TV presentation of “On Tyranny: 20 lessons from the 20th century” illustrated book (video)

During the presentation, the translator, political scientist Hovhannes Nokoghosyan emphasized, that the book is about the power structures created by the dictators of the 20^th century. The book offers some lessons for us to avoid the same mistakes and not to repeat them if possible. "One of the most important conditions of dictatorship is the gradual elimination of alternatives, the disruption and elimination of state institutions, the refusal of choice and ruling people with slogans, which does not give people the opportunity to think with their own intelligence and use their own vocabulary. People, and masses fall behind the slogans, which eventually leads to the disintegration of the state. Dictatorship is evil, dictators generally come to power by using the opportunities provided by various institutes".

According to Gnel Nalbandian, editor-in-chief of the Newmag publishing house, we regularly make mistakes, and we should learn from our or others' mistakes. It is more difficult to learn from history. "For example, we are currently living in a period of the Armenian-Azerbaijani war, and it is very difficult for us to learn from it because in order to do that, 30-40 years should pass before we can understand it. It is very difficult to live in a history textbook. Ukrainians and Russians are living in the history books right now. Time will pass, and just as it is now easy for us to discuss World War II, so will these wars. Dictatorship never comes and goes overnight. Dictatorship is something that accompanies us, it's like democracy, they are "brother and sister", if you loosen the bonds of one, the other will strengthen”.

Mihran Hakobyan, Ph.D. in History, believes that it is not possible to make judgments about the course of history by only learning lessons from history. "Homosapiens have certain behaviors, certain instinctual codes that no one has canceled. And mistakes in history always happen. Before the First World War, Beethoven was forbidden to play in London, Shakespeare was forbidden to be staged in Berlin, and the result is known. It exploded in the background of hatred, which also affected the Armenian people, who were subjected to genocide. But after 100 years, in the 21st century, we see that in many Western countries, which are also a standard of development for us, they ban Dostoevsky, they ban Pushkin, which are gems of world literature".

According to the translator, "We chose the illustrated version with Newmag, because the illustrator Nora Krug presented the author's emotions, thoughts and ideas in a very graphic way, which would enable the reader to perceive more objectively what problems and disasters were being discussed, that various dictators brought over their peoples. The book also contains archival photos, materials from the Holocaust Museum, the Library of Congress, the Historical Archives of the European Union, and her own archive.