“Both the government and the political opposition, which giving hope all the time, is not so mobilized that it can solve specific issues, are literally responsible for that,” ethnographer Hranush Kharatyan expressed this idea during a conversation with www.aravot.am, analyzing the reasons for the fact that a high percentage of the residents of Armenia want to emigrate. Let us note that according to the public opinion polls conducted by Gallup, among 12 post-Soviet countries Armenia’s populace is inclined to emigrate more than the others. 40 percent of the residents of Armenia who were surveyed said that they would emigrate. Ms. Kharatyan thinks that 40 percent is lower than the real rate. In response to our question whether their researches also showed that the main reasons for emigration were socio-economic issues and the future of children, as the public opinion poll had found out, Ms. Kharatyan said: “The phrase ‘the future of the child’ includes everything – the child’s education, socialization, the child’s career etc. These are all different reasons. It includes social and political issues, which are not solved in our country. The issue of justice is one of those; they see that the child is in an unfair condition, therefore, they emigrate to countries, where there is no better justice, but, all the same, they are inclined to reconcile themselves to the injustice of foreigners, rather than the injustice of their own country. They usually explain our emigration by our national character, but we actually know from history that the peaks of emigration correspond to the periods of new violence in our country after conquests by foreigners – the burden of taxes, threats to physical existence. And all those are present in our country these days. If one goes to Harsnakar, they can smash his head in; they will kill for political reasons. The situation in our country is like the one in a conquered country known from history; the subsurface and the surface of the country are conquered, the human resource is overexploited. And under these conditions, people always emigrate. And calling this tradition or national character is the most disgraceful thing. We have colonized our own country, and we call the wish to get rid of that tradition.” Sociologist Hovhannes Grigoryan, the director of the IPSC, said during a conversation with us that the result of their researches on the same subject was roughly the same percentage – 42 percent – and went into detail: “We get the same answer to a similar question. I don’t know what methods they used, how they formulated the question, nonetheless, I don’t have reasons to doubt the results. We will make public the results of our research in some 10 days; the economic and social reasons dominate in our results too.”
Tatev HARUTYUNYAN
