And a Crown on the Pole
Robert Yengibaryan about the individual as the cornerstone of civilization
Robert Yengibaryan. Oh, Marie! A novel.
Moscow: Norma, 2013 – 640 pages
Yulia Karaulova
This novel, written by Robert Yengibaryan, a well-known legal scholar and a doctor of law, is something special in the impressive diversity of current Russian prose. In his work, Yengibaryan revives the classical tradition of great Russian literature, combining the contradictions typical for the formation of a young man, the historical tension of the epoch and the prevailing influence of a civilization.
Against the background of a love drama being experienced by the protagonist of the novel, the life of an individual becomes part of a national destiny and the prevailing trends in the development of the humankind are identified in the history of a particular country. In our era of victorious postmodernism, the author raises pressing questions that people want to be answered – those concerning the relationship between ethnicity and nationality, religion and civilization, the ethnic character and a law-driven society, a multiethnic state and xenophobia – and offers his own answers to them which are blunt and may seem unpleasant to someone.
One distinctive feature of Yengibaryan’s novel is its dual nature combining the love story and the author’s philosophical and social reflections which are of particular interest for the purposes of this article.
The most important topic of the novel is the prevalence of civilizational factors in determining the fate of an individual. “Which factors determine the human fate?..
In my opinion, the key factors are the place and country of birth, religious and cultural affiliation, ethnicity and, finally, nationality… However, this all can be modified in a certain way… The only totally objective and unchangeable factor is the time when the person happened to be born…” By these words at the beginning of the novel, the author sets direction for the development of an individual as part of his or her family, kin and people acting in a particular historical epoch within predetermined civilizational boundaries.
The concept of civilization, in the author’s opinion, is defined by a number of criteria, including ethnicity and nationality. “… Political theory offers various definitions of ethnicity. They can be divided into two main groups. The first group is where an individual embraces the culture and language of a specific ethnic

community. The second one is where he or she shares the destiny of this ethnic community or, speaking more broadly, people. Thus, each individual decides the matter of his or her ethnic identity personally,.. and ethnic identification results from the civilizational demands and mentality of each particular person…”
The concept of nationality in the form existing in the majority of the developed countries includes, but is not exhausted by, the concept of ethnicity. A French,
Russian or US national will not necessarily be French, Russian or Anglo-Saxon in terms of his or her ethnic origin. Therefore, a modern multiethnic nation should, in addition to nationality and ethnicity, involve one more factor encouraging or discouraging assimilation.
The author believes that the confessional affiliation of an individual is such a factor.
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The major civilizations have taken shape under the influence of their respective global religions – Christianity, Islam and Buddhism – which have made a great impact on the cultural, social and legal aspects of life of the relevant peoples. For instance, Luther’s “95 Theses” posted on the door of the Castle Church in
Wittenberg divided the European civilization into the Catholic and Protestant ones and determined for a long time the cultural and social features and even the everyday life of those peoples which were converted into Protestantism and those which remained within the domain of the Roman Church.
However, the Christian civilization displays not very large fluctuations in the modern world, so that an Englishman today will never feel alien in Italy or France and it will never occur to a German from Saxony that the catholic Bavaria is a foreign country, let alone a different civilization.
The situation changes sharply when it comes to conversion to another faith. “…
An Englishman or Russian can convert to Islam, but one should not forget that such an act goes beyond a mere change in cultural values. It affects the very mental and behavioral core of the individual. An individual who has changed his or her faith ceases to be part of his or her (by the right of birth) civilization and joins a different civilization that, in its turn, means that the former personality of the individual will be lost and replaced with a totally different one.
As already noted, religion largely determines the development of any civilization and all of its components – culture, art, law, social stratification etc.. Suffice it to compare the sophisticated Gothic style of the Sienese cathedrals with the austere

simplicity of Anglican temples, the bizarre glamour of paintings by Botticelli with the stern colors of Vermeer’s works, and you will understand that all of those masterpieces were generated by a single system of Christian values with some differences in interpretation.
But how could you explain the fact that, even within an integral Christian civilization, the development of different countries has proceeded in different ways and produced completely different results? Why, for example, do such countries as England, Germany and the Netherlands, which have chosen
Protestantism, have a much higher GDP per capita than the Catholic France, Italy or Spain, let alone Russia where Orthodoxy prevails? Why has the system of
Anglo-Saxon common law, significantly modified under the influence of
Protestantism, ensured the smooth operation of the legislative branch of power and strict compliance with laws by the citizens of the relevant countries, in contrast to Russian reality for which Pushkin’s bitter epigram is still true (“There is no law in Russia, there is a pole and a crown on its top”)?
That means that, in addition to ethnicity, nationality and confessional affiliation, there also exist other criteria determining the formation or, according to the author, the fate of an individual and his or her people and, in the final analysis, the fate of the European civilization. Classical Russian literature teaches us that the fate of an individual is inseverably tied with the fate of his or her people. The people’s destiny, in its turn, determines the fate of a national state, whether it is mono- or polyethnic. In his novel, Yengibaryan pays the closest attention to the fates of two peoples, the Russians and the Armenians, with which the fate of his protagonist is inseparably connected, and he incessantly reflects throughout the novel on the essence of the ethnic character and traditions and on their relationship with the governmental and legal traditions of the Russian state. “The wealth of peoples is distributed unevenly in terms of not only time but also geography.
In some countries… disasters or commotions are rare or local, whereas in other countries they are an almost permanent factor of life, with rare calm and relatively happy years. There exist countries where the human life has… a very high price, especially when compared with an “unhappy group” of countries where the individual is absolutely unprotected against state or criminal abuse…
The average life expectancy in those countries is one third or more lower than that in wealthy countries. Therefore, not only time but also place of birth predetermines the fate of a person and its measure of well-being, happiness and joy…”

The fate of the Russian people was extremely tragic over the last century. The world wars, the revolution, the civil war, Stalin’s purges, the riots and criminal chaos at the end of the twentieth century have drained the nation of all strength by annihilating the best representatives of its cultural, military and social elite and have produced such worst traits as aggression towards the compatriots, the absolute lack of trust in the government, and civil apathy. In essence, the Soviet attempts to create a new people – Homo Sovieticus – totally failed and resulted in nothing more than a persistent generation of Sharikov-style persons. By telling the story of the novel’s protagonist, promising lawyer David Aryan, the author shows the criminal nature of the Soviet state based on lies and hypocrisy, with a legal system separated from reality – a state keen on deference to absolutely unjustified and meaningless ideological dogmas and reluctant to notice the interests and needs of an individual.
When reading the novel, we understand that the foundation of our modern corrupted society was laid down fifty years ago, back in the Khrushchev and
Brezhnev era which is still nostalgically recalled by many people as a relatively liberal period of time called “ottepel” (thaw). Yengibaryan shows in his brilliant way how the essentially feudal system of the Soviet hierarchy was formed and how it worked, from an ordinary investigator up to the First Party Secretary of a
Soviet republic. “I was told many times that paintings by well-known or even classical painters would be presented to top-tier leaders of the republic for their birthdays or jubilees… Then the republic’s leaders would “donate” part of those paintings or things of value to their Moscow superiors or inspectors…”
Throughout the novel, we see how natural desires inherent to each person – to protect and provide for one’s family and relatives, to live a happy life, to bring up children and take care of the elderly – confront with the rigid framework of the
Soviet system which always acted against the vital interests of an individual and which always suppressed those interests in a cruel and extremely sadistic manner.
However, having brought his protagonist through all circles of the Soviet hell, the author makes an unexpected, at first glance, but very honest conclusion. “No, it would be wrong to blame the government for everything. Would a socialism with such… a sinister and predatory face be possible in Great Britain, France or
Sweden? No, and twice more no. The government is alike to its people. The people itself generates a government and a reality of this kind. But I am part of this people…” Thus the author raises a most important civilizational issue, i.e. the responsibility of an individual for the fate of his or her people and of the state that the people generates.
Here we return to the problem of the ethnic character. When David Aryan moves from the monoethnic Yerevan to a Russian provincial area, the protagonist for the

first time encounters the everyday culture of the Russian people which was unknown to him before and which puzzles or even totally repulses him.
Reluctance to observe elementary hygienic rules, poor housekeeping and limitless drinking always followed by brawls – first David Aryan tries to attribute these phenomena to the criminal policy of the state towards its citizens, but then he comes to a different conclusion. “Why is everything so bad, uncomfortable, stupid and inhumane”, I thought, “why is everything arranged against human reason…, natural convenience and social requirements?... it is dirty, murky everywhere, an individual is an unwanted guest everywhere, the work of every office is managed in the worst possible way… But who is to blame – the government, the powers that be?.. It is our people, and you should not hold on to your illusions… It is time to realize that no government can force its citizens to be clean, well-groomed… not to turn into an animal through drinking,… love one’s family, children and, finally, oneself…”
It is self-love or rather self-respect that love and respect for one’s relatives, one’s people and, finally, one’s nation begin with. The author believes that a low level of hygiene and a full-fledged civil society are incompatible. However, an individual can only have respect for his or her nation if the nation has respect for the individual, such respect to be based on an effective legal framework. “I asked myself involuntarily whether people living in dirt and chaos… were able to build a humane society, to love and respect each other…, to take care of the weak? Of course, no. A humane government and a humane society would first of all begin with everyday cleanness, whereas the congestion and poverty of multi-family apartments induced people to live in chaos, to fight, like in a prison, for each inch of space, quarrel and hate each other…”
It should be noted that the characters of Yengibaryan’s novel include not only
Russians and Armenians but also Jews who were among David Aryan’s closest friends. The image of Faina, a girl from a Moscow professor family and a brilliantly educated dissident, is vivid and completely real. After the Revolution, the Jews got out of their ghettoes and little towns where they had been locked by the
Czarist government and, during the Soviet era, turned into popular enlighteners and keepers of Russian culture. Despite the unspoken veto on university education for Jews eventually imposed by the Soviet government, during the
1960s this people became the most educated and civilly active promoter of the
European ideas of a law-governed state and the values of the Judeo-Christian civilization, thus taking revenge for the pogroms of the early 20 th century and for the Holocaust. The Jewish people performed one more important civilizational mission during the Soviet era – it was an element which, due to its international nature, mitigated contradictions among other peoples, integrating their interests through universal human requirements. “It is easy to be with Mark and Faina, and

I totally forget any ethnic or religious differences… We are just modern people sharing common cultural values and everyday demands and similar in our views on life and moral standards…”
I should say that the author does not fear to touch such a delicate subject for our society as anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitic feelings have never been strong among the
Russians, and one should remember that the pogroms which hit the Jews of the
Russian Empire affected mainly Bessarabia, Kishinev and Odessa. However, some residual anti-Semitism could be seen in such statements as “the Jews made the
Revolution”, “the Jews killed the Czar” etc. Yengibaryan reproduces in a very authentic manner a conversation of this kind between Faina and a Russian woman, the investigator Olga Viktorovna.
“… A large portion of the population, given the role the Jews played in the history of Russia, has a negative attitude towards them…
-But could I know what you personally think about the role of the Jews in the history of Russia?... - I immediately noticed Olga’s embarrassment… but had no time to interfere: Olga persistently continued to make her point… - It is a wellknown fact that Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Sverdlov… and a number of other
Jewish revolutionaries were connected with the German intelligence service which directly subsidized their activities to destroy the Russian Empire.
-Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Dzerzhinsky, people of very diverse ethnic origin dethroned the Czar. But then it was found out that the Jews were to blame for it, as well as for any other national disasters. I would like to know why the Jews wish so maniacally to destroy Russia? What is the reason for that?..”
Of course, one article cannot reflect all issues raised in such a complex and multifaceted work as Oh, Marie! – the love-and-philosophical novel by Robert
Yengibaryan. The novel that mirrors the Soviet era with all its contradictions, myths and illusions; an era which was cruel, mean, sometimes naïve, but absolutely inhumane in its nature and, therefore, doomed to failure.
This novel should be carefully and seriously read by the new generation because it contains answers to the questions as to what determines the fate of an individual, people, nation and, ultimately, civilization and what should be done in order to avoid any future mistakes for which you, your family, your people or your nation may pay dearly, because the individual is a cornerstone of any civilization and any civilization will perish unless it respects the individual and his or her needs and interests.