On Communist Morals and the Truth of the Bible

Sixty five bodies were being collected every day in Yerevan, with similar situations in all parts of the country. Upon a ridiculous war and the deliverance of independence, with the treaties of Batumi and Alexandropol destroying the nation, Armenia ended up with just nine thousand square kilometres of bleak territory.

Excerpt from the fiery speech delivered by Comrade Tovmasyan, at the 38th Congress of the Communist Party of Armenia (Aravot daily, 1 December, 2010)

I shall not ask Comrade Tovmasyan how many died daily of hunger during those blessed years of communist, namely during the Holodomor, as I have not myself studied that issue and could not argue about it as a specialist. I can refer to one question in particular, which I have investigated in accordance with my specialisation and by public demand for many years, which is, the size of the territory of the Republic of Armenia.

One can speak of the size of the territory of any country if at least general delineations have been carried out on all the borders of that country. The Treaty of Alexandropol defines only the Armenia-Turkey border (Article 2; I am putting aside the question of the legal status of that treaty for the moment). Naturally, the treaty does not take up the remaining three frontiers of the Republic of Armenia, with Iran, Azerbaijan and Georgia. Naturally, as two countries cannot decide on the borders with a third country in the absence of the third country. Of course, only the Bolsheviks could allow themselves to do such a thing, as they did with the Treaty of Moscow (of the 16th of March, 1921). Whereas, out of the above three, there were no disputes on the Armenia-Iran border, there were disputes of immense magnitude, by our scale, on the Armenia-Georgia and Armenia-Azerbaijan frontiers.

What is more, the Treaty of Alexandropol did not clarify the final status of even Nakhichevan. That was to be decided later, with a referendum (Article 2), as opposed to the Treaty of Kars (of the 13th of October, 1921), by which the communists panegyrised by Comrade Tovmasyan handed it over with nothing in return to Azerbaijani rule.

And also, whereas the Treaty of Alexandropol had provisions on the possibility of a referendum on the final status of even the Kars region (Article 3), the Treaty of Kars between the communists and the Kemalists did not take even that into consideration.

I would like to end by quoting a book the communists don’t like, the Bible: “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?” (Matthew 7:3, New International Version).

Ara Papian

Head, Modus Vivendi Centre

1 December 2010