Spring in an extraordinary city

Printed with abbreviations. Read in full at shender.ru

Once this central Yerevan square was called, like all the central squares of the empire, Lenin Square. Today it is the Republic Square, but the cast-iron sickle and hammer over the front doors of the ministry have not gone away. However, above one of the doors, these tools are already closed with the Converse Bank logo.

Time here, of course, moved somewhere, but stuck halfway. To the fresh, unsoiled eye of the tourist, both constants and changes are thrown with all obviousness. Mid-March in Yerevan is, consider, a full-fledged Moscow May Day: walk, breathe, soak up the landscape! .. On the billboard of some magazine there are portraits of great Armenians: Agassi, Sher, Dzhigarkhanyan ... Immediately, for some reason, Vladimir Solovyov and Alika Smekhova Are they also Armenians? Well, let yourself. An unfamiliar woman greeted me by name, there were inscriptions in Russian all around, not a single car stops at a zebra - hurray, I'm at home!

He moved with a walking step into the arch - and immediately buried himself in a blocked street. Ah yes, the state of emergency! A thin soldier in an oversized helmet sent me around. It was not necessary to understand Armenian in this case: armored personnel carriers sharpen one's intelligence...

Two brave "raspberry berets" were eating ice-cream cones at the bistro; behind the armored personnel carriers, the soldiers, standing in a circle, played volleyball - after all, this is Yerevan, not Berlin, right? Two girls walking in front, completely dressed in spring, distracted me from local political problems - a smart fighter in black with a Kalash in his hands, deprived of the opportunity to follow the girls, exchanged with me a look full of male solidarity.

Spring! Life is everywhere... It's hard to believe that a couple of weeks ago protesters were shot down not far from here. People fled, escaping, to the French embassy. Then almost all the leaders of the opposition were arrested. During the search, of course, they found weapons in someone's possession... Of course, the oppositionists wanted to undermine stability, the symbol of which - of course! are the president and his successor. And the leaders of the opposition (who would doubt it) were in contact with the Turkish special services ... Turkey, you see, is not alone in the conspiracy, I read the headline in a magazine collapse: “There was no cross at the rallies, but there was a Star of David.” Ah, well, now it’s clear who was behind the 100,000-strong rally in Yerevan...

Terrible and funny, as always, are nearby: several hundred protesters were brought from the villages by the administration itself - to a rally in their support. After standing for a while on official duty in the central square, the villagers already moved on their own to Freedom Square to Ter-Petrosyan, to hold a real rally.

When corruption is at the level of Russia, and there is no oil and gas in the country, one hundred thousand protesters are recruited even in small Armenia.

But television works without gas. “You have no idea what a lie there is!” exclaims my guide. I can not imagine? Young man, I did not come from Norway.

However, I turned on the TV in the hotel and waited, for the sake of comparison, for the release of the news. As expected, the announcers had the faces of civil servants. It was not necessary to understand Armenian again: having lived in Putin's Russia, I can translate this close to the text from any language...

Then a local successor appeared in the frame, Serge Sargsyan, exactly the size of Medvedev. Wow! Only local television people have not yet learned how to show it to the people. From below you need to shoot this, from below - to teach you everything! And the rest - well, the successor ...

He just started with the execution, which means that he will not easily leave power. An easy escape from power is a privilege of decent people.