Lragir.am is “amazed” with the news that “in this difficult situation the government spends more than one million dollars” to set up the celebrations for the 90th anniversary of the Battle of Sardarapat:
“The Armenian government provided 339 million drams (about 1.1 million dollars) from the reserve fund for preparations and organization of the celebrations of the 90th anniversary of Sardarapat. 14.5 million drams will be allocated to the ministry of communication and transport for work on the square in front of the memorial to the battle, 230 million drams to the ministry of defence for reconstruction and repair, and 94 million drams to the ministry of culture to hold celebrations. […]
Perhaps the government has decided to simulate the battle at Sardarapat in every detail.”
I am with Lragir on this.
Without for a moment diminishing the significance of the Battle of Sardarapat for the future of Armenian nation and statehood, I am sure we can celebrate this anniversary in a much-much modest (in terms of allocated financial resources) and appropriate way. Spending millions of drams on a one-day (or so) celebration… I doubt that this is exactly what Armenian citizens expect from their government under the current challenging circumstances...
Truly amazing! (not surprising though...)
*photo - via Wikipedia
Posts
10 comments:
I for one think it is a great idea. I think promotion of the events which shaped (or saved?) our national identity should be encouraged. God knows there are enough wastes of resources without any visible benefit that happen all the time. I think this celebration of unified patriotism is not one of them.
I'm surprised they couldn't afford more money... like $3 millions, of which more than half could easily go into the pocket of the "organizer" -- whoever that is.
But what do I know?
It's like Rome. They had events like the gladiator matches to keep the citizens distracted from the woes facing the country. It seems to have worked for them for what now seems a long time.
nazarian, beat me to it. I agree with nazarian and with you as well. That is way to much money for a celebration like that. By the way sine you brought it up I think some western accounts do not acknowledge the battle of sardarapat saying that it was an invention by Armenians and I think I even read radical comments suggesting that it never happened. For instance, look at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Battle_of_Sardarapat
the comments at the very end are disturbing. Does Turkey have records of this battle or perhaps Russians?
C'mon Grigor. I think the battle is quite well documented. If we start referring to Turkish historiography of the Armenian nation, we may soon discover that our own grandparents didn't exist!
I also don't think that Turks are the most credible party to say whether Sardarapat Battle took place or not...
Looks like Wikipedia refers to the First Republic as 'Democratic Republic of Armenia' while the scan of the passport issued by that government says 'Republic of Armenia'.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/35/DRAPassport.jpg
One strange thing in the scan of that passport: it's issued on December 18, 1920, about three months after Republic of Armenia ceased to exist.
reflective, the point isn't that the battle is quite well documented, the point is that when you are challenged you have to argue and when you are challenged in the way that you cannot use your own history then you will have to look elsewhere. Now, I know my own history, but I cannot find a word about the battle in Western records. The question was simply if anyone knows any non-Armenian account of the events.
I have to disagree, if Turkey has records indicating that such a battle took place then it will definitely confirm the fact that they actually lost the battle. So the whole point is that we just need one non-Armenian source of confirmation that the battle took place not that we won or lost as just the mere existence of such a document implies that we won it given the rest of the history which in fact is well documented by foreign scholars.
Grigor - I am not a historian, but check Christopher Walker or Robert Fisk or maybe Toynbee.
Also Hovannisian's books on the Republic of Armenia must have references to many other texts that are relevant here.
thanks I will.
To Nazarian,
The transfer of power from the Republic to Bolsheviks took place on December 2-3 of 1920. Check your facts. (Mher)
Post a Comment