that has happened, the way I remember, everything that exists and is going on now every day, till the 4th of September 2015, with this very format in one of my notes… About what is going to be after that we will arrange later.

In 1988 three Ashots (Bleyan, Dabaghyan, Manoucharyan) were entirely engaged in pedagogy, and in order to implement our pedagogical programs and ideas we were using the opportunities of “Perestroika” and publicity initiated by Gorbachev.

The school number 183 was an experimental one and was subordinated to the Ministry of Education, but we had numerous problems to be solved with the Soviet district, municipal, party authorities and sponsor organizations. I was completely in charge of the kindergarten, primary school and the  relations outside school. Ashot Dabaghyan supervised the middle and high schools, initiated school trips, hikings. Ashot Manoucharyan was both the torturer of our souls and the psychologist. He was a real torturer in the direct sense of the word. There were many man teachers in the school and they were all smokers, beginning from Dabaghyan and ending with Mayis Nikoghosyan. Many were late for classes, many didn’t treat the learners in the right way. Manoucharyan was respected and everybody was aware of his unyielding pursuit from their own experience.Ashot was a model: he never said anything which he himself didn’t do. Ashot the psychologist was working individually with dozens of difficult boys, was the defender of each learner’s rights. He might deal with the problems of a concrete child for days and weeks….

It was cold, very cold in December of 1988, there was such an epidemic of flu that authorities stopped the classes in all Yerevan schools. This time-out was a gift for us; with some close friends we, three Ashots, secluded ourselves in a Dilijan rest house, to discuss our pedagogical programs and the school plans of further developmentforgetting our everyday problems. My daughters, ten- year-old  Lilit Bleyan and eight-year-old Tatev, their peer Bagrat Dabaghyan fully took the advantage of  Dillijan’s nature and the freedom of their vacation… On February 14-15 we were returning to Yerevan in a bus which belonged to the well-known kindergarten Sebastia the director of which was Mrs Veronika, our prematurely deceased  teacher of Physics Alexander’s mother. The driver, a friend of ours, was surprisingly telling us about the incredible new events in Yerevan that had invaded the city with no exact answer to the questions: Where from and how? We had left the city calm a few days before…and the driver was endlessly telling us news about ecological marches, political appeals, worrisome Nagorni Karabakh, discontents in the Opera Square… We were eager to reach Yerevan in the shortest time possible. On leaving our families at homes we were soon in the Opera Square.

What a surprise!There we could see our Samson Ghazaryan, Hambartsum Galstyan, Hrair Ulubabyan, Alexan Hakobyan, fellow students from the university, faces, individuals that we had lost being isolated in Bangladesh (South West district of Yerevan) with our pedagogical problems… That was the start of Karabakh movement for us. Were we ready for such a breakthrough of events? Any breakthrough is just a breakthrough with the state of being unprepared, with a new situation. The young wing of Karabakh movement is the university Komsomol-antikomsomol active of the 1970s. We were the  students of the 1972-1978s who believed that social justice could be established in a separate institution of higher education, where the students could influence the administration of the university through the Komsomol organization. We had had an impressive period of inner-university political struggle.

The university students’ construction teams of faculty of Physics, the well-known gatheringsThe Physicist’s Day     , the clubs had removed the borders not only among different groups of students but also among the students and lecturers. There was an attractive faculty environment which was creative: there were discussions, sharing of ideas, initiatives of informal groups of people. In 1974 Karen Demirchyan, a man with virtuous look, mettle and speech, became first secretary of the Communist Party of Armenia. I remember listening to his program speech so absorbedly….

There was a demand for change in the whole of our republic. There was a frustration of hopes for Armenia’s democratization connected with Karen Demirchyan. Yerevan State University, the Mother University, became the bearer of changes with its revolutionized students. In 1977 we succeeded in surprising the leaders of the Communist Party of the university and Myasnikyan district committee of the Communist Party by ruining the initially determined staff of the committee of the Komsomol organization of the university during the conference of the Komsomol organization. So we managed to take the student sovereignty at the university by electing the well-known figures among our students: Samvel Nalbandyan, Ashot Manoucharyan, Ashot Bleyan, Ashot Jazoyan, Garush Lazaryan, Hambartsum Galstyan… I am sorry, I can’t remember many of them. It will be difficult for me to explain the significance of all these to the young reader of my diary as a phenomenon…But a revolutionary situation was developing. The voice of the Yerevan State University was heard during the Soviet well known parades, regional, municipal and republican conferences-gatherings.

The system, administrative staff all these very quickly, and repressions followed, in the result of that our uprising was totally crushed during the years of 1977-1979. Syoma was promoted (my prematurely deceased friend), I found myself at school number 10, Ashot Manoucharyan- at school number 12, Hambartsum Galstyan, Alexan and many others took up scientific research activities. But we still preserved our political experience. The scientific-creative-engineering community of Armenia being politically the most mature in our country, didn’t act at their best in using the perestroika-publicityopportunities provided by Gorbachev during the years of 1985-1989. Were we all with such an experience prepared for social-economical breakthrough started with the events in Artsakh? No, we were not, anyway. New were the dimensions, scale, quality-dеvelopments. They were unknown to the Soviet society with their geopolitical rhythms. The movement in 1988 was a national one: a spontaneous movement which was not seeking for independence in its nature. Everything was planned and done within the boundaries of the Soviet Union still being preserved by Gorbachev’s perestroika…  This is the source of the contradiction between Karabakh movement and the United National Party (Paruyr  Hayrikyan, Movses Gorgisyan and others) in 1988-1989. The fact was that Gorbachev’s perestroika couldn’t save the Soviet State: it collapsed. And the independent statehood in 1988-1989 didn’t even belong to the newly formed political elite let alone common people gathered around national ideas…Timely and equitable solution of the Artsakh problem which was to be done only in a peaceful way through restoration of historical justice, wasn’t deviated by either the Sumgait violence in 1988, or ecological factors, or the social problems occurred in the result of the 1988 earthquake. Armenian people in Artsakh and Armenia, everywhere were asking-pleading for, explaining, proving, suppressing, enduring, withstanding until the Soviet new leadership found an equitable solution, which would, of course, be in favor of destitute Armenians by means of uniting Artsakh with Armenia.