When my thoughtful mood is identical with the day, a familiar impulsion leads me to a place where a fenced piece of land is gratuitously soothing me. The clatters born from the silence fixed over there gently set my past in the passing day and review it in favor of my conscience. The crossing point between earthen and incorporeal permanently exists in its self-sufficient peace and never interferes with my present. It is me who lives in harmony with the past but from time to time I devote my present harmony with already mature placidity to my beloved as late consolation. From time to time – it is the law of life that I sometimes bypass in order to give more. There, I can’t change my feelings into words and not even into thoughts. And I feel myself so identical with my beloved lying peacefully in that piece of land but living anxiously in my heart that nothing remains to give. There are only memories and regret; regret but never repentance because we cannot repent for things that are established.

* * *

Even if I were a true skeptic, I couldn’t help admitting of the fact that the “ties” of my mother’s family with the Soviet dictatorship were the work of providence. The victims of three generations in a family were the victims of the power of seventy years. This cannot be accidental.

 The beginning was in the 1930s when the human blood in the veins of still embryonic communists was curdled by the intimation of state terror. Unlimited power was given to the stupid creatures who should lead the country by the predetermined path and the population destined to provide the normal development of the country to loss. The “protocol” justifications for the huge losses of human resources (more than during the World War) were based just on the accusatory confessions written by people who were condemned to oblivion. The stupid leaders had masterly command of the mechanism to extort the confessions. The toffs of people were a spade to dig their own graves. If you don’t want a spade, dig with hands.

After the revolution, until the year 1927, the riches of my maternal grandfather Levon was considered as “average”. In 1930 he was acknowledged as a tonsure for his riches and was sentenced to be a party membership in the “ARF” (Armenian Revolutionary Federation) and was accused of implementing anti-Soviet agitation. My grandfather, Levon Hakobyan, bore the penalty for non-proven guilt and became one of the first residents of the GULAG archipelago - the death camp. After returning he was again arrested in 1937 artificially accused of having been connected with tonsures and was sentenced to the maximum punishment – execution with confiscation of property.

My mother had already been married when her father was executed. As her parents firstborn she took care for her 6 brothers and sisters together with her own children with my father’s favorable support. My mother's eldest brother had already grown up and was helping my parents to relieve the family burden when he was called up to the army during the Great Patriotic War (though he was a teacher and was exempted from military service with deferent). He was captured and spent the rest of his life in deportations.

But it was not all. In 1948 my mother’s brother, Poghos Hakobyan, 20-year-old boy became the victim of the red monster. The assembly invited to exile him to Yakutia listened to the report about “the verdict of a person violating the work activity and living antisocial life”. The adopted decision had been preserved up till now.

The verdict of an Armenian was made by his compatriot for he had been disabled for a month because of leg fracture: “To approve the social verdict of the general assembly against Poghos Hakobyan to exile him to remote regions of SSRM for eight years as a deserter from work refusing his application”.

The bulletin of internal affairs of SSRA proves that in those days thousands of Armenian families were exiled to remote regions ofUSSRfor eight years. The deportees were exploding mines in those places where the workforce was in need. And Poghos Hakobyan who “had violated the work activity” dies during one of those explosions.

The grief of her twenty-year-old brother’s loss obsesses my mother who has taken care for her orphan sisters and brothers and her own children as well. It is followed by her sister’s untimely death and the care of her orphan children falls on her shoulders (their father died during the Great Patriotic War). Along with all this my mother was actively engaged in the case to justify posthumously her relatives. In 1963 she finds people involved in the case of her father; then she organizes re-examination and manages to justify him. It is written in the documents of my grandfather Levon Hakobyan’s execution: “Justified because of the lack of evidence; based on his daughter’s complaint. Thirty years later it turned out that he was killed by accident. “Justified”. It was the only compensation possible to get from theSoviet Unionfor innocent victims or distorted fates; more or less in the registers of the state bureau of statistics.   

* * *

Afterwards… when it seemed that the passions of the Soviet dictatorship were partially moderated and my mother, who had grown up her father’s and sister’s orphans together with her own six children, now could breathe quietly… my turn came.  

37 years passed from the year of 1937 symbolizing the state terror, and now my mother was present at my lawsuit. On the one side of the court was the state structure the alive victim of which she was and the witness of its injustice; on the other side was her son whose only guilt was that he had dared to speak about the historical truth and lie to think about which was even forbidden. The red monster could not listen to such things. Even if the state of terror roared that it was civilized, although it was the same state of the years of organized slaughter.

My mother… she did not talk about the past. Sometimes she remembered some episodes and gave some assessments. Her feet were the evidence she bore on her shoulders during all her life. But how people become aware of the sorrow of the soul? My mother's soul was in pain, I saw it in her eyes hidden in the depth of her look. There was so much strength in it and so much fatigue at the same time. Either of them forced me to worry as both were too much. Later I saw the same look when I was taken to prison after the court. When my mother had overcome the difficult and long way to Mordovia to see me – and moreover, she wanted to stay with me there in the exile, but I refused her, I saw the same look. In her look I had recognized the restrained pain of her rebellious soul, when some of my fighting friends were yielding and trying to find more favourable conditions, meanwhile I had chosen the way of hardship as an honest friend. I felt the same pain and sorrow in her eyes when I was twice sentenced because of false accusation for escape, and that was ten days before my return. I noticed that pain in her eyes even after my return as I continued my political activities. I saw the same look in 1988 as well, when Ukrainian political figure Chernovil was in Yerevan. He came to our home, approached to kiss my mother’s hand and said that the families of political prisoners had greatly suffered. Then he humbly apologized. Then my mother stared at him and asked, “Were you together?”

After years, I see clearly the restrained grief in my mother’s soul. I see clearly my first letter, written from the exile, trembling in her hands: “Dear Mom, today – on my 25^th birthday anniversary, “blameworthy of the love for our country”, we are taken to Mordovia having passed already prisons of Tbilisi, Rostov, Kharkov (I do not know what prisons wait for us ahead, but we are going to Mordovia)”.

Mordovia… How much she desired to see her son next to her… How much she would like to embosom him on his birthday and, as a joke, question him about the neighboring girls.

Our family was an ordinary family with customs and traditions and the youngest son was to be his parents’ hope for the future. But I had forgotten and put aside any personal life pursuing the restoration of historical truth, the right to become independent through national self-determination and a referendum. Of course, my struggle was not only fair but also legal. But the prisons of theSoviet Unionwere waiting for such law-abiding fighters like me.

My mother was very little talking about the past. She was silent even when my present life reminded her of her past. My family had been greatly suffering because of my political views. But my mother's suffering was other, but not only because she was my mother. But what was the reason? This question has never been raised. It was living in the secrecy of peace and liveliness of our home. It was perceived in the voice of the postman coming in from the gates and in the coldness of winters that prompted about the severe frosts of remote regions. 

Today, after many years, I have raised this question to find an answer to it. Now I know for sure that deep in her soul my mother felt herself guilty for my choice. My present was the response of her past. On those days I noticed my mother suffering greatly, but I was younger and I comforted her with the following words: “Even if I had only three days to live I would never regret. The homeland needs victims, and we should give them without complaining. It will pave the way for our descendants. They will pass through the way paved by our victims”. I wrote to her, “Do not fall into despair, mom. Finally, as people say, water pitcher is broken on the way to water”. I wrote these words from prison, in those times when my young heart, irreconcilable with the injustice of time, held my hand and lead me to the future so fast that I could not turn back to look underneath the feet. I could see only the remote past, historical truth and the lie that forced me to be stronger and to go ahead.  

 There are some havens in our life. If a person is walking straightforward, he meets himself in the haven of life. When I collided with myself I felt the remorse in my heart towards my mother, in the same way as she felt her responsible for my chosen path, with regret, regret but never with repentance because we cannot repent for things that are established.

Razmik Markosyan 

P.S. Thanks to thee, Lord for she rose to the sky, she left the world full of sorrow and rose to the heaven, leaving us earthen people, she rose to light and was equal with the righteous.