Armenia: Corona Crisis and War

In Armenia, as elsewhere, the initial Corona restrictions in force since mid-March and the closure of schools have had an impact, particularly on independent schools, which are not receiving any state support even during the crisis. It is only since September that children have been going back to school under strict conditions: the temperature is measured in the morning, masks are compulsory in class, and instead of two children, they have to sit alone at a table. In order to be able to teach smaller groups of learners, school hours were extended to Saturday and online teaching was provided for the higher classes. The long period of school closure, the large amount of extra work involved in attending lessons and the restrictions on leaving the school also posed great problems for the Waldorf School in Yerevan: "Most of the parents at our school work in the tourism industry, in cafés, restaurants and hotels", Ara Atayan from the Waldorf School, founded in the early 1990s, explains to us. "Many have already lost their jobs. Some pay less school fees, some can't pay anything at all". For this autumn, Atayan expected to see his monthly budget halved. This amounts to a total loss of at least €108,000, which must be recouped, so that the school can continue to operate.

In addition to the Corona crisis, the country is also reeling from a renewed flare-up of the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh. This dispute has lasted for a century. In July 2020, fighting broke out between the armed forces of Armenia and Azerbaijan on the border between the two countries. A former pupil of the Waldorf School in Yerevan also fell victim to this conflict. We tell you about his shortened life on our website.

Alen Vardanyan – a short life, sacrificed in war

Alen Vardanyan (2001-2020) was one of the most intelligent, friendly and artistic pupils at the Aregnazan Waldorf School in Yerevan. He had an incredible sensitivity for poetry, art and history. Everything was interesting for him. In the 7th grade he listened to Ara Atayan's teaching about Russian poetry. All of the students were given a collection of poems to read by Pushkin, Lermontov, Visocky and other Russian poets. The pupils had to learn the poems by heart; each pupil was asked to learn a poem that was particularly dear to him. And the class then learn them by heart. In the end, all pupils knew all the poems by heart.

Ara Atayan drew a large table with the students' names on a vertical line and the beginnings of the poems on a horizontal line. If someone knew a poem by heart, a line was drawn with a star, if someone knew it very well, a shining star. When Alen Vardanyan spoke, the system had to be changed and a new category created: absolutely beautiful. The way he recited the poem was fresh, with a special quality. Not an imitation of the teacher’s style and not a traditional recitation, it was a narrative entirely drawn from his personality. He was beautiful like a knight with an absolutely peaceful character. Ara Atayan said: Alen resembled Gawain from Arthur’s table.

He lived with his mother and his 16-year-old sister in Yerevan and finished the Aregnazan Waldorf School in 2019. Like all 18-year-old young men, he was drafted directly into the army. And in the first week of October, the first week of the war in the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, he died. This senseless war between Azerbaijan and Armenia over a small mountain area, a conflict that has been going on for more than a century and has turned, repeatedly, into warfare, demands - like all wars - senseless life, young life, a life of promise, not yet lived. Alen Vardanyan is one of the faces of this broken promise.

Nana Goebel