The relevance of reinterpreting the “Old days”

Sergey A. Aghajanyan
Doctor of Philological Sciences

Summary

Keywords – being, history, repetition of history, inevitability of reinterpretation, qualities of identity, history of identity, the Great Patriotic War, historiography of Soviet Armenians, barrack socialism, tragedy, symbolic scenes.

The already densely populated world is a multicolored and diverse complex of human cultural activities, which is shaped by the well-established identity of each nation that still exists. Apart from the qualities of their identity, neither these cultures nor the peoples who embody them can guarantee of existence and prospects for life. As the most important factors in the historical process, these qualities shape relevant behavior towards existing challenges, making their bearers viable or doomed. This is why the historical process, shaped by peoples and their value system, becomes either a controlled stream or a stream that irreversibly destroys everything.

The historical process is not as easy to analyze as material for a sober analysis. No coexistence can be guaranteed survival and development without a retrospective review and rethinking of the path traveled. At the same time, it is extremely important that this necessary scientific activity be conducted, especially in the search for the cause of failures, first of all, internally, in the qualities of one’s own identity and the national behavior that they engender.

The process of retrospective reassessment and rethinking, especially in modern times, can only be effective if it becomes a mandatory methodological practice for sociological thought. After all, for active culture-forming communities, the days have long passed when the people’s spontaneous worldview shaped the value system and behavioral norms of society.

Retrospective assessment, or rather, reassessment-reinterpretation, is one of the priorities of updating our historical consciousness. This is also imposed upon us by the 30-year stage of our modern history, which began with a heroic impulse rooted in national interests, which, unfortunately, ends with irreversible human, material, moral and psychological losses.