The New York Times January 1, 2018 Monday Arseny Roginsky, a Champion of Historical Truth By SERGE SCHMEMANN Arseny Roginsky, a founder and the longtime head of the Memorial organization in Russia who died on Dec. 18, was no doubt familiar with the admonition of the Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel that to forget a holocaust is to kill twice. Mr. Roginsky's father died in prison, and Mr. Roginsky himself spent four years in three different Soviet labor camps in the 1980s for printing an underground journal whose goal was ''to rescue from oblivion all those historical facts and names that are currently doomed to perish or disappear.'' That remained his mission to his dying day, briefly with the support of the Russian state in the 1990s, then again in defiance of it as Russia under Vladimir Putin set about creating a narrative of Russian greatness in which historical facts could be a handicap. For Mr. Roginsky, historical memory meant more than compiling records; it also meant giving a name to the culprits -- the interrogators, the guards, the state itself -- and sounding the alarm at violations of human rights. In recent years, Memorial was targeted with searches, threats of closing and identification as a ''foreign agent.'' It is not only in Russia, of course, that reckoning with a nefarious past has been a struggle. Germany's Nazi past, America's Confederate monuments, Turkey's refusal to recognize the Armenian genocide, China's censoring talk about the Tiananmen massacre and many other examples bear witness to the difficulty of confronting a troubling history. The reasons are many. Those who lived through hell, as Russians of an older generation did, may prefer to blot out the horrors they endured or inflicted. Younger generations prefer to live for today. Political leaders prefer to project a noble history, sometimes by turning complicity in atrocities into claims of victimhood. In Russia, Mr. Putin and many of his lieutenants came from the K.G.B. and resisted fully confronting its repressive history. And they, like many of their countrymen, prefer to portray Stalin not only as the architect of the Gulag but also as the leader who built Russia's industrial might and led it to victory in the Great Patriotic War, as World War II is known in Russia. The Russian state does not deny the Gulag. Memorials to victims exist across Russia. The Butovo Poligon, or firing range, outside Moscow where more than 20,000 political prisoners were shot and buried in mass graves has been turned into a Russian Orthodox memorial site. In October, President Putin opened a Kremlin-promoted monument to victims of political repression in Moscow, the Wall of Sorrow. To Mr. Roginsky, referring to ''victims of political repression'' was not enough. The phrasing made it sound as if the repression descended like a plague, he said in an interview with Masha Gessen in The New Yorker, ''and then the repressions ended and we just keep on living.'' No, he said, ''these are victims of the state. This was state terror.'' Yet Mr. Roginsky was not among the dissidents who scoffed at the Wall of Sorrow as a hypocritical project of the state. It would still be there after the current powers were gone, he argued, and even if it did not give the full story, future generations would know there was a great evil in Russia's past. Confronting the past is essential for a nation's future, he believed, but it is a task for generations. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTOpinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter. URL:
Category: 2018
Inside the Unexpectedly Fascinating World of Petrossian Caviar
Traveler
Jan 2018 / Feb 2018
Photo by Oddur Thorisson
Armen Petrossian in the company tasting room.
The inimitable, family-owned outfit runs one of the most iconoclastic cafes in all of Paris.
"Go ahead, eat as much as you can." Armen Petrossian, the patriarch of the firm whose name is synonymous with one of the world’s most famously decadent foods, wasn’t kidding. Dressed in a bow tie and white lab coat, he had just pried open several kilo-size tins of caviar in the tasting room at Petrossian’s headquarters in an industrial park outside Paris. Osetra, sevruga, and beluga glistened golden brown to satiny black under the bright lights. I dug in, churning through a series of little wooden sticks, each mouthful of cured sturgeon roe a distinctive mix of salty and nutty, creamy and even fruity, as the eggs popped against my palate. “It’s not always the most beautiful color that’s the most delicious; it’s the taste and texture of the egg,” said Armen, keeping pace as he passed bite after bite under his gray handlebar mustache. But despite his insistence that I keep going, I eventually tapped out.
Learning I had a limit on caviar wasn’t the most surprising thing about that morning. It was the discovery that Petrossian isn’t, as I’d always imagined, part of some massive European luxury conglomerate. Rather, for nearly 100 years, it has essentially remained a mom-and-pop operation, ever since Armen’s father, Mouchegh, and uncle, Melkoum, fled the Armenian genocide to start a new life in France, in 1920. Back home, not far from the sturgeon-rich Caspian Sea, caviar wasn’t exactly an everyday dish—it was consumed mainly by elites—but in France, already the gastronomic capital of the world, it was virtually unknown. "It took them a good couple of years to convince people about it," says Alexandre Petrossian, Armen’s son and a managing director of the company in the U.S. His grandfather and great-uncle used some of the traditional foods they left behind—smoked salmon, pickled herring—to bring crowds through the door, eventually turning to the Ritz and the French luxury cruise line that built the S.S. Normandie to spread the word. Today, Petrossian’s teal-blue Left Bank épicerie is still at the original address, 18 boulevard de La Tour-Maubourg in the 7th arrondissement, where Armen’s wife, Cécile, presides over the 10 modest tables and the staff, many of whom have been with the family for decades.
I always drop by the shop when I’m in Paris. This spring, I met my friend, the photographer Oddur Thorisson, there for lunch, and we devoured piles of smoked salmon (from the Petrossian smokehouse in Angers, about 180 miles southwest of Paris), Russian potato salad, pâté en croûte, potato galette—and caviar, of course. We picked a bottle of Bollinger La Grande Année from the Champagne list and, eventually, added a few glasses of cold Petrossian vodka to the tab. Sometimes Cécile will pack up a picnic of caviar, blini, gravlax, and other accompagnements for the train ride to my house in Bordeaux. But just as often, at one of the Petrossian kiosks at Charles de Gaulle or LAX, I’ll just grab a 30-gram tin of osetra and a bag of chips to make flying coach a bit more glamorous. A little caviar does go a long way.
"The best caviar is served directly from tin to mouth," says Alexandre Petrossian. "Extras like eggs, capers, and crème fraîche just hide the flavor." Where to begin? His advice is simple: Don't be intimidated by names, and buy what tastes good to you. "One of my favorites right now is Kaluga Huso Hybrid from China," Petrossian says. "It’s not too strong, not too salty, with a balanced palate. Then you have the osetra, beautiful large eggs that are a little more nutty and a dark brown color with jade accents. I also like the Daurenki: Its very floral, large eggs are delicious." While beluga has a rep as the best, you’ll have to go to Paris to buy it. "It’s been banned in the U.S. since 2005," Petrossian says with a sigh.
A Glimpse of Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict
Defence Journal, UK Sunday A Glimpse of Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict by Attiq ur Rehman The Caucasus region located between the waters of the Black and Caspian Seas is connecting European and Asian continents territorially. The area of Caucasus is mainly occupied by six states – Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran, Russia and Turkey. The mountainous terrain of this region is divided between Northern and Southern parts of Caucasia populated by generally Christian and Muslim communities. The rich cultures of the Caucasian states attract tourists from around the world and Azerbaijan is considered to be the richest state of this region. The oil-wealthy Azerbaijan touches the Caspian waters in contrast to the diverse landscape of Georgia which borders the waters of Black sea. Both states are commonly known as the regional points of greater attraction for international community. Additionally, the mixed terrain of Armenia touches the borders of Iran and Turkey, and is the third main state of Caucasia. The greater Caucasian mountains region consisting of three states borders the Russian Federation in the north. Russian areas of Krasnodar, Stavropol Krai, Rostov Oblast, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachay-Cherkessia North Ossetia, Chechnya, Dagestan, and Ingushetia share the borers with Georgia and Azerbaijan. The historical strings of Caucasia remained under the influence of its surroundings Iranian, Turkish, and Russian civilizations. It is the region where Iran, Russia and Turkey are only separated by three states-Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia. The history of the Caucasian region cannot be completed without discussing the ongoing territorial issues of Nagorno-Karabakh which has become a protracted dispute between Azerbaijan and Armenia. The governments of both states adopted inflexible positions over the land of Karabakh in the post-Soviet era, and in this way the scope of regional peace and stability deteriorated. It is an ethnic and territorial conflict between the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Republic of Armenia. Initially, the historical demise of Soviet Union in the end of decades-long period of Cold War laid the foundations of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Both Armenia and Azerbaijan, former Soviet Republics, entered in a phase of an unending conflict immediately after the disintegration of Soviet Union. The efforts of the international community for the peaceful resolution of Karabakh conflict were always halted by stubborn positions of state officials of both the contesting parties. Several attempts for installing a permanent peace agreement acceptable to both parties remained an unrealistic dream. The history of Karabakh under violence started when the Armenian government preferred to send their armed forces against Azerbaijan in 1992 which occupied 20% of Azerbaijani land, including Nagorno-Karabakh, and expelled around 1 million Azeri citizens. The Azeri areas under Armenian occupation are Kalbajar, Lachin, Gubadli, Zangilan, Jabrayil, Fizuli, Khojavend, Shusha Khojaly, Khankendi, Agdam, and Agdere. These twelve areas were captured by the Armenian army and in this way, the wave of bloodshed initiated by Armenia turned the South Caucus regional politics into violence, and deteriorated the scope of peace and stability in the region. In short, the end of the twentieth century embraced an unexplainable wave of bloodshed after the Cold War and the Caucasus region started to witness a series of tragic incidents. The Armenian aggression sparked a wave of massive human rights violations and causalities of the Karabakh residents. Estimates show that the military raids by the Armenian army has caused 20,000 deaths, 4,866 persons went missing, and 100,000 were injured. Moreover, 50,000 people have suffered injures of varying severity and became disabled. The humanitarian efforts of Baku has accommodated over one million refugees including Internally Displaced People (IDPs) in Azerbaijan. The genesis of Karabakh land are fundamentally inherited in Azerbaijan, because most importantly, it is one of the ancient regions of Azerbaijan. The name of this area which is internationally recognized as an integral part of Azerbaijan is rooted in Azeri language. Karabakh is a combination of two words of Azeri language – Kara (meaning Black) and Bakh (meaning Garden). Similar to its name, the people of Karabakh share a multi-dimensional history with the Azeri people. Initially, the area of Karabakh was considered to be a historical and geographical location of Caucasia which later became an undeniable part of larger Azerbaijan land. The region of Karabakh covers a total area of 4,400 square kilometres and is located territorially on the southwest of Azerbaijan. Parallel to Azerbaijan, this mountainous areas touches the Armenian borders as well. In order to clear the Azerbaijani positon over the land of Karabakh, the president of Azerbaijan and the founding father of Azeri nation, Heydar Aliyev stated, “Azerbaijan does not plan to use the difficult situation in Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh to achieve its own military objectives. This, despite the fact that in 1991-1993 Armenia took advantage of the internal tensions within Azerbaijan to occupy our lands. We support peace. We don't consider a military solution acceptable.” The Foreign Affairs Advisor to President Heydar Aliyev, Vafa Guluzade, during an interview to an American news agency said “The condition of war and lack of any settlement greatly damages both Azerbaijan and Armenia. However, Azerbaijan has more potential than Armenia. If the status quo continues, Azerbaijan will achieve much more than Armenia. This is obvious. But I would not like to have Armenia as a starving, embittered and “armed-to-the-teeth” neighbour. It is in the best interests of both of our countries to reach peace and develop together rather than annihilate each other.” Hafiz Pashayev, Azerbaijani ambassador to United States, during a conference on Azerbaijani economy described his position on Karabakh issue, “I'm optimistic about the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict for one simple reason: both history and facts are not on the side of extremists in Armenia. History in the 21st century will not be on the side of aggression. History will not favour those who create a million refugees and then claim they themselves are the victims. And history will not be kind to those who live in the past but do not learn from it.” Several arguments expressed by leaders from diverse backgrounds show the significance of the Karabakh conflict in world politics. The President of Ukraine, Leonid Kuchma, during an official visit of Azerbaijan said, “The world has closed its eyes to the humanitarian catastrophe in Azerbaijan, where every seventh citizen is a refugee. The vast majority of these refugees originate from Azerbaijani districts occupied by Armenian troops outside of Karabakh proper. I am convinced that Armenia does not gain anything from having created this situation; in fact, it only loses.” In 1996, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSEC) at Lisbon Summit accepted the lack of progressive development for the peaceful resolution of Karabakh conflict. Three principle were recommended by the Co-Chairman of the Minsk Conference. The member states of the Mink Group provided their support to the following three principles. 1. Territorial integrity of the Republic of Armenia and the Azerbaijan Republic; 2. Legal status of Nagorno-Karabakh defined in an agreement based on self-determination which confers on Nagorno-Karabakh the highest degree of self-rule within Azerbaijan; 3. Guaranteed security for Nagorno-Karabakh and its whole population, including mutual obligations to ensure compliance by all the Parties with the provisions of the settlement. The Minsk Group was created by OSCE in 1992 for the promotion of harmonious environment to carry peaceful negotiations which could resolve the Nagorno-Karabakh decisively. Minsk Group or commonly known as Minsk Process is co-chaired by Paris, Moscow, and Washington. The Group comprises permanent members – Belarus, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Finland, and Turkey, as well as Armenia and Azerbaijan. The unproductive progress of the Minsk Group is inherited in the role of co-chaired countries which are France, Russian Federation and United States with which the Armenian government has cultivated cooperative relations. Moreover, the three countries are accommodating a large number of Armenian citizens in their lands. Prior to 1996, the OSCE’s meetings at Helsinki on March 24, 1992 and at Budapest on December 5-6, 1994 emphasized the scope of peaceful settlement of armed conflict between the Caucasian states over the Nagorno-Karabakh land. Furthermore, the ninth session of the Islamic Summit Conference in Doha focused on the Karabakh conflict during its session of Peace and Development. This meeting of Muslim countries passed a resolution (Resolution No. 21/9-P (IS) on the Aggression of the Republic of Armenia Against the Republic of Azerbaijan) on December 12-13, 2000. Above all, the role of United Nations analogues to other territorial disputes of international system remained theoretically so much active. On December 20, 1993, the 85th Plenary Meeting of General Assembly passed a resolution (Resolution A/RES/48/114) calling Emergency International Assistance to Refugees and Displaced Persons in Azerbaijan. The efforts of the international community failed to produce positive results and the Karabakh conflict became one of the major conflicts of post-Soviet era. United Nations Security Council (UNSC) adopted several resolutions for the peaceful settlement of Karabakh conflict but the role of UNSC remained largely ineffective in implementing its resolutions. UNSC passed four resolutions, Resolution 822-adopted on April 30, 1993, Resolution 853-adopted on July 29, 1993, Resolution 874-adopted on October 14, 1993, and Resolution 884-adopted on November 12, 1993. The Armenian leaders obsessed with anti-Azeri behaviour do not agree with the four UNSC resolutions which are principally designed to liberate the occupied areas of Karabakh. Armenia's official inflexible position over the Karabakh conflict cemented in violent military operations is unable to accept the role of UNSC, and the government of Armenia is unwilling to compromise its stance over the land of Karabakh. Armenian foreign relations with great powers and its anti-Azeri lobbying around the global have placed the Karabakh issue at a low priority of the international community. The people living in the world’s capitals seem less inclined towards Caucasian peace on the basis of their cooperative and diplomatic connections with Armenian government. Therefore, the hostile status of Karabakh has become one of the most terrible pictures of human rights violations in the history of mankind. The ethnocentric claims of Armenia is cemented in their brutal armed policies against the Azeri people, it has launched a massive campaign of negating Azerbaijani legitimate claims over Karabakh region. No doubt, the chances for a peaceful resolution of this conflict remains a most desired objective of the international community, but the leaders around the world are reluctant in forcing the Armenian government towards a peaceful settlement of Karabakh dispute. The belligerent attitude of Armenia has not only caused massive human rights violations, but it has also endangered the scope of regional peace and prosperity. A more meaningful role of the great powers is now needed to resolve the Karabakh dispute peacefully, and to stop the Armenian aggression against bordering nations. The suspension of Armenian armed violence is a viable option which could lead the international community towards a peaceful solution.
From Half a World Away, Engineering Student Tackles Housing Problem in Armenia
University of Virginia
Jan 2 2017
From Half a World Away, Engineering Student Tackles Housing Problem in Armenia
Leon Yacoubian vowed to do something to help the Armenian people, even as he pursues his undergraduate degree at UVA. (Photo by Dan Addison, University Communications)
Leon Yacoubian is a fourth-year student at the University of Virginia, but he’s already putting his education to use on the other side of the planet.
An ethnic Armenian majoring in civil and environmental engineering, Yacoubian and some of his fellow students are seeking to develop housing for Armenians still suffering from a 1988 earthquake. Each of his proposed structures, which house four people, measures about 158 square meters (or about 1,700 square feet) and costs around $7,500 – costs he hopes will be defrayed by donations from Armenian expatriates. “There are more Armenians living outside Armenia than inside,” he said.
A week before he came to the University in 2014, Yacoubian toured Gyumri, Armenia, with his father and was badly shaken. He saw the destruction that persisted from the earthquake more than a quarter-century earlier, with survivors still living in the shipping crates that were supposed to be their temporary shelter.
“I was in shock,” said Yacoubian, who has lived in the Armenian capital of Yerevan – about 55 miles from Gyumri – since 2012, when his family escaped the Syrian civil war. “I saw where nature had overgrown the fallen buildings. I thought ‘Why am I so lucky? Why am I here and they are there?’”
Yacoubian was determined to do something about the plight of the Gyumri residents. He launched the “Tuff Armenia Project” in the fall of 2014 with the goal to design and engineer small houses made out of tuff, a local volcanic ash that he hoped could be formed into building blocks.
There are about 7,000 people in Gyumri who are still affected by the earthquake. Yacoubian’s teams are focusing on one district, Number 104, known as the Bus-Stop District, which has about 400 residents, requiring about 100 structures.
He now has two teams working on it. One is a field team of engineering students who have been to Gyumri and seen the problem firsthand. The team’s expenses were defrayed by a $20,000 Jefferson Public Citizens grant and a $10,000 Center for Global Health grant as they gathered material for research and analyzed the data.
The second team comprises students for whom the Tuff Armenia Project is a classroom exercise. Yacoubian’s project has been included in two civil engineering classes, “Civil Engineering Research and Design,” offered in the fall, and “Civil Engineering Design and Practice,” offered in the spring. Fourteen students signed up.
“Leon convinced us that these courses would benefit from the real-world project,” said Leidy Klotz, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering and and an associate professor of architecture. “We were looking for a way to do this. Architecture students were part of the team that traveled to Gyumri and we are exploring ways to have a merged architecture and engineering capstone opportunity through coursework as well.”
Students working on the Armenia Project incorporated it in their civil and environmental engineering capstone experience in the fall in Klotz’s research and design course, and will continue in the spring design and practice course under Brian Smith, professor of civil and environmental engineering and the chair of the department. The team also enrolled in professor James Groves’ interdisciplinary engineering design course.
Yacoubian said the class project is split into three sections: one dealing with site selection, a second team designing the house and a third team working with the tuff stone material. He said tuff has proven to be an unreliable building material, but still can be used as a façade material. Yacoubian said it is important in designing the buildings to make them look as if they belong to their surroundings.
The teams are preparing architectural designs and shovel-ready engineering plans, and Yacoubian said project members are working with non-governmental organizations in Armenia to build the structures. He said the houses, which would be built on girders supported by pylons, would be “half-built,” meaning they would have two bedrooms, a bathroom and a kitchen, with space for the homeowner to expand the structure.
“The residents can build the rest, if they want additional bedrooms or a workshop for a home business,” Yacoubian said.
The survivors are very interdependent, he said. “It is a tight community and they rely on their neighbors. They share community gardens and rely on each other for child care and sharing space. It is a tight community and we want to maintain that and keep families together.”
He said it is important that the people in the communities have a sense of being part of the solution.
“We want to design this ‘with’ the people, not ‘for’ the people,” Yacoubian said. “We need to listen to what they are saying. We need to see them as people and not just data points. Everyone has a story to tell.”
He said at one point they gave the Armenians disposable cameras and told them to photograph negative and positive things in their lives. The people all said that their families and their gardens were “positive,” while rubble, trash, rust and mold were “negative,” he said.
While Yacoubian’s project is focused on the problems in Armenia, the lessons are not limited to one crisis.
“The Armenian problem is unique, but the lessons are certainly transferrable,” Klotz said. “For example, learning about the unique needs of a community, understanding available material and human resources in a region and designing accordingly.”
And the problems can be approached in many different ways.
Bethany Gordon is part of the field team. A first-year Ph.D. student in civil engineering from Richmond, Gordon is experimenting with virtual reality as a way of presenting engineers with problems to be solved in faraway places such as Gyumri.
“Virtual reality can give you an understanding of someone else’s world in minutes,” Gordon said in a podcast that won an international competition this summer. “It’s not a perfect understanding, and maybe you are not aware of all the cultural nuances, but … you can make that connection in five minutes by sitting on your couch and looking through a $10 virtual reality viewer.”
Gordon, who received her undergraduate degree in civil engineering from UVA, wants to integrate virtual reality into her research, which involves developing sustainable design interventions for civil engineers using behavioral science and neuroscience. Gordon is also starting to explore the idea that increasing the blood flow to the parts of an engineer’s brain dealing with empathy will produce more sustainable designs. She is also working on the hypothesis that the later in the process an engineer commits his or her design to a model, the more willing the engineer is to change the design.
Yacoubian said he sees the problem in Gyumri as a “wicked problem,” a social or cultural problem that is difficult or impossible to solve for as many as four reasons: incomplete or contradictory knowledge; the number of people and opinions involved; the large economic burden; and the interconnected nature of these problems with other problems.
“I see the issue in Gyumri as having no singular solution,” he said. “Instead, there needs to be a multitude of solutions, each tackling a root problem instead of a symptom. I see the Tuff Armenia Project as one step toward a solution for one of the problems.”