Russian and Armenian Technologies
French historian Henri Besançon mentions in one of his articles that Russia’s problem is not only lagging behind Europe in economic and political sense, but also the unsuccessful attempts to overcome this lagging and, as a result, the mechanisms of reparation of the failures that deepen the abyss. These mechanisms, according to the historian, are three: religion, imperialistic sentiments and the lie.
“All our disgusting phenomena are good as much as they are ours, inspired by ethnic and religious spirit,” this is the religious way of overcoming the complexes. “We are proud that one-sixth of the land is ours, we rescued the peoples of the Caucasus and Central Asia from vandalism, we have conquered the Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic republics, because they are our brothers, thought all these “conquered” are sometimes ungrateful, this is the “imperialist” way to overcome this retardation in the imagination. “We absolutely do not lag behind Europe, in fact, we are ahead in some areas,” it is the “technology of the lie” to solve the problem. These three ways are continued for at least three centuries.
As Armenia carries the influence of Russia over two of the three centuries, we naturally, imitate also the forms to concealing the retardation. The “imperialistic” method, fortunately, is not applicable in our case. We are the so-called “objects” of this method. The bad news here is that we often implicitly admit that we, Armenians, until 1820 were groping in the darkness of barbarism and were able to get out of this situation only thanks to the Russian Empire. In this case, we must also admit that the language that we speak and the letters that we write have generated by General Paskevich’s active intervention.
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We use the other two methods “with great enthusiasm”. First, it should be noted that as much as our church has played a positive role in Armenia’s history, so much it played a negative role. Just like in Russia. In both cases, the church hindered the establishment of knighthood and secular aristocracy, in both cases, the “alternative” movements were successfully suppressed, as a result, we did not have a “reformation”, which is the integral part of the European culture. But most importantly, currently in the two countries, the official church no way displays trends of reformation and struggles for some “purity” for being not pure at all. On the contrary, often displaying closed and bureaucratic structure features. Sects, particularly, in our country would not develop that much if the elite of the Holy Mother Church displays itself as a “sect” of high-rank businessmen. Indeed, the clergymen in Russia struggle against “degenerated Europe” more actively than in our country. This role in Armenia is assumed mainly by marginal social groups.
As for saying a lie, then Armenia’s and the Russian’s authorities can compete with each other. This subject, of course, does not need a separate interpretations and examples. I will just say that both the government and the public should be record honestly and objectively as to exactly where we are in the sense of economy, social, cultural and educational and do not try “blurring” the situation with “consoling” words. Moreover, not to try thinking of a “unique way”. According to another French historian François Guizot (by the way, a prime minister of the country during 1847-1848), “History is a process, which by establishment and strengthening of the middle class leads to approval of the constitutional freedom. This process is called a civilization.”
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
