by David Zenian
The view from Mrav Hayrapetian's terrace is breathtaking. High on the mountain top is the 760-year-old monastic complex of Gandzasar overlooking lush fields of wheat and mulberry.
The flowers in the garden are in full bloom. Chicken peck away in the courtyard and cattle graze in the distance on the banks of the Khatchen river. Everything seems picture perfect. But it has not always been like this.
"The name of this village, Vank, means monastery in Armenian, and it has always been that-even during the communist era. This land is sacred to generations of Armenians who lived and died here," Hayrapetian says.
Vank is a typical Armenian farming village in Nagorno Karabakh-the ancestral home of generations of Armenians who have fought and survived many battles over the centuries.
At 83, Hayrapetian still works in the fields along with his two sons, Mher and Abraham, who is a 43-year-old former Soviet army veteran wounded three times in the war of liberation against Azerbaijan.
"I am lucky my son is alive today. Many others from this village were killed in the fighting." he said as the conversation turned to the roots of the conflict and life under Soviet and Azerbaijani rule.
Hayrapetian was only eight years old when by just the stroke of a pen, and despite the declared will of the overwhelmingly Armenian population, Karabakh was given to Soviet Azerbaijan.
The year was 1922, and life has not been the same for the 150,000 Christian Armenians since then. In 1923 Nagorno Karabakh was made an autonomous region within Azerbaijan, but real autonomy never came until 1992 when the Karabakh Parliament declared an independent Republic of Nagorno Karabakh after repeated attempts to correct the Stalinist blunder through peaceful means.
Hayrapetian remembers how thousands of Armenians in Karabakh signed a petition in 1963 to then communist leader Nikita Khrushchev complaining of cultural oppression and economic discrimination.
"Nothing happened. Autonomy means liberty, sovereignty and freedom. We had none of these under Azerbaijani rule," Hayrapetian says.
Karabakh has been tossed back and forth between one occupation army after the other from as early as 387 A.D. following the division of the Armenian Kingdom.
In the 7th century Karabakh fell under Islamic Arab rule which lasted 300 years. Then came 100 years of Mongol occupation, followed by Turkish rule until the early 1600's when the territory was captured by the Persians.
In 1603, Shah Abbas of Persia granted local rule for the Armenians under five meliks or Kings, a situation which lasted until the Russian capture of Karabakh in 1828.
But despite the various onslaughts, Karabakh did not lose its Armenian identity, language and Christian faith. Under early Russian rule, serious efforts were made to integrate Nagorno Karabakh with what was then known as the "Baku Province"-which was later to be named Azerbaijan. The efforts failed and, encouraged by the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, Karabakh re-emerged as a state governed by the Assembly of Karabakh Armenians which on April 23, 1920 decided to unite with Armenia.
That decision was never implemented. The Red Army moved in and established Soviet control, not only over Karabakh, but the entire region including Armenia and Azerbaijan.
What little independence the Armenians of Nagorno Karabakh had was shattered when the Caucasian Bureau of the Communist party-under pressure from communist dictator Joseph Stalin-not only reversed its own July 4, 1921 decision to attach Karabakh to Armenia, but also gave the territory to Azerbaijan as an "autonomous region". It also shrank its existing boundaries and cut it off from the Armenian mainland.
"Over the centuries, Karabakh never lost its Armenian identity despite the various invasions...and the thousands of Armenian monuments and dozens of churches stand witness to our roots and will to survive. Azerbaijan wanted to wipe us out. It tried for 70 years, but failed. Enough is enough," Hayrapetian said raising a small glass of "Oghi", a vodka-like home-brew made from fermented mulberry juice.
"A toast...to freedom."
The conversation around the table gradually shifts to the years when Karabakh was ruled by Azerbaijan.
"I always resented the way we were treated, but did not hate the Azeris as human beings. What angered me most was the Baku government's persecution of Armenians and attempt to drive us out of our lands. Baku had a clear policy to de-Armenianize Nagorno Karabakh," Hayrapetian said.
Vank has a population of 1,500, complete with a small school, a clinic and a community center-once used as a communist party headquarters but now more of a memorial hall where one of its walls is covered with the pictures of thirty-six young men who were killed in fighting the Azerbaijani army.
"I hope we will not add another picture of a martyr to this wall. We have 220 young men from this village on the battlefronts ready to defend our homes, lands and our right to live in peace," Hayrapetian says.
Like the majority of Armenian villages in Nagorno Karabakh, Vank has no asphalted roads or side streets. Access to Hayrapetian's two-story stone house is either by foot through a winding dirt path or by tractors and jeeps. "Forget an ordinary car, a mule will get you here quicker." he says.
Driving across Nagorno Karabakh, the pattern is clear. Villages once inhabited mainly by Azeris are situated on the sides of the asphalted main roads while Armenian villages are built miles away-often on top of high mountains.
Agricultural land once appropriated for Azeri farmers were on flat and fertile plains. Armenians were given the rocky hillsides to cultivate. Most Armenian villages had a poor infrastructure, like the lack of running water and telephones. This was not the case with the Azeri-inhabited villages.
There were no direct roads linking one Armenian village to the other. The only communication was through Azerbaijani villages and towns.
"Everything was for them, and the left-overs were given to us...the Armenians. They had all the privileges, including the right to a Moslem religious funeral despite a communist ban on religious expression. I had not seen a priest until we pushed the Azeri occupiers out of Karabakh and got our independence," Hayrapetian said.
Others in the village recalled the years when the Azeri language was forced on Armenian school children while Azeri youth were often excused from studying Russian-the official language of the former Soviet Union.
All that has changed now. Hayrapetian smiles, and drinks another toast as he talks about today, pointing to the church of Gandzasar on the mountain top.
He is not much of a historian, but rather a witness to the last 70 years of Karabakh's history under Azerbaijani rule.
"For hundreds of years, Gandzasar has been a guardian angel and a source of strength to generations of Armenians living in this region. We are free again. Gandzasar has survived, and so have we," Hayrapetian says.
