On a Quest of the Light

By Paruyr Hayrikyan

On a Quest of the Light is a story of betrayal, heroism, passion, and loveboth for a woman and a country.

Paruyr Hayrikyan, architect of Armenias independence movement and author of this book, presents his experiences as a freedom fighter through a letter to the love of his youth whom he lost during his eighteen years in prison and exile for dissident activity under the repressive Soviet regime. Written in the form of a personal memoir, On a Quest of the Light tells a chapter in the history of the fall of the Soviet empire that is rich with crucially important and nearly forgotten details of the story of a former Soviet republics journey to statehood.

The letter/memoir tells the tragic love story of the naive and innocent Lusineh and the helpless romantic and democratic leader Paruyr (whom Lusineh only knows by the pseudonym Varujan) against the backdrop of Paruyrs struggle to liberate Armenia from the USSR by way of national referendum. While one chapter describes twenty-four-year-old Paruyrs excitement at his and Lusinehs first kiss, the next describes Paruyrs despair upon being sentenced to fourteen more years in prison. Parallel to the dissident activity in Armenia, the memoirs also discuss dissident movements from across the Soviet Union (Ukrainian, Russian, Georgian, Jewish, and pre-Baltic movements) through Paruyrs friendships with his counterparts in other Soviet republics, owing to their shared sufferings in Soviet prisons and shared dreams of freedom for their respective nations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 13, 2015
• ISBN: 9781514417850

Paruyr Hayrikyan

Paruyr Hayrikyan was born on July 5, 1949, in Yerevan. While in school, Hayrikyan established the Union of Armenian Youth (UAY). Hayrikyan established contacts with the leaders of the National United Party, which was founded in April 1966. In July 1968, the KGB uncovered the National United Party and arrested its founder, H. Khachatrian, and his close friends Haroutiunian and Zatikian (the latter was directing Hayrikyan’s activities). Hayrikyan became a leader of the NUP and launched an active campaign aimed at restoring the organization and recruiting new members to the party. As a leader of the organization, Hayrikyan was sentenced to four years in prison. Hayrikyan served his term in a special camp for political prisoners in Mordovia. After returning from prison in 1973, Hayrikyan updated the party’s program by focusing on respect for human rights and the process of popular referendum as the road to democracy and independence. On February 12, 1974, he was again arrested. In 1984, after 14 years of imprisonment (which included 6 years and 7 months in prisons, another 6 years and 7 months in camps, and 304 days in solitary confinement), Hayrikyan was exiled to Ust-Kut in the Irkutsk region of Siberia, where he lived until the beginning of 1987. In the fall of 1987, Hayrikyan returned to Yerevan and, together with his friends, established the Union for National Self-Determination (UNSD). UNSD’s major objective was to achieve Armenia’s independence through the peaceful declaration of self-determination in a nationwide referendum. In 1988, under the decree of the Presidium of the USSR’s Supreme Council, Hayrikyan was stripped of Soviet citizenship and exiled to Ethiopia. The US State Department immediately offered him political asylum. With the assistance of the Armenian community of Ethiopia, Hayrikyan went to Italy and then to France and Germany. The USA was the last stop in his long travels. In the fall of 1988, Hayrikyan’s wife and three children joined him in the United States. The next year, Hayrikyan’s mother (his father, Arshavir Hayrikyan, died in the fall of 1987) and his sister (the widow of Stepan Zatikian, who was sentenced to death by firing squad) and her children also joined him. During his stay abroad, Hayrikyan acquired wide popularity. He was elected as chairman of the international organization Democracy and Independence. In July 1990, Hayrikyan was nominated in absentia for the post of the Supreme Council chairman but lost, however, to Levon Ter-Petrossian. In August 1990, Senator Bob Dole led forty US senators in pressuring Gorbachev to restore Paruyr Hayrikyan’s Soviet citizenship. Further pressured by the Armenian Parliament, the Kremlin restored Hayrikyan’s citizenship in November 1990 and allowed him to return to Armenia. He returned to Armenia, while his wife chose to stay in the USA with the couple’s three children. In October 1991, Hayrikyan stood for the office of president. Judging by election returns, Hayrikyan ranked second after Levon Ter-Petrossian, but his supporters claimed that there were multiple violations during the campaign, including an act of violence committed against him and his supporters in the village of Paravakar (Tavoush District). These charges were subsequently judged to be true by the decision of the Armenian courts. Since then, Paruyr Hayrikyan has been a member of the parliament for nine years, has held positions as chairman of the Constitutional Reform Commission and ombudsman of the Republic of Armenia. He earned a degree in constitutional law from the Yerevan State University in 1998. Hayrikyan has also authored numerous patriotic and lyric songs and poems, as well as political and constitutional-theory pieces, such as “Formula of a State’s Democraticity” and “Complete Democracy.” On a Quest of the Light was published in Armenian in 2004 by UNSD Publishing House (ISBN 99930-980-5-1). He concluded his research on complete democracy in 2012 by publishing a manual called Toward Absolute Democracy in English, Armenian, Italian, and Russian (see www.demos.am). He got nominated to run for president of Armenia particularly to bring this theory to life. Toward the middle of the election on January 31, 2013, there was an assassination attempt on his life by a group that was sponsored by Russia. After three surgeries, he’s recovering and actively participating in Armenia’s constitutional reforms. He’s also currently writing a three-volume book series on his jail memoirs that is mostly based on miraculously saved papers and documents (as of April 2015, the first book is complete).

Book preview

ON A QUEST

OF THE LIGHT

PARUYR HAYRIKYAN

Copyright © 2015 by Paruyr Hayrikyan.

Translated from the Armenian by Aris G. Sevag

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 01/12/2016

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CONTENTS

Chapter 1 1990, New York to Los Angeles

Chapter 2 1973 to 2000, Yerevan

Chapter 3 Lusineh and Varujan

Chapter 4 On the Border of Two Worlds

Chapter 5 October 1973, Yerevan

Chapter 6 Flowers and the First Anxieties

Chapter 7 Oh, I Like Wine

Chapter 8 Bagrat and Ararat’s Trial Wasn’t Just Theirs

Chapter 9 The Ringing Slap Operation

Chapter 10 Finally, Who Are You?

Chapter 11 As for What Ordeals Lie Ahead

Chapter 12 Toward You with the Burden of the Past on My Shoulders

Chapter 13 It’s You! You’ve Come!

Chapter 14 We’ll Talk Tomorrow

Chapter 15 February 12, 1974, Yerevan

Chapter 16 Again in Cheka In the State Security Committee

Chapter 17 I’m Writing, so I’m Alive. I Exist

Chapter 18 Return to Gulag

Chapter 19 Return, 1987, Yerevan

Chapter 20 Life Goes On

Chapter 21 Epilogue or Let’s Close Our Eyes and Be Together

Paruyr Hayrikyan wrote the autobiographical novel On a Quest of the Light in 2001. In the same year, parts of it were published as a novelette entitled Lusineh.

CPAC›90

Paruyr Hayrikyan

For your courageous leadership in the fight for freedom and democracy in the Soviet Union. We Honor and salute you for your inspiration and strength which has began a process to set 300 million people free.

17th Annual Conservative Political Action Conference March 2, 1990 Sponsored by The American Conservative Union and Young Americans for Freedom

Congressional Record 101st Congress (1989-1990)

Senator Helms to President Bush:

«Mr. President, I feel the Government of the United States should heed the words of Mr. Hayrikian, who is, as I have pointed out, the president of the new Coordination Center in Support of the National Democratic Movements for the Peoples of the U.S.S.R."

Dear reader,

Through this book, you will experience the living conditions and the environment of the underground strugglers for liberty in the USSR, as well as face the human problems they confronted and the emotions they went through. You will sit in the courthouses where political prisoners received their sentences and accompany them in their prison cells where they spent their days and nights. You will meet the brutal servants of the punishment systems, as well as the administrators that managed to keep human values despite the inherent cruelty of their daily duties. You will bear witness to the victories of an all-powerful love, and you will hear sweet melodies arising from the depths of agony.

I am glad to be introduced to American readers with my book On a Quest of the Light. Evolving beyond its particular ideological foundations, the United States is a country that acquired numerous distinctive qualities in the international arena throughout its history. By being on the winning side in both world wars, it did not consider the losing countries’ peoples as enemies and instead gave importance to conveying its values to them. People living under Communist tyranny were able to reclaim their right to live in freedom with the support of the West and especially with the help of the United States.

Moreover, I have personal reasons to be grateful to the USA: I cannot forget when after spending seventeen years in Communist prisons, at which time I was again incarcerated by the KGB, President Ronald Regan met my wife and my three little children in Moscow. He promised them to do everything possible to speed up the process of freeing me. Indeed, my imprisonment was ceased in about two months. But by order of the highest authority in the USSR, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, they did not free me from prison, as they did with all the other political prisoners. Instead, they exiled me to Ethiopia, in handcuffs, through a special airplane. They had never exiled any political prisoner to Africa before. In Addis Ababa, the American embassy offered me political asylum. The American government also accepted the members of my family, and I lived and worked in America for two years. It was very important for me that the American congressmen accepted and supported me for my freedom-loving ideas, although I was a person who did not have any official position or post. It was under the pressure of their intervention that the last president of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev, was obliged to return my citizenship and permit my return to the USSR. Otherwise, I would not have been able to continue my struggle for the freedom of the Soviet people and the freedom of my motherland.

My path was full of difficulties, but along the way, I had the chance to experience several events equivalent to miracles with exceptional people with beauty, kindness, and light. All of these were gifts of fate to my person, and it is my obligation to convey them to others.

My book is written in the form of a voluminous letter about my search for a young girl who became dear to me at that time and whom I lost a few decades ago. Indeed, I want very much to find her and tell her all that I did not have a chance to tell her before my sudden imprisonment. In parallel to this romantic story, I describe some experiences of finding light in the seeming darkness. I recognize that some of these experiences can be useful lessons to others, and this alone will have made writing and sharing my story worthwhile. And if I am fortunate, perhaps in English, my book will find its addressee, and she will hear my words of sorrow and regret for the pain and sadness that I caused her.

CHAPTER 1

1990, NEW YORK TO LOS ANGELES

On May 15, 1990, I departed for Los Angeles from New York’s JFK Airport. Once on the airplane, I asked a stewardess for a copy of the Wall Street Journal.

image030.jpg

Paruyr Hayrikyan in 1984, exile

The day before, I had met with the management of that daily for close to an hour. I was with my American friend Martin Coleman. He was a representative of the private Washington, DC, organization called Center for Democracy in USSR, and he considered it very important for American business and political circles to be informed about democratic movements in the Communist world. And it was he who had taken the initiative to arrange that meeting.

At the end of our conversation, the top brass of the Wall Street Journal wanted to find out, among other things, if the New York Times had ever written about me in detail, particularly about my participation in democratic movements in the empire known as the Soviet Union. When I replied in the negative, they asked straight-out if I would be agreeable to their publishing an article based on our conversation in the following day’s issue. Of course, I didn’t object.

What I said about the New York Times was the truth; what it had published pertaining to me had basically been news items, and the topic of the lengthy article entitled Exiled Armenian Describes Dispute as Political, Not Ethnic, published in the August 14, 1988, issue, was the Karabakh conflict. In spite of prevailing dispositions, when the Armenians of Armenia and its diaspora were trying to prove to everybody that Karabakh is theirs, I was presenting the issue from a viewpoint that was also understandable to foreigners—one of national self-determination and, generally speaking, human rights. Karabakh belongs to the Karabakhis, and only they, the Karabakhis, can decide their destiny in the course of correcting the mistakes made by the Communist empire. It’s true that quite a bit was also written about my activity in that article, but there was no mention of any collaboration with democratic forces.

The stewardess came over to my seat after a few minutes. I immediately opened the paper and saw a sketch of me. So did the stewardess.

Is that you?

Yes, I confessed with a smug grin and proceeded to read.

It was more than I expected. The title was ARMENIAN EXILE SITS TO COMPOSE FREEDOM’S ANTHEM. The continuation presented here too gives a rough idea of its contents. Readers wishing to read the article in its entirety will find it in the May 15, 1990, issue of the Wall Street Journal.

"Of all the tests facing Mikhail Gorbachev these days, one of the toughest comes from Glendale, Calif. Glendale is the home of Paruyr Hayrikyan, an upstart Armenian whom the Soviets thought they got rid of when they stripped him of citizenship and dumped him in Ethiopia in 1988. Now this exiled democrat is a registered candidate for election to the Armenian Supreme Soviet. Armenia has not yet reached the point of declaring independence like Lithuania. But voters who hope this Sunday’s election will bring change are marching through the streets [of Yerevan], shouting, ‘Hayrikyan, Independence!’

"Over lunch at the Wall Street Journal recently, Mr. Hayrikyan outlined a future for Armenia: ‘We need political independence first, and then economic independence—the head must come before the stomach.’ He worries about independence movements throughout the Soviet Union. ‘After Lithuania, we are sure: The Western governments are with the communists, and the democratic movements are alone.’

The answer, he believes, is for independence movements to join hands. In Paris last year, he helped to found Democracy and Independence, an umbrella group that pulled together exiled leaders of pro-democracy movements from many republics of the Soviet Union.

The next two paragraphs went on to say that Communist Moscow was inciting ethnic clashes because such hostilities were necessary in order to divert peoples from the struggle for independence. There was also mention of the conference of Democracy and Independence to take place on July 4 of that year in Prague under the sponsorship of Czech president Vaclav Havel, at which there was hope of conducting negotiations geared toward the peaceful settlement of those hostilities and discussing the possibility of nations achieving independence peacefully through referendums.

image033.jpg

Czech president Vaclav Havel, Paruyr Hayrikyan’s friend

Numerous biographical details pertaining to me were given in that article. In particular, mention was made of my struggle during years of imprisonment and the maturation of the idea of a referendum. After leaving my place of confinement, when I spoke about referendum, I saw that people didn’t understand what I had in mind. I was obliged to explain that the referendum is an act of democracy. Mention was made of my seventeen years of imprisonment and subsequent forced deportation—through a special airplane with eight chekists*—to Ethiopia. It was explained why Ethiopia specifically was chosen. There was a detailed discussion about my efforts to quickly return to Armenia and the demonstrations I had organized in Paris.

Another paragraph made reference to my songs. It was another talent that made Mr. Hayrikyan a national symbol: songwriting. His last words to the Soviet court after one prison sentence were: ‘You may kill me, but after my death you have to fight against my songs.’ His words held true. Armenians sing his lyrics: ‘We are in prison, we are in exile, but, Fatherland, you will be free.’

As soon as I read this article, I pushed my seat back to the maximum, and while situating myself as best as I could, I closed my eyes. I woke up only twenty minutes before the end of my flight—when it was announced that the airplane would be landing shortly at Los Angeles International Airport.

I was not in the habit of sleeping the night before a long plane trip. I have maintained that habit right down to the present. By not sleeping the previous night, one can’t help but sleep on a plane, and the hours of a flight will pass by easily and imperceptibly. I was very tired that day because I had engaged in conversation with the members of the Yegnukian family, who had settled in New York, until late into the night, and then I had to put my papers in order.

The Yegnukian family had immigrated to the United States in the 1960s from Armenia, which was a part of the Soviet Union and, in reality, a Communist dictatorship. The parents had been able to ensure a suitable education for their two sons and, in a very short period of time, create the basis for a steady income.

By specializing over the course of time in a new field of American industry, they had been able to establish a rather-strong company named Erebuni, which produced aerodynamic automobile accessories. This business thrived from one day to the next, eventually becoming a leader in its field in the United States. Despite the successes achieved in America, the Yegnukian family had held on to the dream of having an independent homeland, and after my appearance in the United States, all the members of the family joined the American branch of the Union for National Self-Determination, an organization of supporters of Armenia’s independence. The Yegnukians’ older son, Garo, took me to JFK Airport that day.

When I woke up, I was surprised to notice that strangers in different sections of the plane were smiling politely and warmly greeting me. A few of them approached and expressed the desire to shake my hand. It’s a great honor for us to shake the hand of someone like you they repeated almost word for word. We admire you and are proud for all human beings. I didn’t understand what was happening and what all of this meant. I had been in such a situation in 1988 when Frenchmen approached me in the streets of Paris and greeted me enthusiastically after I was banished. But that was understandable and was brought about by the continual broadcasts pertaining to me on various French television channels. I couldn’t understand what had happened here. A pleasant woman was sitting next to me. Probably guessing my bewilderment, she said, after it was announced that the plane was preparing for landing and all passengers had returned to their seats, You were sleeping. They made an announcement about you over the loudspeaker.

That’s interesting.

To find out a little more, I tried to engage her in conversation. And what were they saying?

Oh—the American woman smiled—they said that today, we had traveling with us on the plane—as an ordinary passenger in Economy Class, Row 21, Seat D—a man who had played a great role in the struggle against Communist totalitarianism—that he had spent seventeen years in various prisons for the struggle waged in the name of democracy and that finally he had been forcibly banished from the Soviet Union and deported to Ethiopia. She thought a bit and added, "They said that you are now head of a coordination center for anti-Communist democratic movements. Oh, they mentioned that you are also a songwriter—that your freedom-loving songs are much liked in Armenia. They also said that there was more detailed coverage about you in today’s Wall Street Journal."

Everything became clear.

During the landing, people continued to approach me. A few of them gave me their business cards, saying that they would be happy if they could be of any help.

A young couple in the baggage-claim area asked to be photographed with me. We are expecting a child, and we would very much like for our child to be like you, said the young man.

This was a joyful moment for me—primarily because those people, although not my compatriots, had become so enthusiastic. It followed from their attitude that the values dear to us were likewise dear to them; namely, they were universal.

CHAPTER 2

1973 TO 2000, YEREVAN

Ten years later, in May 2000, the contest called Sayat-Nova Festival of Pan-Armenian Song was completed in Armenia’s capital. That was the first contest of contemporary Armenian song in which musician composers from Armenia, as well as the widespread Armenian diaspora stretching from Australia to Europe and the United States, were included. The contest/festival was sponsored by the Armenian cultural ministry and the American-Armenian businessman and New Jersey resident Vahakn Hovnanian. To everyone’s surprise, my song White Bird of Love won first prize; I had written it during my evening hours of solitude in a hotel room in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev in 2000, when I went there to attend an international conference. What this song had in