Life in Communist Berd

As Anahit Babayan Sarkisi, now seventy-six years old, starts her interview in her dining room, for the first time in many years she starts to remember her memories in Soviet Armenia’s town of Berd.  Becoming an orphan at a very young age and dropping out of school at fourth grade, Anahit spent most of her time helping her father in farming under Communist regime. Currently she lives in Glendale, California, with her family supporting her financially. Life in a small town like Berd was very entertaining when it came to celebrations, but the people worked hard all year long just to be able to provide for themselves. She mentioned that Communist system had direct cause on everything they did and because of it her father lost all the land and animals he owned under Stalin’s economic policy of Collectivization. While she would love to visit her homeland one more time, she wouldn’t prefer to live there permanently because of her memories from the past.

To talk about my birth, I was born in 1932. I lived in a middle class family, neither very rich nor very poor. Until 1937, my father was an independent worker and had many animals that brought a lot of money. Between the years 1937-38, he entered into farming and everything he had was taken from him. It included sheep, donkeys, pigs, cows and many of his belongings.

The real name of my city was Berd, and it had around 1500 to 1600 people since it wasn’t a big region. There were many elders, but there were small kids too. We had students, many farmers and there were many kolxoznik, people like you who work together including teachers, doctors and community workers. Everyone knew their neighbors and they talked together with love and everyone worked. There weren’t any fights or conflicts in the village between the people so we never experienced anything very dramatic. There were many class ranks depending on who the people were. The age was not much of a factor. There was tremendous respect towards elders in my years. It was just great and there was no fear to the elders but a lot of respect and love.

Soviet had everything to do with us. It was great for education, it was great for work, it connected the people to work together, nobody had any negativity towards their neighbors, and nobody gossiped. Basically they were very cooperative and connected all the time working together with a lot of love. There were enough schools for our community members. School was until the tenth grade. Unfortunately, I dropped out when I was just in fourth grade. In schools, Armenian Language was first, and then came secondary languages like Russian, German and some classes had English. As a beginner, we had Russian, but starting from fifth grade, students either took English or German, but it was mostly English. We had history class, geography, biology. Basically every subject was available. We received newspapers daily and everyone in the community always had one and they read it. There were telephones, there were televisions and back then radios were the most popular. In the beginning it was just radios, and then came the televisions followed by telephones. Telephones came very late compared to the others.

In our region, it was only Armenians. Taush region and the Berd area especially didn’t have anyone except Armenians. All the people were Christians. I didn’t know of anyone who had any other religions. There were many churches, especially in our village, but in Berd we were prohibited from visiting churches because of the Soviet Union. In some other areas like Echmiatzin it wasn’t prohibited. We went there, lighted a candle and had some religious freedom. People would get together, have different conferences and ceremonies. Everyone had their own place. They all had their own little groups. Old people would talk together next to the houses and buildings. The working people had their own place and they blocked the roads celebrating whatever the ceremony was.

When you entered into a different farming factory, the owners took everything away from you. They didn’t let you work on your ground anymore because you were given tasks on working the farm or doing office work. As I was saying, that was when my father went into farming and everything was taken from him. Later, I became an orphan after my mother passed away. Life was very hard back then. In the morning, little kids were left home alone and parents went away to go and do farming. Sometimes, they even put their kids on their shoulders and took them with them. There were special kindergartens next to big farms where kids stayed until work was over. It was especially hard for parents. My husband worked very hard and came home sweating from all the work he did under the sun.

News got spread throughout the village very fast. If there was an election and we got a new leader, people celebrated by traditional Armenian musical instruments like zurna, dhol and we accepted everything easily and happily. Leaders always gave visits to our villages once in a while and checked on the people. They checked the workers and working conditions all the time. Two leaders that I remember are Matsak Papian and Anton Kochinyan, who were accepted to our society very nicely. There was no chaos and nobody fought against the government. Huge tables were put for celebrations and people took the day off to be part of the fun.

In every aspect, there was no other choice than to do everything together. Construction was done by hard work and communication or in a specific work place there were still together. If it could be like back then, all the people would be very close together, but I have been away from the city for a long time and I have no idea what the people are like with each other now. The weather was mostly misty and foggy. It was not very clear most of the time. There wasn’t much sun, which wasn’t very good for our agriculture because the weather system was not balanced. I remember that sometimes in the springs, lightning’s destroyed the farmlands and people were forced to work extra hard to get back on track.  

Even though we were very close to the border with Azerbaijan, we didn’t have any problems. The conflict between us started in the eighties. When the problem arose, all Turks were driven out of our land and they did the same thing to Armenians. Our soldiers did a great job in keeping Azeri’s out of our land. They weren’t able to conquer any land and didn’t reach any of our civilians to kill them. Currently, my sister lives in Berd and the situation there is at its worse. If I have a chance, I would revisit my birthplace to see my country for the last time.

 Interviewed by Razmik Kajberuni