YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 6, NOYAN TAPAN. The Armenian people bid their last farewell and paid a tribute of respect to Rafael Ghazarian, an academician of the National Academy of Sciences, a prominent intellectual, a famous public-political figure, a member of the Karabakh Committee, on November 6 in the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia. State and political figures, scientists, artists and simple citizens, who shared his ideas and supported his thoughts, had come to say a last good-bye to the true intellectual. Rafael Ghazarian headed a number of departments of the Yerevan State University for many years, then founded and headed the Architectural Center of the RA National Academy of Sciences. However, the last period of the activities of the famous scientist is insaperably connected with the national awakening of the Armenian people, that is to say, with the Karabakh movement. "Rafael Ghazarian is a national value for me. We lost a very important national value, we lost one of our powerful pillars. Just, like our other national figures, Rafael Ghazarian was not understood either," Samvel Karapetian, a scientist of monuments believes. "Rafael Ghazarian was an exceptional phenomenon. Our society suffered a great loss, in general, since he played a role of a litmus in some way at many moments of great significance for our nation. He was a steady personality and always strove for consolidation. He was straightforward and truthful and always told all the head officials what he saw in reality. He was unyielding in ideological sense, and his position was only national and in favour of Armenians," thus Arthur Ishkhanian, the Head of the Architectural Center of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia, the colleague and pupil of many years of the great scientist, spoke about the latter. According to Vahan Hovhannisian, the Vice Chairman of the RA National Assembly, as a public-political figure, Rafael Ghazarian was one of the few, who managed to maintain in politics "a top high-level morality." And he never committed himself to lie in order to achieve success. "He was the conscience of the Karabakh Committee, and when he saw the deviation of the political elite of those times, he became opposition. He was always a fair and a decent personality," Vahan Hovhannisian stressed. "I came to know Rafael Ghazarian very late, but I knew him as a perfect person. That kind, unfortunately, is becoming less and less among us and there are no very simple perspectives for filling the gap. However, I hope that in the course of time similar people will come to fill that lack, since no society can exist without that kind of people. Extremely of principle, extremely honest, extremely human and surprisingly modest: these are features, which seem to be difficult to combine in one person," Yervand Manarian, the Head of the "Agulis" Puppet Theatre, said.

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