VAZGEN  MANUKYAN

Until 1988 Vazgen Manukyan was a member-organizer of various political organizations, uniting the Armenian intelligentsia, and it is not accidental that he is also at the roots of the Karabakh movement.

“I experienced the greatest spiritual uplift of my life when I saw hundreds of thousands of eyes during my first speech at the mass meeting, although I said things that were not acceptable to them. Everyone was convinced that we have a permanent enemy in the person of Turkey and a permanent friend in the person of Russia. And I said that we had neither a permanent friend nor a permanent enemy”.

During the demonstrations in February 1988 Vazgen Manukyan, in his public speech, for the first time called for a nationwide strike.

In 1988, when the “Karabakh” Committee was formed to lead the movement to reunite Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) with Armenia, Vazgen Manukyan was first a member of the “Karabakh” Committee (since February 1988) and then – the Committee coordinator (since June 1988).

The public speeches of the members of the “Karabakh” Committee were taken down in shorthand and presented to the Politburo. Knowing this well, Vazgen Manukyan sometimes indirectly addressed his speech to the Politburo itself. “One day in my speech I said that we were going to “rock the boat”, even if you do not give us Karabakh, the Baltic states will sooner or later stand up and the Soviet Union will collapse...”.

On December 10, 1988, Vazgen Manukyan was arrested along with other members of the “Karabakh” Committee and spent 6 months in “Matroskaya Tishina” prison in Moscow.

Vazgen Manukyan, Ashot Manucharyan and Davit Vardanyan from the “Karabakh” Committee thought that the scope of the Committee's issues should be expanded, certain ideological principles should be fixed.Manukyan put down those principles and presented them at the mass meeting. Later they became the ideological principles of the Armenian National Movement.

“In 1988 the movement brought forward an issue that was acceptable to the entire nation, including the communist nomenclature and the intellectuals.It was the reunification of Karabakh with Armenia. But thereafter the movement came up with two powerful ideas that contradicted the ideology that had existed before. The first was the national ideology. The article “The Law of Exclusion of the Third Force” was written, “Time to fly off the train” was written, at the mass meeting it was declared that “we do not have a permanent friend and a permanent enemy either”, the ideological principles of the movement were proclaimed, and all this was hotly debated in public.It meant reviewing the entire national policy that had prevailed in Armenian society for the past two hundred years”.- Vazgen Manukyan

The second most important principle proclaimed by the movement was the building of a new, liberal state. An issue was put forward to change the structure of the whole state, the attitude to human rights, freedoms, the issue of free economy, free political competition, multi-party system was raised, etc..

“On the one hand, the “Karabakh” Committee promoted the idea of resolving the Karabakh issue in a constitutional way, seeking to find partners in law and in international law all over the world, on the other hand, realizing the inevitability of war, in a way, so to speak, we encouraged the creation of volunteer detachments…”.

“Turning the movement into an ethnic or religious issue, or relying only on history, could be a catastrophic mistake for us, the Armenians. The only way was the constitutional one, which made you understandable and acceptable for the whole world”.

Upon the initiative of the “Karabakh” Committee, the “Armenian National Movement” public-political organization was established, the founding administrative board of which consisted of almost all the members of the “Karabakh” committee. Vazgen Manukyan was elected the first chairman of the ANM Administrative Board.