Small-Town Living

It is a cool winter’s night in Glendale, California. Asli Karapetyan is sitting on her living room couch, listening anxiously as her grandson interviews her about her younger days in the Soviet Union. Asli was born in Tehran, Iran as the youngest child of seven. At the age of 36, she and her family moved to Armenia, to the small town of Micro Rayon, in the city of Hrazdan. The town consisted of approximately 18,000 people, yet the people knew one another very well. She attended three jobs to help keep her family running properly. She worked at the “Radio Zavod”, a factory building which made supplies for the Soviet Union Army. She also worked as a cleaner at a furniture store and restaurant. Her six children grew up in the town, and attended public schools there, however only her third oldest child ever attended a university in the capital of Yerevan, the capital of Armenia.  

I lived in the um Micro Region in Hrazdan. We moved to Armenia in the year of 1969 from Iran. I lived in Micro for 22 years. Yes I did like it it was good I did many things, it was a good place. I worked at three different places and it was really great working there and I like my jobs. I worked as a cleaner at three different places, it was me there and I cleaned and my job I was kind of like a maid but not for houses, for the factory I cleaned.

I cleaned the cabinets for the director of the factory, like um over here there is presidents of factories, yes over there it was called directors and also I worked at two markets and I cleaned the floors there too. I mostly cleaned everything up in the store and I was responsible to make sure everything everything was good, was clean, was neat, everything. I worked 5 hours at one place 4 hours at the other place and 2 hours at the other place, yes yes I worked. Uhh yes yes life was good everyone had fun especially the kids would play here and there outside everyday after they came from school. Yes there was a man named Terman Ter Petrosyan he was the manager of the Radio Factory and he was the brother of Levon he was the president of Armenia before. And also, Anahit Gevorgian she was a teacher that she taught my children everything and she was a very good teacher. The Micro leader was Sasoon Mkrtchyan, yes Sasoon Mkrtchyan was the leader. He was the mayor and he would regulate the town. He regulated that area, the Micro Area.

The schools were not really named, all the schools in Micro were under the name of Isahakyan, but there were numbers. There were schools 9-13. So the schools were called by numbers not names like here. Yes, well the children did many many different types of sports. The children and teenagers were always outside playing. It was very safe there, and I did not worry about my children being outside. When they finished their school work and reading, they would play outside. They would go swimming at the lakes and the river. There were not any pools in Micro, but in Yerevan there were pools. So instead of swimming in the pools they would swim in the lakes and the river since there were no pools in our region. Some children who liked music played the piano or the drums. The only problem was that there was not that much time for them to do all of these things, but when they had time, they did them. The children played many sports such as football [soccer] and also they played basketball too. At the schools, there were basketball teams, and the children would play games together. In the summer they usually played soccer in front of our apartment, and then in the winter they would go skiing in Tsaxkadzor which was another region of Hrazdan like five minutes away and they would go there. People, they went to the close region of Hankavan, and also visited the Hrazdan lake, they would go swimming, also they would go sightseeing by the chairlifts, also there were carnivals like here in Disneyland, there were roller coasters there too, and people went for tours.

Yes we had television there, when the kids came from school and they were done with their homework, we had four channels, the language they spoke in was Armenian and Russian. When my children came from work or school and when I came home I watched T.V. as well if I had time. Yes there were a lot of newspapers, many many. There was a newspaper such as Avangart, there was Soviet Armenia also. I did not know how to read um but, my um husband read them. Yes, there was a church; it was the church of Atarbegyan in that region which was about twenty minutes away. We would celebrate Easter since we were and are Christian. We would go to church during Christmas and New Year. Our Christmas is the Orthodox Christmas which is on the 6^th of January. We would celebrate, and take the kids there to church.

Well, there were three regions in Hrazdan. Yes, okay why not? There was in Hrazdan, there was Tsaxkadzor, um Micro um Rayon, uh there was Raykom. And then there was also the Grez which was a famous factory. It was really good. We lived in the upper portion of Micro, yes, but we also lived in the lower portion of Micro yes but for only a few months until our home in the upper portion was ready. The upper portion of Micro was more upper class, I can say, there were libraries, and nice parks that you could go to, there were also big building like the ones here but not that high. The population was more than the lower portion, but it was still smaller than lets Yerevan. Everyone knew each other. But there were nice big buildings and they would construct new buildings. In the lower regions, there was not any new construction going on, it was very still. Hrazdan was different than the other cities because in the summer there were summer camps and many people would send their children to summer camp at Hrazdan because it was about one hour away from Yerevan and they wanted their children to be far but not so far. And also in the winter a lot of people would come to Hrazdan to ski. Hrazdan was different because it was a very cold city. We had very low temperatures in Hrazdan, the climate was very cold. The people would come to Tsakxadzor to relax and vacation. There were ski lifts and many people came to relax. They came and there was a sports event in the winter, and also the summer. Two times a year, they would come from everywhere in Armenia for the sports events.

There was the Grez which it was a factory, it produced water, um no never mind I mean over there, they produced electricity through the water supply. And then the Radio Factory, um they would make pieces. These pieces were for the army and and they would make these pieces at the Radio Factory and the army would use them. Yes, yes I did enjoy working, I liked my job a lot. The people were good they were great actually, the jobs were good, we had jobs. The water the gas we had water and gas, everything was good. Everything I enjoyed. Because we had everything and we had it always, we had water, gas, electricity, we had everything. Because there was everything consistently. All the store were stocked up and there was everything you needed to purchase from the stores. The water, gas, lights, we always had it. We lived very well. We lived a good life.

We all, my family lived in Micro and we all worked at the same factory, the Radio Factory, and we all worked there, one day they called me to a meeting, and then they called all of us to the meeting, they called my whole family. It was kind of like a surprise, they said oh how good they said your family is the only family that all the members of you family work here at this factory and they work very well and because of that, they gave us a new house that was four rooms, over here we say three bedrooms, but over there the living room was counted too. It was really good, really good, I was really happy.

I came to America in the year of 1991. I went back to Armenia two times. Once in 2000 and once recently in 2006.The first time it was not good, because they did not do construction to fix the town, but the second time yes yes it was good, it was better. They had fixed the roads so it was um a little bit to uh go from one place to another place. I went to Tehran, and came back to Armenia, I traveled a lot. It was good. It was really good. Really good. My family over greeted me with open arms. It was really good. Yes there is big difference, yes, over here, um I am more relaxed and I do not work, so that I good. And over here the government helps the people, over there the government helps people too, but you know, its not too much help, its not enough. Now, if I wanted to go, Umm um, over there, no no I do not think I would go, no. Over there, it is not as good as here. I would not go back because if you compare here to there, there is a big difference between this country and that country. Over there a little, here it is better than there and I like it here better because it is calmer, but over there, in those years was different it was good too.

Interviewed By Edik Karapetyan