However, I deemed that those ‘boys’ were surely better than the careerists catering to the rotten Soviet system. The boys were intellectuals: historian, physicist, talented writer. We heard a lot of gossip about them: a group of them had a love for playing poker, the other, chess, being overly fond of women the third, the fourth were KGB and so on. But in those days, “our boys” were the object of collective love. They had come to be saviours in a situation where no one understood what was to be done.

Sometimes they would say wise things over the megaphone, at other times, not so much. Sometimes they would say true and important things, at other times, they would descend into previously exhausted, tiresome tales. Though much of this did not come from them, it was either their predecessors or the others who were also given the loudspeaker. Sometimes they would propose the right thing (when done, it resulted in a positive outcome), sometimes, they were wrong.

I did not dare articulate my skepticism in that initial phase. I did not have the words, the thoughts, the knowledge to articulate them. I could not say that in my opinion, although nothing can be done against the progression of history, nevertheless, it was wrong to be standing at the square for weeks on end doing nothing; that it was peculiar as to why those particular boys were up there on the platform and why they got to decide who could be up there with them and who couldn’t.

Levon Abrahamyan’s theory discusses the 1988 protests from a sociological and anthropological praxis of carnival connecting it to Bakhtin and his interpretation of human thinking that a revolution is also a feast and a ritual; it is semiotics, to be able to understand, you have to know how to read the symbols. This work was first published quite early on in those days, the first attempt to provide a framework of understanding about the Movement. I was enthralled by his theory, I appreciated his truth and thought how unlucky is the person who does not want to disintegrate into the noisy mob and wants to preserve an independant train of thought …woe to him who does not love rituals in that situation when history is a ritual and ritualistic...Meanwhile, rituals were born, strengthened and overestimated by the crowd, celebrated by the people and the platform as their victory: the collective assistance to the person who felt ill because people were too cramped together; chanting “Mi-a-tsum” - “U-ni-ty” when it was timely; the playing of the trumpet - the hymn of the protest; thieves who didn’t steal; the lectures read at the square during student strikes; the flowers Armenian girls would present to Russian soldiers, etc. All this and more was so accurately described by Levon Abrahamyan and the group of researchers he led, and still far from enough was illustrated and collected.

These rituals became the foundation for a new ideology. The people, self-centered, in love with themselves began to say, “See how good we are? We are the best.” But what about if even a hollow consolation becomes needed? In that precarious situation, if we did not praise ourselves, who would do so? If we did not encourage ourselves, no one would have. We had to convince ourselves that we were capable of something but we really didn’t comprehend what we were or were not capable of doing.

And those, who did not share this enthusiasm because they were corrupt or because of experience; or because of their critical, skeptical countenance, were mainly silent. It seemed that they did not exist. And if they ever tried to speak, they would usually be cast out under whistles and labeled “Communist spy.”

I could not endure the long and fruitless, self-righteous lingering and soon stopped standing at the square. I was not “square material” and secretly pitied those who were “square material.” In my opinion, it was manipulation. Standing at the square soon became as boring and as much a waste of time as komsomol meetings.