Lost and Found Independence

During earlier repatriations, there were some misconceptions, from those settling in Armenia and from the locals, who were wondering why people living elsewhere could forfeit their lives and choose to live in a country where living conditions considered minimal elsewhere were considered luxurious at home.

Also, there was no reference to the Genocide and the future of the Armenian Case. Perhaps these policies had to do with compensation and territorial claims.

Back to the present: some who heard about the prime minister’s plans greeted it with sardonic smiles, whereas others accepted it with the belief that Pashinyan knows all.

Succeeding generations of Armenians have struggled to gain independence but twice it was not those efforts but historic accidents which brought independence to Armenia.

In 1918, the Ottoman and Russian empires collapsed and in the ensuring political vacuum, Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan attained independence, only to be absorbed into the Soviet Union two years later. The same thing almost happened again in 1991, when the Soviet Union imploded and its constituent republics were left on their own.

Today, as we celebrate nearly three decades of statehood, it behooves us to assess the historical experience of those years in order to be able to project the future and somehow accommodate Pashinyan’s plan.

As much as Armenia has struggled to build a civil society based on Western democratic values, it has been handicapped by the burden of history, and to this day, it cannot build statehood based on a political philosophy.

Before, the Soviet era, the czar was the monarch and embodied the state. Then, the Soviet regime came to power, supposedly to implement an ideology. It was basically a huge demographic experiment which failed because the Czar’s one-man rule continued, only this time, replaced with Stalin’s one-man rule.

When the Soviet empire splintered, the emerging states became miniatures of their former parent state. Armenia could not escape the shadow of the personality cult. Four succeeding regimes in the country all were ruled by a mini-monarch. The reason that Armenia and its fellow republics replicated the former model of statehood was that they failed to develop an ideology; ideologies are built on political parties, in the European pattern. Yet in Armenia and its similar nations, all the parties were centered around a strong leader’s person or purse, rather than a set of beliefs.

One can still ask what the political ideology of Pashinyan’s My Step party is. In addition, we have to wonder if the party can outlast Pashinyan.

We can claim all we want that our ideal is to build a state emulating Western democratic values, but when the country continues to be ruled by a strongman, democracy will evade Armenia.

A certain level of altruism and national pride is expected from the ruler to work towards rebuilding state institutions and develop true political parties, which can eventually lead to a system of government wherein the individual ruler will not compete with the system.

As long as we fail to recreate such traditions, the current chaos will continue in Armenia and each new administration will heap blame on the previous regimes for its own failures.

A propos, the diasporan political parties were not able to survive in Armenia for the same reason. They were not perfect because they were formed and operated in alien societies but they had developed ideologies which survived their leaders and they had an experience in the liberation movement.

The Velvet Revolution brought an end to corruption, attempted to establish the rule of law and temporarily put a hold on emigration. But a revolutionary government by definition has some difficulties, since instead of operating as opposition, now it works as the power center. This new situation for the revolutionaries has led to vendettas. Witch hunts and rancorous treatment of the ancient regime officials will only generate instability. Instead, the new administration needs stability in order to achieve its long-term goals.

Armenia can rank itself among civilized countries if it can muster the courage to celebrate its 30th anniversary, having on the stage side-by-side Levon Ter Petrosian, Robert Kocharyan, Serzh Sargsyan and Nikol Pashinyan. This may sound like an unorthodox expectation but it is the hallmark of civilized nations.