In July 1974, the 10,000-strong Turkish army, choosing the name of the gang leader Attila the Hun as the operation motto, invaded Cyprus and occupied almost half of the country. The Turks were going to occupy the island. The plan did not take place thanks to the "threatening warnings from the Soviet Union and the US President Lyndon Johnson’s explicit threats."

The first thing Armenia began to do shortly after it gained independence was establishing diplomatic relations with other states. This process received broad political resonance and infused pride in our compatriots who had just regained independence, both in our motherland and in the Diaspora.

In 507 BCE, the Athenians sent a delegation to Persia asking for help to subdue the Spartans. This was one of the fatal and unforgivable errors in the history of Athenian diplomacy.

The significance of the word, both uttered and written, in diplomatic relations is immense. The forefathers of classical diplomacy in ancient Greece understood this very well. The knowledge of the word was greatly appreciated. The Athenian philosopher and orator Demosthenes, who lived two and a half thousand years before us, said...

The golden rule in interpretation is that the interpreter must accurately transfer the meaning from one language into another. There is no other way. And yet there have been cases when the interpreter has interpreted the exact opposite of the original meaning, which can be justified.

But the task of Stalin’s and Khrushchev’s interpreters, for example, must have been tortuous. They had to deal with fear in the first case, and non-regulated language in the second.

In the 1970s, the Soviet diplomats were courting the Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, who reminded of a tragicomic hero whose actions always culminated in terrorism, human deaths, and international scandals.

The question of owning or producing weapons of mass destruction has been the subject of anxiety among the superpowers since World War II. They have tried to control and bloc the djin that is now out of the bottle because of them.

Even a schoolchild knows that every minister must work in the realm that he has been assigned to. Thus, the minister of education must make sure that students are receiving a good education, the minister of agriculture—that planting and harvesting are done on time, the minister of defense—that the country is protected from enemy incursions. In other words, they each have their own function.

But if we listen to certain prominent men we would think that diplomats are devoid of this divine gift, because they are dry, strict, and introverted people who are strangers to laughter. Balzac and Goethe have thought rather negatively about diplomats, considering them "literal pedants,” while Marcel Proust has called them "as boring as the rain.”

They used to joke at the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Affairs: "You only need to know two things to work as a diplomat: a foreign language and how to drive a car.”

The undeniable proof of the superiority of socialism, Soviet foreign policy and diplomacy was Lenin’s "victory” over national politics, which had "secured” the brotherhood and eternal friendship between the Soviet nations. The collapse of the Soviet Empire revealed the defects of that "friendship,” heightened the hidden conflicts between the nations and their regional, historical, economic, and cultural disagreements.

In 1969 Yerevan was celebrating the centenary of the great Armenian poet Hovhannes Tumanyan. It was a grand celebration of international scale. A government committee had been formed, however the event was being organized by the Minister of Culture Kamo Udumyan, who was one of the most active figures in social life and politics, and whose energy and unconventional methods surprised and even terrified the parochial functionaries and dogmatists.

One of the most common traits of small nations is to claim great world dignitaries as "their own.” If they announced an international competition in this "sport,” Armenians would certainly win the game.  According to our compatriots, Shakespeare, Napoleon, Goethe, and Griboedov among others are of Armenian descent.