It was historic in that Moscow came to the 10th gathering in the summer of 1990 with ready-made texts. However, our positions, the positions of the delegations from those republics, changed the course of the meeting.

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The Tenth Gathering was the last Gathering of the All-Union Pioneer Organization named after Lenin. It was changed after that and did not have the same name anymore and was not the same organization.

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You know what was for sure? There was one thing for sure that I remember it in myself: are we radical enough or are we still compromising?

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This “Aryan” thing could not appear in our process, yes. Internationalism was still very important.

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My mother answered very sadly: “Wait, let’s see what happens to this world, what Artek?”, because it was [19]88, and some things had already started.

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There were such things and we were on that side, and had decided that it did not matter that our school was a Russian one, that our headmaster was a Party member, and so on, that we had to show our solidarity with the Karabakh Movement.

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There were several newspapers at that time. It was “Soviet Armenia”, it was “Avangard”, there was another newspaper... I don’t remember the position of “Grakan Tert” [Literary Newspaper], but for a long time it was only condemning. Then suddenly it change

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But I remember that the rally changed from May 1 on, its essence changed, I understood that the power was already changing, transitioning, OK? I think that the Central Committee felt that the power was out of its hands.

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It adopted a decree that if Moscow would make an important decision, Yerevan would not be obliged to endorse it. Yerevan will implement it, if only the local Supreme Council will approve it. In other words, it was the beginning of independence.

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The return of the “Karabakh” Committee showed that the Committee had won. After the movements started in the Baltics etc., it was already clear the changes were irreversible, i.e. there was no going back to the old ways.

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