PERSPECTIVES ON THE SOVIET UNION : There’s No Turning Back

The least that democratic governments can recognize now is that only democratic forces and truly free peoples with elected governments can guarantee reforms. And only sovereign and independent nations can determine their interests freely to create whatever form of association they choose with their neighbors.

It is time for Western governments to reassess their support to a central government whose main function was the retention and use of repressive apparatus, where fascism and totalitarianism have been dominant instincts. Western governments did not appreciate the fact that, more than ever, real power now resides with the people and their duly elected governments in the republics.

While much remains to be explained, it is clear to us that Armenia cannot link its future to a union where the dominant ideology is imperialism and where repression remains the preferred tool of governing. Since the return to constitutional authority, it is not all that clear that the central authorities will represent a fundamentally different vision for the union or the nations that make it up.

Failure to deal with those questions adequately and to learn from what happened is bound to lead to more, and far bloodier, surprises.

Armenia has no reason, then, to change its goal of independence and thus far remains committed to achieving it through constitutional means. We will go ahead with our referendum.

Independence does not exclude the possibility of working with a democratic Russia and other republics toward some form of association in the spirit of cooperation among free and equal nations on the basis of common interests.