Nikolai Nikulin: With No Passport, This Father of 5 Hasn’t Worked in 22 Years
Larisa Paremuzyan
hetq
12:13, August 24, 2012
Nikolai Nikulin, a Russian living in the Lori Marz village of Tzater,
has a serious `identity’ problem.
The man has no identity documents of any kind and thus hasn’t been
able to work for the past 22 years.
`All those Armenians living in Russia get good benefits. But Armenia
can’t do a thing for this Russian. It can’t get him identity papers or
any assistance,’ says Asya Andreasyan, Nikolai’s wife.
The two started to live together in 1990. The marriage was never
registered due to the lack of identity papers. Their five kids bear
their mother’s last name.
Given the financial straits of the family, Nikolai and Asya married
off their 16 year-old daughter to a man from the Agarak village near
Stepanavan two years ago.
A few years ago Nikolai suffered a stroke but couldn’t receive any
medical care due to his lack of identity status. The man isn’t in any
shape to work even if someone gave him a job.
The family somehow survives on a monthly allowance of 46,000 AMD
($130). The kids do odd jobs to keep the family afloat.
The parents and their 4 children, ranging from 7 to 16, live in a
trailer on the outskirts of the village near the pasturelands.
Visitors are struck by the neatness and order inside.
When we visited the family, Nikolai was resting in bed. He said he
came to Armenia in 1988 from Kazakhstan.
`I did my military service at the army unit in the Stepanavan village
of Poushkino. I married Asya after being discharged,’ Nikolai says.
Asya relates that Nikolai lost the ability to speak after the first
stroke but that miraculously he regained his speech after a second
stroke three years later.
Nikolai told us that his military service papers and driver’s
license were stolen when he went to work in the nearby village of
Gyoulagarak.
He says that in 1996 he went to see his mother, brother and sister
living in Kazakhstan.
`I went with my wife and the two children at the time but my mother
refused to accept us. She was angry that I had marries an Armenian.’
Recently, Nikolai sent a telegram to the military base in Kazakhstan
where he was conscripted to get a copy of his service record. He
received a reply stating that his relatives no longer reside at the
address he had given.
Nikolai told us that he plans to look for work in the Zoghloushan
forest outside of Stepanavan. His wife said that’s where he fell ill
in the first place. Sergey, the family’s 14 year-old son, now works
there in his father’s spot.
Anna Davtyan, principal of the Tzater village school said that the
children attend class regularly even though they were taken out of
school at the end of the year to help out with taking the livestock to
graze in the mountains.
Hetq asked Gevorg Hakobyan, who runs the Toumanyan District Passport
Division, to comment on Nikolai’s predicament.
`Normally, non-Armenians residing in Armenia for many years with a red
passport without citizenship are granted citizenship by a decree of
the president,’ Hakobyan explained.
The official added that if Nikolai, with his red passport, and Asya,
with her citizenship papers, came to his office it would be possible
to resolve the problem.
Tzater Mayor Bagrat Ghalayan promised he would provide a car to take
Nikolai and Asya to the passport office.