“I am not afraid of this word, although many people have complexes. Our task is to carry out a bourgeois democratic revolution; I talked about this as early as in 2008, during the election campaign. Many people try to criticize me, forgetting that the current civilization of the whole world was created thanks to the bourgeois democratic revolution,” Levon Ter-Petrossian made this observation in his speech at the Armenian National Congress (ANC) convention, talking about how systemic changes in the country should be implemented, in their opinion. In response to a question of www.aravot.am whether it was possible to carry out a bourgeois democratic revolution in our country, Ruben Mehrabyan, an expert of the Center for Political and International Studies, said: “I see a serious problem with definitions here. The bourgeois democratic revolution was one of the ideas of the 19th and 20th centuries and is not applicable to the Republic of Armenia. The issue here is different. Have you heard people in any country of Eastern Europe carry out or talk about a bourgeois democratic revolution?” Mr. Mehrabyan didn’t give an exact assessment of L. Ter-Petrossian’s observation, he just stated: “It is hard for me to say whether it is a result of delusion or intentional distortion. However, I think that it has nothing to do with our reality, Armenian society, and the agenda of the Republic of Armenia. Classical capitalism existed in Europe in 17th-18th centuries; we don’t have that past. Therefore, it is not appropriate to try to squeeze us into a certain standard. That standard doesn’t work here, the Eastern European standard works here. And for example, can what happened in Poland be called a bourgeois democratic revolution? Oh, please.” Political scientist Yervand Bozoyan thinks that the scenario suggested by L. Ter-Petrossian is the simple truth and adds: “The idea of the bourgeois democratic revolution is the universal truth, which the whole world was guided by. There have been two types of revolutions around the world – bourgeois democratic and socialist. All those countries that took the path of the bourgeois democratic revolution are developed countries these days. The Russian Federation, China, and the countries of Eastern Europe took the path of the socialist revolution. However, the past experience has shown that those countries didn’t take the path of progress. So there is no other way; the international experience has shown that. Therefore, it is not correct to discuss the simple truth. Although the Armenian people is not a European one, but it is at a higher level than African peoples; I hope that, although a bit late, it will take that path.”
Tatev HARUTYUNYAN
