During this entire period, I consider our independence and my individual freedom to be the greatest achievement. Once in a while, while I'm awake, I can have a daydream I imagine, for example, what I would be, what I would be doing had the Soviet Union not collapsed... I probably wouldn't have continued doing journalism, because in those years I already understood that there are a lot of fakes and lies. Maybe I would do something else. And in general, I dream of working as a watchman.
Me and my sister, who was five years older than me, were very excited about all this. My sister was involved in the ecological movement before I left the army, before "Perestroika". My brother was more interested in the business side of Perestroika. My mother did not have clear views, my father did not believe in all that. I remember that (the rally) started on February 20, the 21st is my birthday, and we came from the square to our house in a group to celebrate my birthday. On that day, Gorbachev's reply was expected from Moscow. There was a news program "Vremya", it started at ten o'clock. Since it was the official news program, we hoped that he would say something in it. We talked constantly to see what he would say, my father very calmly said: “You don't know this country well, nothing will happen.” We were upset, “What do you mean nothing will happen?” He said: “You will see that nothing will happen.”
The authorities of that time were really in a poor situation, because it was so unusual for them to sit and talk with a twenty-year-old kid, but they had to because they felt that some eye from above was watching them, and they must obey the rules of "Glastnost". Yes, the authorities of that time were in a poor condition.
On March 26, troops entered Armenia. The whole sky was full of helicopters. The people jokingly called them "perestroika swallows". I don't remember whether curfew was officially announced or not, but they were standing everywhere. And the people very spontaneously (now it's called сарафанное радио in Ukraine) spread the word that we are creating a dead city. We don't leave the house on those days. And from March 26-27, I saw very bad quality footage, showing that there was nothing happening on the streets. The intersection of Kino Nairi, Moskovyan, Ishakyan is depicted in those videos, you look at it for ten minutes, only one tram passes by, no one gets off it. In other words, everything was so organized. And we considered this a victory.
People did not know what was happening. The situation was like this - from above, it was said: "Freedom, openness, reconstruction" and so on, but below they were not used to it.
In the summer of 1987, we decided to create a more youthful organization, which was called "Goyapaykar". It was mainly a group of students from different faculties of philology, physics, geography. Now I don't even remember how we found each other. On October 18, 1987, it was a Saturday, we gathered near the university and started walking towards the Opera Square. There is a photo of it taken near Sayat-Nova music school. People of the older generation also joined us, for example, Dr. Rafael Ghazaryan, who was later a member of the Karabakh Committee and an academician.
A demand was made that the operation of the "Nairit" chemical plant should be stopped, the issue of the [ed. Metsamor] nuclear power plant and similar issues were raised. Let me tell you the interesting thing: no one stopped us. It was even a little sad for us because we were fired up and ready to fight for our ideas. The police, very few in number, accompanied us from the side, they did not interfere with anything, we held our rally, went home and waited for [special forces] to come after us. Naturally, they did not. At that time, I was working in the "Avangard" newspaper, which was the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Youth Union. They called me the next day and said, "You won't work here anymore, you don't understand where you work, go to Communist Youth Union’s Central Committee, they need to carry out some work with you."
When "Perestroika" happened, I myself was serving in the army at that time and was not in Armenia. When I returned to Armenia, I had a very interesting feeling. It was already the summer of 1986, I had the feeling that the Armenia that I had left in 1984, the air of that Armenia had changed, there was that breath of freedom, a certain, still not very noticeable air, but there was some movement.
Armenian poet, journalist, and public figure Tigran Paskevichyan was born on February 21, 1965 in Yerevan, the capital of Soviet Armenia. He studied at Yerevan State University, the Faculty of Philology, Department of Armenian Language and Literature. In 1984, he was drafted into the Soviet army. During those years, „Perestroika“ began in the Soviet republics - the policy of “reconstruction” that entailed economic reforms, revaluation of human rights, freedom of speech, easing of censorship, etc.
One of the results of „Perestroika“ in Armenia was the environmental movement that started in the 80s, an active participant of which was Tigran Paskevichyan. In these years, together with like-minded friends, he founded the environmental protection organization „Goyapaykar“ (Literal translation - Fight for Survival), and edited the „Mashtots“ self-published [samizdat] periodical of the organization under the code name Mesrop Sahakyan. In February 1988, the first mass demonstrations began in Yerevan‘s Opera Square (at that time, called Theater Square) with the demand to unite the Nagorno Karabakh Autonomous Region with Soviet Armenia, which after some time, included the broadest sections of the Armenian society and also took on an anti-Soviet turn and became known as the „Karabakh Movement“ ( February 1988 - August 1990).
From day one, Tigran Paskevichyan became one of the active participants of the movement. In November 1990, he was elected a member of the ruling party‘s board. He is the author of a number of documentaries, articles and poems.
