INTRODUCTION
My life has been dedicated to disseminating information about my outstanding compatriots with whom I have been lucky enough to work. The most notable in this Hall of Fame are the names of Andranik Gevondovich Iosifian, the outstanding man of Artsakh, as well as Oganes Karapetovich Davtian and Eugeni Artemovich Bashinjagian.
It is my desire to give the younger readers a brief account of the life of those extraordinary Armenians. There is no need now to specify all of their innumerable distinctions.
Andranik Gevondovich Iosifian had established over 10 research Institutes, design offices, and manufacturing plants in Armenia alone. It was his scientific research that made the young engineers like us convert the "Armelectromotor" Association into a unique center of automated electric motor production. His concepts had been incorporated in the electric drives of nuclear submarines, electric motors of wheel-mounted "Moonwalker", he had built the first ever harnessed electric-powered helicopter.
Largely depreciated during the Soviet rule, Oganes Karpovich Davtian was awarded a memorial publication, even though posthumously, by our joint efforts with his widow and one of his disciples. One innovation alone could have made him famous for all time: used as electricity source by the "Apollo" program was an installation with oxygen and hydrogen generating electric current and water by oxygen and hydrogen joining together. He has greatly contributed to discovering the essential qualities of the universal field. As a true Armenian, he used to seek the origins of the Universal in the works by St. Grigor Narekatsi. Being related to the outstanding Armenian painter, Eugeni Artemovich Bashinjagian was a world-class engineer, a large-scale manager in the automotive industry. His record includes the management of the Yaroslavl Motor Factory, the Volga Automobile Factory, later he became Deputy Minister of the USSR Automotive Industry and the NIIATM consultant. Through his efforts Armenia deployed 9 automotive plants. I remember our last encounter in Moscow, when noting his extraordinary contribution into Armenia's industry and economy, I ventured a remark that the distinguished manager of industry had failed to consider a crucial national feature of the Armenians. He seemed to be acutely interested. I expressed myself in a very determinate manner: the Armenians are poor conveyer operators for the reason of their highly developed creative personalities. I cited multiple examples showing that a completely automated manufacturing unit is something very different from the mass production with a human factor. I rounded up the discussion with a definite conclusion that the Armenians could have tried their hand in the field of automobile design so as to create the vehicles like Ferrari. During the years of my chief editorship of the popular Armenian-language Magazine "Science and Engineering" the official reprimands and suspensions for "national conceit" (as formulated by the Party overseers) had been applied to my modest person more than once. I remained afloat only because that was a part-time job, the main one being my tenure at a college. A frequent topic discussed with my friends is a lull on the horizon of outstanding Armenians. There is hardly an observable break in the artistic domains, but the situation with science is not so encouraging, not even science but rather the knowledge-intensive technologies which are certainly conceptually wider than science proper, since added to scientific thinking, there is a need for developing the manufacturing samples, their testing and deployment. Could it be true that there is not a single prodigy between the ages of 40 and 60? My good old friend Rudolf Gevorgian, a scientist with an encyclopedic knowledge, stated on that account that the issues like that had always confronted us with difficulties in orientation, we had been waiting for some special messages from the International agencies like CNN or Reuters, while our novel Armenian hero is toiling for the glory of the Russian and World Science. Then we started to bring together the evidence, so that the situation became clear even without meeting or talking to our hero. No, the Armenian land has not become poor of talents or prodigies. It was just as ever, that this time as well, the seedling having gotten into the kindly Russian soil, yielded abundant crops to the delight of his new countryland.
The time has come both to admire those crops and to pick up some internationally acclaimed ideas of this remarkable scientist and chief developer of quite a number of state-employed data and technological systems to be further replanted in the land of his ancestors. K. A. Valiev, a Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, once expressed himself on the idea to measure human talent. According to him, humans differ mentally with multiple proportions far in excess of their physical differences.
Both in the 20th and in the 21st centuries the usage of environmental science enabled man to improve his chances of survival upon the Earth.
The past and future role of science has been characterized in this way by Ju. S. Osipov, President of the Russian Academy of Sciences: "A well-developed science performs a certain function of monitoring within the sea of knowledge which exists. As soon as you loose this component, you are transformed into ordinary people of business who will hardly hold their fingers on the pulse of science. Measuring the pulse of scientific and commercial activities will require analysts and large-scale scientific structures".
Hopefully, everything that has been done by Academician M. A. Shakhramanian and his team is largely matching this definition. The 2050 readers of this book may be envied, for by then the technologies herein described will become the basic anthropogenic or Earth-preserving strategy of survival for the human species.
By the will of the Destiny I used to visit Western Ukraine. There at the resort of Truskavets, thousands of Soviet people rid themselves every year of the unneeded stones in their bodies with no efforts or surgical intervention. Modest premises inside the mineral resort compound shelter the exhibits on the history of the Institution. The visitor learns the name of the person who had first discovered the healing properties of the local springs and established the resort at the time when the land belonged to the Polish state. The name of that medical man was Theodore Tarasevich, the plaque reminding of his Armenian origin.
I used the multiple visits there to deliberate on the phenomenon of the Armenians having been established on this land so distant from Armenia, with their settlements, churches and cemeteries, since the 10th century. I could learn many useful things from my friend professor Ruben Abgarovich Hakobian. Research shows that the Armenians arrived to that place following the destructive earthquake around Ani, the ancient Capital, in the 10th century.
Every once in a while, when staying alone with my thoughts, I was trying to grasp the psychology of my poor countrymen surviving the disaster. What was the supernatural force that made them rush headlong towards the west? Their travel lasted for years, and they settled at a remarkable place. What made them suspend their flight were not mountains or rivers or deep crevasses, but rather the natural boundaries of the Catholic Faith.
They stopped where the spiritual influence of the Russian Orthodox Church terminated, where the subsequent centuries would see the strife between the Unionists and the Orthodox on the one hand, and the Catholics and Unionists on the other.
The mountains were still there as a naturally drawn boundary. Passing there today are the borders of Hungary, Slovakia and Poland. Adding however, Bulgarians and Rumanians would never suggest whatever etymological sources of the Carpathians — the name of the mountain ridge. The search may be facilitated by assuming the CAHRE PAT = STONE WALL in Armenian.
I have always been haunted by the question, whether the earthquake is such a horrible event that the survivors would flee it to the end of their lives. A peculiar feature of the humans is that they can hardly become fully aware of a disaster through descriptions or even seeing films. It makes all the difference when one finds oneself on the scene of events.
That was what befell the residents of Armenia after December 7, 1988, when countless thousands of mutilated bodies of innocent victims mingled with the reinforced-concrete rubble of the Soviet achievements in urban construction. The Russian nation have quite recently had a chance to observe a scaled-down version of this tragedy in Neftegorsk, the Island of Sakhalin.
The dispute on the true number of casualties has never been resolved. What I know for sure is the real number of the government-placed order for coffins. Actually manufactured were 105 thousand. Later, when visiting the disaster zone, I caught glimpses of fragments of coffins used as structural material.
The Institute where I was employed had affiliated branches both in Leninakan and Kirovakan. I spent the initial 6 months in the immediate aftermath of the terrible disaster with the survivors. Many suffered from hallucinations and nightmares, the best cure was sublimation through preoccupation by work, for those who had no losses among the next of kin.
15 years have now passed since that day of horror. Those who had lost their loved ones, have made up the losses by starting new families, the ones who could not give birth adopted thousands of children who had lost their parents.
In May 2002 my Polish colleagues invited to the traditional conference taking place in Zakopane, a popular Polish resort.
Before departure I naturally gathered fresh data on Poland, the Armenians residing in that state that historically gave shelter to Armenians 900 hundred years ago.
What was my surprise in finding that Poland has since 1988 given shelter and employment to 100 000 Armenians.
This occurrence has not yet found its explanation, the number of Armenians in the adjacent countries: Slovakia, Czechia, Hungary, being lower by orders of magnitudes, sometimes as low as 5 to 6 thousand.
After the conference we were taken to the mountains, first by bus, then on horse-drawn wagons. Our guide related that the tallest summit in Zakopane, clouded most of the time, was named Mount Ghevond. When he finished his story, I asked: — Is Gevond a Polish name? — The answer was negative.
Then I explained that the name Gevond is used by the Greeks and the Armenians. The case here is perhaps concerned with perpetuating the name of an Armenian.
Thus, what we see is a surge of the feasible part of our people with a period of 900 years through a natural disaster. The first time it was at the time of no data exchange, while the second time it was at the time of satellites, television and a developed information infrastructure. In both cases the result is similar. Man and his fragile ego succumbed to the horrible catastrophe. For the meager Armenia there were more times to come so that Armenians should have to abandon their countryland in search of bread.
In the Republic of Armenia today, the statesmen do a lot to reduce the threshold of poverty, to suspend the migration of the population through economic difficulties.
The efforts applied for the past 10 years to scientifically minimize in a similar way the anticipated casualties and demolition following the natural disasters, are absolutely inadequate. They are in fact ridiculously inadequate, having been developed and financed in a wrong direction.
Despite the crucial multilevel agreements concluded between the governments of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Armenia, we have never used even a fraction of what has been done by groups of Russian scientists advised by the outstanding scientist and manager, academician, doctor of technical sciences, major general Mikhail Andranikovich Shakhramanian.
CHAPTER I
- FOR THE GLORY OF RUSSIAN SCIENCE, AND THAT OF THE WORLD
- THE NEW CONCEPT OF CIVIL DEFENCE
- IN THE MINISTRY OF EMERGENCIES ANY ONE IS A RESCUER
- ORIGIN AND LIFE
- A BRILLIANT TRIAD: SOLDIER, SCIENTIST, STATESMAN.
CHAPTER II
- THE GLOBAL (WORLDWIDE) GEOINFORMATION SYSTEM "EXTREMUM"
CHAPTER III
- THE FEDERAL SYSTEM OF RECEIVING AND PROCESSING SPACE DATA "EMPIRE STATE WATCH"
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
- One who is warned is armed
CHAPTER VI
- INFORMATION SYSTEMS OF CIVIL DEFENSE
CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VIII
- MOVING INto the 21st century with new information and education technologies
Appendage 1
Appendage 2
- Articles in Newspapers and Journals on the Activities of the Federal Center of Science and High Technologies
Appendage 3
Appendage 4
Appendage 5
- INTERNATIONAL AND RUSSIAN DIPLOMAS AND AWARDS
