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FROM THE MARGINS | BY PATRICK AZADIAN
Los Angeles Times Valley Edition | Glendale News-Press | July 15 2006

Leave the old baggage at home

The cold war is over. Isn't it?

And yet for many of the ethnics across America, the war continues to rage, even after the destruction of the Berlin Wall.

Don't be alarmed. I don't mean to suggest there are many communist sympathizers living here in America waiting to setup a worker's dictatorship in Washington, D.C.

No, absolutely not. One would be hard-pressed to even find outspoken liberals in today's political environment, let alone leftist radicals who still cling onto the notion that somehow the now-defunct Soviet system was actually better than the variety of systems offered in the Western hemisphere.

But the legacy of the Cold War continues to divide ethnic communities that lived under socialist rule.

When it comes to Vietnamese-Americans, Cuban-Americans, and to a lesser degree, the Chinese and Koreans, these community divisions from within are logical, as the old country (or parts of it) continue to remain under Communist rule.

This select group of Americans still have families "back home," and some have suffered physically, emotionally and economically during violent revolutions. Many of their scars continue to remain fresh.

What is a little unusual is the persistence of these divisions within the Armenian-American community, long after the unceremonious dissolution of Soviet Armenia. And nowhere is this more apparent than in Glendale.

Ironically, there are no more objective grounds for these age-old animosities. But many immigrants in their mature years still carry these same attitudes toward their neighbors and acquaintances. The root of these divisions can be traced to what I'd like to call "the five commandments of spending your best years in the Soviet Union or the Middle East."

Here they are:

Commandment No. 1: Thou shalt not trust the government. Logical, if one has lived in a system where the state treasury and the lifetime-president's bank accounts were synonymous. Anyone running for office or already part of the government structure may be considered a crook.

Commandment No. 2: Thou shalt not trust political parties. Whether one traces their roots to Syria or the Soviet Union, joining "the party" was the only way to climb the political latter, or just to manage a life in tranquillity.

Those who dare to be associated with a political party today may be considered shady characters, at best.

Commandment No. 3: Thou shalt not trust election results. I don't think I need to elaborate on this, but if one was born in some infamous Mesopotamian state and the same president declared a landslide victory by 99% of the votes every five years, then you'd be suspicious of any election results, as well.

I've always wondered about that 1%; why not round it off to a nice 100% figure? Anyone who is fairly elected to the office is, well, not fairly elected.

Commandment No. 4: Thou shalt not trust volunteer organizations. This is a little complicated, but in a system where no independent volunteer organizations are allowed to exist, everything is seen as the tool of the government, and everyone associated with volunteer organizations is assumed to have an ulterior motive.

Refer to the first and second commandment on this one.

Commandment No. 5: Thou shalt blame corruption and fraud when elections results don't end up as planned.

This is the flip side of Commandment No. 3. Many have already come across this phenomenon in recent elections, and will see more of it in the upcoming city elections. Basically, "cry wolf" whenever ending up on the losing side.

I don't like wrapping myself in the flag, but America is a chance for Armenian-Americans to bury many of their old animosities within the community. Getting rid of some of the baggage from the Old World could be liberating as well as productive.

Whatever the source of these divisions, they cannot be any greater than the American-Japanese conflict during World War II, the Russian scheme to destroy the Capitalist West for decades, or the East German border guards firing on their own brethren during desperate escapes to the West.

The way some Armenian-Americans treat one another reminds me of those post-World War II movies where a couple of poor Japanese soldiers abandoned on an isolated island continue to shoot at Americans long after the end of the war.

The Cold War is over. If you don't believe me, ask your Russian neighbors who just arrived on the Aeroflot from Khabarovsk.

It would be nice if the community could channel some of its energy into addressing some of the needs of our city and community as opposed to wasting it on the abandoned battlefield.

Copyright 2006 Glendale News Press