Артак Григорян Artak Hryhorian

For graduation, we did a musical. One of the numbers was political, kind of funny. There was this Vietnamese girl, and she came out with... we did a cover of a song from [the musical] “Chicago.” In it, five girls tell their stories. <...> There are four storylines. And the fifth one, this Vietnamese girl, comes out with a placard showing the flag of Vietnam. And she starts speaking in Vietnamese. There's a translation. And she starts saying, "I, Nguyễn Thị Huyền, am Vietnamese, and I want to say that neither in the Richelieu Lyceum nor in the 11th grade does anyone oppress the rights of the Vietnamese-speaking population." And then she flips the placard over to show the flag of Odesa. The whole hall starts laughing, because this was the end of May [2014], so the tension about the "Russian-speaking population" and all that was still high. And I remember, during the curtain call, I started chanting, "Glory to Ukraine! — Glory to the heroes!" and "Putin khuilo!" and so on. I mean, I was the instigator, I was shouting it, and people were shouting back. Then our biology teacher came up, like, "You can't do that! No, no! Who is that? Who is that?"

I always have these conflicts with our police when I have to write down my ethnicity, because we still have these old forms where you have to state your ethnicity. They ask, "Ethnicity?" and I'm like, "What am I supposed to write? I mean, what is this?" They're like, "Well, who are you?" I say, "If I was born in Odesa, am I Ukrainian?" "Probably. Well, yes, that means you're Ukrainian." "Then Ukrainian it is." Or another one might ask, "Well, I can see you're not Ukrainian." I say, "My parents are from Armenia, so what's my ethnicity?" So, starting with those police reports where you have to write your ethnicity, I'm just like, "Ugh, what is this, why do I even have to write this?" I think that [identifying myself as Ukrainian] definitely happened after the Revolution of Dignity. I didn't even think about it at all back then. It was around [20]17 when I started, probably, getting involved in more substantial activism. Not just observing. I guess when I reached that level of theoretical knowledge, when I had formed some kind of foundation, I was able to move beyond it and understand that, for example, I needed to join some initiative, go somewhere, do something.

When I went there [to Automaidan], I didn't go with a specific goal. I just ended up there. It turned out that I was interested in just being in the same group with these people and seeing what they were creating, and helping them with it. Since, basically, that first case of mine with the Maraslis's House was a personal story for me, managing it was probably my main task. Then I realized that it didn't have to be just that, there could be other cases. Then it happened that we realized we had a common outlook on other political situations. In principle, [my] goal is the same as all of Automaidan's — to do the right things and not do the wrong things. To be that part of society that can show by its own example how society should live. Not to betray these principles. And to do the absolute most that you can, whatever depends on you, in one way or another, without doing the boring stuff. That's what I like about the organization and the people around me — that we always remain the same people who, in the morning, are talking about what to do with some security guards at an illegal construction site, for example, and in the evening, we're going out for a beer and watching football.

After Yanukovych fled and the main demands of the Maidan were met, we understood that the main problem now was the unreformed judicial system and our unreformed police. And we started to work on this security bloc. We have a lot of very cool lawyers, like Vadym Valko in Kyiv, for example, who attends all the High Anti-Corruption Court hearings and knows every single one of them inside and out. Like Roman Maselko, for example, who is no longer a member because he was appointed to the HCJ, the High Council of Justice, and now, at the highest official level, determines which judges will face [punishment]. If, for example, there's a criminal proceeding or something like that, your vote will decide whether that judge can face a fine or another penalty. <...> While the Kyiv story is more about reforming the system as such, <...> in Odesa, all of it [the Automaidan initiatives] turns into a fight against local developers, the local council, and so on, because changing things at the local level... The rules of the game are mostly decided within the walls of our parliament in our legislation. We understand what the rules are here in Odesa. We also have legislative initiatives, like our local or regional authorities, which can also determine a lot. But for the most part, it’s about specific cases that you react to. But that’s the nature of local cases. So this coalition, as I see it, of really cool people from Kyiv, like Katia Butko, who do real things, with slightly crazy people who have the same values in the cities. It makes for a cool organization with cool values. And I see the main goal as supporting all of this so that it works. <...> What’s the difference between a volunteer and an activist? The fact that <...> volunteering arises because the government is failing somewhere, while activists want to be above that. Under any government policy, there will always be activists who will show the government which path it needs to take and in which direction it needs to move.